Wigged Out!: Chpt 30

About ten days after my first chemo treatment I had to go back to the cancer center for a blood test. This test told the staff how my body was healing and whether I would need additional medication. You know the stuff you see advertised on TV when some tire and sad looking person looks in to the camera and says…
"Chemo made me so tired that I couldn't do 'whatever' anymore, so I ask my doctor for…fill in the blank…miracle drug, and now I can do anything." Anyway I was feeling tired and I figured that they would put me on this stuff. I drove to the hospital and headed for the cancer center. After walking past the smokers and talkers I took the elevator to the second floor I didn't use the stairs because I was too tired. I then headed for the waiting room, just as I opened the door who should walk out but Beth and her mother. To refresh your memory these were the two women who were members of our first church and that Mark had run in hospital lobby one day when he was there to visit me. At that time Beth had told Mark that she had had a double mastectomy a few months earlier. So here she was walking out of the cancer treatment center while I was walking in.
"Hi" she said. I almost didn't recognize her because she looked so different. I remembered her with shoulder length, light brown hair, and today her hair or wig was short and dark red. She looked great, but she looked so different from how I remembered her, and I found myself staring at her wig instead of her eyes when we were talking. We filled each other in on how our respective treatments were going. We compared surgeries and recovery stories, she told me about her double mastectomy and implants. I told her all about my single mastectomy and the "joys" of the trans-flap surgery.
"I'm glad I had the implants." She says laughing. Then she told me that her treatment was going well, and that she had her last chemo treatment two weeks ago, today she was there for her blood test and a shot of that miracle drug. I found out that her husband was still a great guy and she was a grandmother. Twice. I wished her well-then walked into the office, happy to see her, but thinking about how different she looked in that red wig.
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Eva tested my blood and told me that I was fine and I didn't need any additional medication.
"But I feel so tired!" I told her; she assured me that I was doing fine, “better that most.” She said. That statement made me feel real bad for the other patients. We schedule my next chemo treatment for the following week. I still wanted to change my chemo treatments to a Monday or Tuesday but they could only adjust my schedule for one day in either direction from a Thursday. I found out later why. In the book Straight talk about Breast Cancer it was explained that the way that chemo works (put here very simply) is that the cancer cells kind-of open and close. So when the chemo attacks opens cells it kills them, but if the cancer cell is closed than the chemo has no effect. So the chemo is given in cycles that follow the opening and closing cycle of the cancer cells. Or something like that, so sticking to a schedule is very important for killing all those pesky cancer cells.
Somehow, and I will never figure out why but I decided that I wanted to change my chemo treatments to Wednesdays. In reality this messed up the library schedule worse than going in on Thursdays did. Once again my co-workers came to my rescue by jumping in and covering for me without ever complaining. As I was about to leave Eva reminded me that sometime around the second treatment my hair would start falling out. Thanks.
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From the moment that I was diagnosed with cancer I started getting interesting mail. The hospital (or someone) informed the American Cancer Society (ACS) about my condition and the ACS imminently contacted me both through the mail and with a phone call. Some woman called asking me how I was doing and did I need some help building a support base. I told her that I was dealing with everything fine and that my husband, friends and church were helping me a great deal and that although I appreciated the call, I didn't need any outside help. To their credit, they never called again, but the mail. I got catalogs for wigs and prosthesis, scarves and hats. I also received pamphlets of various kinds of treatments and information of local support groups. One of the letters I got was an invitation to come to a "Look good…Feel Better" seminar.
Although I had been invited to join two different Cancer support groups I had decided not to join either. I had three reasons for this. First; I didn't want to join a group because doing so felt like a long-term time consuming commitment and I didn't want that. I felt that I had lost enough time to my cancer treatments already. Second; the group at the hospital and the group at Dr. Sullivan's office met at times that were at the same time that I worked. I was told at work that I could change my hours, but I felt that my co-workers had rearranged their schedules enough for me. Third; and the main reason that I didn't join any group was because I was selfish, I never believed that I was going to die from the cancer, so I didn't want to join a group of women and become close to them only to watch some of them die. I just couldn't do it. I had formed a small circle of people who I could rely on, get close to and in theory none of them were going to die on me.
The "Look Good…Fell Better" seminar looked interesting, it was only a one night event and they would show me how to use make-up and wigs to look better during my chemo treatment and the letter said that participants would receive free make-up. Free stuff-sign me up.
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On the appointment day I headed out for the seminar at the local chapter of the American Cancer Society. I was not sure what to expect, a few makeup tips maybe or a lesson on how to tie a scarf around my head in interesting ways. Before going to the seminar I had decided that I was not going to wear a wig, I felt that I would only wear hats and scarves.
