First of all, I want to say that it is truly and completely unbelievable to me that today, the biggest update I feel compelled to share is on the current status of my HAIR. I feel blessed beyond belief and afraid to say more for fear of somehow jinxing things. But I guess to be fair, I do feel like hair can often be a direct reflection of your health status and so far, mine continues to look great. It's actually kind of empowering to regularly know that my vital organs are all operating as they should, my thyroid is in good shape, and so on. And by empowering I also mean anxiety-inducing and fairly crippling each time I brace myself for something to be "off," immediately followed by the relief that if not for this little cancer diagnosis, I'd probably be considered in pretty good health!
It's been so long since I've last updated but I've been wanting to share these photos for quite some time now. Yesterday I finally got my haircut and I've noticed a couple of things:
1. My hair appears to be re-growing at a very fast speed (yay!) and coming in the same color and texture as it was before, which is to say it's re-growing with a slight wave to it and it is VERY thick. This is a great thing! The friend who cut my hair said she even thinks there is hair coming THROUGH my scar (which she also noted is "beautiful" and "very small" and I'll take her word for it because I can't see it!)
My dad would most certainly make some kind of crack about how this just proves how hard-headed I am. And he wouldn't be wrong. :)
2. The one downside to #2 is that very thick hair that is only a few inches long but lays underneath other hair is kind of troublesome - it has a tendency to stick up and out, possibly in part because I've also had to re-train my part (I hear side parts are coming back, thank goodness!) to go the other way.
I've been through more hair products than I can begin to describe -- including some "filler" products, various dry shampoos, and hair thickening sprays. I've become a big fan of the Bb thickening spray along with the WOW root lifter. I literally can't travel without them. (On that note, I'm a bit nervous about how the hair routine will work in a foreign country without access to my usual heat tools but that's a bridge to cross this weekend.)
I know few people really notice it at all and most people probably have no idea that sometimes it can take me a ridiculous amount of time just to get my hair to look like I really didn't do anything to it. And honestly, most of the time I just don't care. Either you know me well enough to know that I lost a huge chunk of my hair due to radiation or you don't, in which case you shouldn't even care, right? And people I encounter are always so complimentary of my hair which is a little weird because that's not something I have any real control over but also a big confidence boost because it feels good to hear the subtext behind "your hair looks great."
A few people have asked me if I'm doing anything special and I often joke that I am taking enough biotin every day to kill a small animal (without any actual knowledge of whether or not a biotin overdose would, in fact, harm an animal so please don't come at me!) Truthfully, I take biotin and I've been using a shampoo and conditioner bar that has biotin and rosemary in them and occasionally a hair oil with those same two ingredients. And I honestly have NO IDEA if any of that is helping but I KNOW it's helping me *feel* as if I'm doing *something* to take back control of something that was out of my control so that's not nothing, you know? For what it's worth, my nails are also in amazing shape -- I haven't broken a nail since before brain surgery (BBS.)
Right now, the hair "underneath" is probably in its most awkward grow out phase yet but I'm hopeful that in a few more weeks that will start to change and I'll notice the left side filling out to be more like the right side. Cutting this hair was like piecing together a puzzle because I have hair that was growing back after being shaved for surgery, then hair that was growing back because it all fell out due to radiation, then hair that is just randomly growing new (kind of like the hairs that sprung up after I had babies) and hair that has been damaged and made brittle for no real known reason. It's been a long time since my hair was quite this short but I think it's going to be like this for a while and I kind of love it. Every other time in my life that I've cut my hair chin length, I've immediately decided I liked it but would grow it back out again. This time, I think this cut is here to stay for a while. I guess time will tell. Here is a rough timeline, dating back to late February when I had finally stopped losing hair to today.