I found the building with only a little difficulty, and went inside to find the room where the seminar was being held. The room was small with a long table down its center, A TV in one corner a few small tables lining the walls. There were sixteen of us; twelve cancer survivors, one leader and three observers (they were learning how to run other cancer seminars). The women ranged in age from their early twenties to the late fifties.
The woman leading the seminar was named Sandra, she was somewhere between her late thirties to early fifties, it was hard to tell, she had that look of someone who works in the beauty business. (You know blond-blond hair and lots of make-up) It turned out that she use to own a wig shop that’s how she got involved with the ACS in the first place. Recently she had sold her business, retired and now volunteers part-time for the ACS. I decide that she is a very nice woman, and really knew what she is talking about. The three observers were in the late twenties of early thirties, and they didn't say much. Then there were the rest of us.
Like I said we twelve were from our early twenties to late fifties. The group was a nice mix of Black, Spanish and Angelo. Ten of the women had their own hair, one wore a wig and the youngest of us wore a baseball cap.
Sandra was very interesting, she talked a little, then show us a video about 'How to chose a wig,' it was amazing how different each woman in the video looked with different kinds of wigs, it got me thinking. Then Sandra asked the woman who was wearing the wig if she could use her to demonstrated how to put on a wig. The woman named Lillian said "Sure." Then she moved to the chair at the head of the table, where she sat down than whipped off her wig.
"I'm ready!" she said. We all gasped and laughed at the same time. Lillian was a well put together woman, other than the fact that she was carrying an extra ten pounds, she looked perfect for her age. Her wig was stylish, her clothes stylish and expensive, her make-up perfect. I wasn't sure why she was here (maybe the free make-up). The only thing that wasn't perfect was her bald (kind of) head, there were still some clumps and whips of hair on it, so her head looked funny, she would have looked much better if she shaved her head (note to me, remember this).
Sandra told us a lot about hair, wigs and make-up it was a very informative evening. I even learned how to draw on natural looking eye browns. Eye browns? Nobody told me that I was going to loose my eyebrows. Every now and then Sandra would give us a short break, so we would stand up (there was not enough room for all of us to walk around) and chat, that’s when we learned the story of the young woman who was wearing a baseball cap.
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It was April 2001 when Mandy, who was in her twenties, working full time and four weeks away from her wedding found a lump in one of her breast. She went to her doctor and discovered that she had breast cancer. She got married, went on her honeymoon, and then started her cancer treatments. I look at this bald, thin, very young woman and realized that she had only been married for four months.
Before I started my treatments I had been warned that the chemo would throw me into early menopause, instead of being sad about that fact I was thrilled at the thought of never having a period again. Of course the other stuff life thinning bones and hair and saggy looking skin I would deal with later (Hay, I know a good plastic surgeon). But Mandy was young, a newlywed who dreamed of having a family. And now thanks to modern medicine she could have a long life, but not children. I felt so sad for her, yet she seemed very up-beat about her future. Like the rest of us she was happy just to have a future. The seminar ended, we took our bag of make-up (some really good stuff) hung out in the parking lot and chatted for a while then went home.
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Whether its explaining the rules of baseball, the facts of life or the realities of a mother with cancer it takes more then one big talk to explain all the facts to your children. It is more like a continual flow of information, the asking and answering of questions. You don't sit them down once, hem and haw, say a few words then walk away thinking that they've got it. First you tell them that you have cancer, then try to relieve their fears while you try to hide your own.
Then you tell them that you have to have surgery, and it is going to be ok, but you have to go to the hospital a little while. After you come home looking and feeling really bad, you start to heal, then things starting going back to normal when you tell them that the next step is chemotherapy. That’s harder to explain that the surgery. How do you explain to you children that once every three weeks that you have to go to the hospital for a few hours, let a somewhat stranger stick you with a needle and fill your body with poison. How do you explain it to yourself? When it came to discussing the chemo treatments I made two big mistakes.
The first was the day that I came home from work with a large box of scarves that Caroline had loaned me. Good scarves are expensive and cheap scarves look like well-like cheap scarves. I felt that I was very lucky to have a co-worker and friend who had a very nice collection that she was willing to loan me for as long as I need them. Anyway, Leah was at the door to greet me when I brought home the box of scarves.
Leah loves anything to do with clothes, she has a better wardrobe and more shoes than I do. This is a child that decided at the age of 5 that she wanted to be a fashion designer when she grows up. While Ronnie had set the goal of going to Princeton, Leah’s goal is to attend The Fashion Institute of Technology. When Leah found out that I have a degree from there (I have an associates in Fashion, Buying and Merchandising) I became a much cooler mom in her eyes.
Anyway she was thrilled when she saw all the scarves and wanted to play with them, which met dressing-up all her dolls. I explained that the scarves were for me, that I would need them when my hair started fall out.
"Your hair what?" and she started to cry.
"That was a lousy way to tell you child that you are going to be bald". I thought to myself. I realized how badly I had handled the conversation. I held her in my arms and tried to explain that the chemo would make my hair fall out, but only for a while, and then my hair would grow back again. The child was near hysteria, it took me a long time to clam her down. Then second mistake was I didn't follow up this discussion by giving Ronnie the same information. A few weeks later in the middle of a fight with sister Ronnie came running into my room screaming.
"MOMMY, MOMMY LEAH SAIDS THAT YOU ARE GOING TO BE BALD. TELL HER TO STOP LIEING MOM!" I sat on the bed patting a space next to me indicating that I wanted her to sit. I put my arms around her and say.
"Honey, Mommy has something to tell you…"
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Going bald was never a big concern for me, I have basically lived with the philosophy that anything temporary is tolerable. I have met women and read about others, who were tempted not to have chemo because they didn't want to go bald. How silly, I don't know about them, but I have always had a love/hate relationship with my hair. I thought of few months of baldness might be interesting. After all, how many times have I been standing in front of a mirror brush in hand fighting with my hair, and loosing and thinking.
"Why don't I just shave off all of my hair and buy a wig that will look just the way that I want it too." So I thought that I would handle the loosing of my hair very nonchalant. Wrong.
The first thing that I realize was that it would be easier to see my hair fall out if it were short. Let me tell you a little about my hair. First of all I like it long, as a teenager in the 70's I was blesses with long straight blond hair with a natural part in the middle. And that was great as long as long, straight hair that was parted in the middle was in style, but alas styles change. Parts on the side came and went fashion wise, but any time I tried to part my hair on its side my hair rebelled by going every which way and making me look stupid. So I learned that I had to leave it parted in the middle, sometimes with bangs, some times with out. Did I mention that my hair was straight? Hair-curlers, curling irons, moose and perms, I’ve tried everything. I can get my hair to curl…for a while, then it goes straight again.
I heard that hair sometimes changes as a person grows older, but the only change that my hair did was get darker, first I notice a slight change here and there, and then I got pregnant. The slight darkening became quick darkening, so by the time Leah was born I could no longer call myself a blond.
Evan though I live in a neighborhood where most of the women have standing appointments with their hair-dressers, being the rebel that I am, I was happy with my long light brown hair-usually in a pony tail.
That was about to change, my hair was starting to fall out and I learned at the seminar that cutting my hair short would make loosing it easier, both mentally and physically. So off to the hair-dressers I went. Being cheap I went to a barber shop in town that chargers $16.00 per hair male/female/adult/child. It is run by an old immigrant couple that offers a no-frill hair-cut in a very frilly town. How do they do it? Easy, the shop is very small only two chairs and two mirrors. There is no reception deck and no appointments. You walk in sit on the long bench that sits along the wall and wait your turn. There are no sinks (which is good for me, because I hate having my hair washed in a salon), no hair-dryers, no colorist, no manicurist and a décor that has not been up-dated since the 1940’s. The couple does not speak English well (he speaks it better than she does) but boy, can they cut hair.
I discovered them a few years ago and take the girls there whenever they need a hair-cut. The woman always does the hair of any female that comes into the shop, but they both cut the hair any man who comes into the shop, after all men are their primary customers. So it was to this shop that I went to get my long tresses cut short. I walk in with my hair in a pony-tail than started at the based of my neck. My intent was to have the woman start with one big cut so that I could have my pony-tail as a keep sake, just like the ones that I have of each of my daughter's first hair-cuts, but we had a little communication problem.
The women's English was good enough for me to tell her that I wanted my hair cut short. It just was not good enough for her to understand I am having chemo and I am about to looses all of my hair, so I want to have my ponytail for a souvenir. She took my hair out of the pony-tail and started cutting a little bit at a time, I wanted to cry. As a matter of fact I think that I did. Anyway she finished cutting my hair, then I got off the chair and garbed a hand full my hair off the floor. I think that the woman must have thought that I was nuts. Maybe I was.
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O.K. after thinking about it for a long time I decided to by a wig, but I didn't want to go shopping alone. Mark is good at many things, but shopping is not one of them, I learned very early in our marriage that for us to stay happily married we don't shop together with the exception of maybe Home Depot. So I asked Alex to go with me. I had my list of wig shops in the area from my "Look Good…Feel Better" seminar, Alex and I decide to go the easy route and visit the wig and cosmetic store that is located in the Hospital (yes, they have their own store). We drove to the hospital and hunt for the store, and guess what? The store was closed Mondays we went there on a Monday. Rats. We checked the list for another store. Looking at the list, Alex saw a store located right down the street from her favorite Portuguese Restaurant and she know where there was cheap parking in that neighborhood. Sure sounds like a logical reason to chose a store to me.
We find Alex's secret parking spot and walk toward the store, we heard three or four different languages spoken just on the walk from the parking lot to the wig shop. We checked the address and locate the shop and walk in. Our hearts sank, the place was not a wig shop but a beauty shop and it looked like a disorganized dump. We didn't see anyone, not an employee or customer in sight. The shelves were well stocked, but nothing was labeled it looked like items were tossed on the shelves helter-skelter. We saw a few broken mannequin heads with cheap green, orange or purple wigs on them. We were shocked, and we wondered how this store got on the American Cancer Society's approved wig shop list. Without saying a word Alex and I turned to the exit when two African-American teenaged girls walk in. Suddenly an African-American man about forty, and dressed casually stood-up behind the counter, we hadn't notice him. The girls walked up to the counter and addressed him by name, then asked him for some product that I had never heard of. I figured that he would be spending the next hour just looking for the item.
"Second shelve from the top, five items over." He said pointing to his left. The girls walked over to that spot and there was the item they wanted. I was amazed; I gave the place a second look. It was then that I realized that I was use to shopping in corporate stores where everything was lined up in perfect order. This was a privately owned shop where the owner had his own way of doing things, the place looked like a mess to me, but it was obvious that this man knew where every item in the store was located. I was impress, but that didn't help me find a wig, so again Alex and I headed out the door when an well dresses African-American woman who looked somewhere in her thirties walked up to us and asked.
"Can I help you?" I held up the paper with the list of wig shops on it and said.
"I was looking for a wig."
"Follow me." She headed for an open door in the wall that I hadn't notice before, we went through the door and stepped down a step. We entered a wig shop, a real wig shop. It was beautifully organized, there were close to fifty mannequins heads each wearing an expensive wig. Every color, cut, and length was there, it was a bald woman's paradise.
"Have a seat." She said pointing to four conformable looking chairs sitting in the middle of the room "I'm Yvonne." Alex and I headed for the chairs, one of us must have looked at the door and then looked at her with a confused expression on their face because Yvonne looked at the door also.
"My husband and I have different business styles, but they both must be working, because we've been in business for over twenty years." Twenty years? Obviously she was older than I had thought.
"You can't argue with success" Alex said to keep the conversation going. This made Yvonne smile.
It had now been about three weeks since my first chemo treatment and just like Eva had said, my hair was falling out, fast. Yvonne put a tan skull-cap over my head and then selected a wig from her collection, placed it on my head, then styled it. The wig was similar to my own hair (or what was left of it) in length and color. It looked nice but I wanted to try different looks.
First Alex picked out a wig for me to try on, and then I pick one. It is interesting that each of us select a different cut and color for me to try on, each of us saw me differently. We were having a lot of fun, I hadn’t laughed that had in a long time. At one point I watch Alex who was at the other end of the shop, taking a blond wig off a mannequin for me to try on. I was not looking in the mirror at the wig that Yvonne was putting on my head; she styles it then walked to another area in the shop to help another woman who has just walked in. Alex turned from the mannequin and started walking back to where I was sitting, she was staring at me strangely.
"What?" I ask her as she slowly approaches me, never taking her eyes off my head.
"Look" she said as she pointed to the mirror in front of me. I was amazed at the woman that I saw staring back at me. That woman had beautiful hair, it was dark blond, with expensive highlights, the cut was exquisite. She looked so sophisticated, like she should be drinking a mint-julip at the Yacht Club or heading out for a day at her stables. I was standing there looking spell-bound into the mirror seeing myself as I have never seen myself before when my thoughts are broken by the sound of Alex's Brooklyn accent saying…
"…Too top of the mountain for you!" (top of the mountain is an expression that we use in referring to the RICH people who live in our town) we burst out laughing standing there in our jeans and tee shirts, pointing at the imposter in the mirror. Yvonne has given-up on us and told us to call her if we needed her.
I tried on a few more wigs, I found one that was my fantasy hair, it is not-quite to my shoulders, dark red and slightly curly, hesitantly I put it on, after the 'top of the mountain' wig I was gun shy. It looked great, fun, even sexy. I love it, Alex loved it even Yvonne who had rejoined us approved. Then I start thinking about seeing Beth and her red wig, it looked soooo, un-natural, soooo wrong. I took the wig off, then tried on a short light brown boring wig with slight red highlights. It said unassuming suburban house wife-I bought it. I am what I am.