She Gone.

So it all finally happened, the day I have been hoping would never happen since all of this “cancer” stuff started…. the day I have to say goodbye to my beautiful long hair, my identity, and truly come to terms with my new life. The day I finally can’t disguise or hide my cancer from the world anymore.

As you all know, I have been working up this day in my head for SO long. This past week I got to the point of frustration where I just needed the whole process to be done and over with so I could start moving on from it and recover from my fears of it. I was tired of being upset about it or getting down about it. I felt like I had finished my mourning and was finally ready to see it gone. I had had enough times looking in the mirror trying to picture myself without my hair, or wondering what it would feel like, or wondering how upset I was going to be. It also was becoming a burden because I was so afraid of experiencing any of it falling out, so I was barely touching it, washing it had become difficult, and don’t even get me started on my anxiety while trying to brush it, blow dry it, or straighten it. ENOUGH ALREADY!! Straight up torturing myself.

That morning I had felt at ease. I made sure I did one last good job of straightening it to make sure it looked its best prior to leaving me. Took a nice 360 look at it through my two mirrors, and said to myself a final goodbye. That morning was rather back-to-back for me, so I didn’t have too much time to get into deep thought about the day I had in front of me. I find that has been a nice tactic for me – keeping busy right before any major event (surgery, first chemo, haircut), so I have minimal time to let my thoughts wonder.

The place I got the haircut done at was called Medical Image Wigs, in Oakville ON, which is where I ordered my wig from. It’s run by a lovely lady named Lora Collins who has been working in the prosthesis wig business for upwards of 12-15 years and also worked with the charity, Look Good Feel Better, which helps cancer patients with things like wigs, make up, cosmetic care, etc., essentially feeling beautiful. She made the whole experience from start to finish so pleasant and I’m so thankful for how she approached everything - with a perfect balance of empathy and productiveness. In my first appointment with her back in March, she spent time with me walking me through what the whole process was going to be like, how the wig will be fitted, when my hair will start falling out and what it’ll feel like, and she also just gave me the comfort of explaining how she works with cancer patients all the time and was confident that, like all of them, I’d be just fine. On top of all of that, she also offers to do the first haircut so that I could have it done in private and be fitted to my wig that day. On that first appointment, which was 2 days after finding out I’d for sure need chemo, my sister and I walked out of there feeling a sense of hope that maybe this wasn’t going to be all that bad after all.

SILVER LINING ALERT: So I am really excited to announce that I was actually able to donate my hair!!! I can’t express to you how important that was to me. It changed everything. It gave this entire experience so much purpose. I am so thankful that my hair can live on and help someone else going through what I’m going through. I was worried that I couldn’t donate because 1) I had already gone through my first chemo round and 2) I had died it ~2 years ago, so I figured the ability to do so was off the table. Turns out it wasn’t!! (for anyone wondering – the donation will go specifically to cancer patients and won’t end up on Kim Kardashian’s head or something – I made sure to confirm this!).

I have always had extremely healthy hair, no matter how much I have beat it up over the years. It has always pulled through. RuthAnne jokes that one time I looked at her and asked seriously “what do split ends look like?”….. she glared back at me and said “shut up”…. I’m still not sure if I know what they look like. I think because I was able to donate my hair though, I walked in there with pep in my step on Friday, and a sense of pride, knowing that my beautiful hair was going to live on! And thankfully was not going to just be put in the garbage – that would have been beyond devastating. After they cut off the ends, I was told they’d be able to make a ~12-14 inch wig with it! Amazing! Lora commented that she even had in mind a little girl that was fighting through cancer and could use my hair. That warmed my heart – Purpose!! Silver lining!!

For the haircut, I was joined with RuthAnne (my sister), and two of my best friends, Laura and Becca. It was so nice having them there, keeping me distracted from my persistent fears of losing such a big part of me. As you can see, Laura again took beautiful photos of the experience, and I am so thankful for them!! I was also really thankful to have all of them there because they did the job of crying and left all the smiles to me :)

I decided to book the haircut on Day 9 post-chemo, which is right before I am expected to start feeling tingling in my scalp – the first sign that it’s going to fall out. Generally it doesn’t fall out until 14-21 days after the first cycle. I made sure I was ahead of that though. When you suddenly lose control over your life and your body, you make sure that you grab hold of anything you can control (even if it’s only a little bit). This for me was one of those aspects I felt I had a chance to control, or at least get a head of. The thought of experiencing my hair falling out in clumps was NOT something I could handle. So I decided I was going to absolutely avoid it by cutting my hair early. Cancer was not going to do that to me – to be in the shower and pull out my long beautiful hair, or see it on my pillow in the morning. NO THANK YOU. Cutting it early also let me donate it while it was as healthy as it could be! I feel like I’ve now upped the score to Cancer: 100, Diana: 1. By taking control of something, I feel like I’m fighting back, which is a great feeling.

Because I was donating, the process of cutting my hair had to be a certain way. That is why you’ll see I was turned into Scary Spice with 10 pony tails. By doing it that way, it keeps the hair contained and makes it easy to move it around without it going everywhere or ruining it. This however gave me a rather interesting haircut…..which I would define as somewhat of a hack job. It’s fine though, it’ll all be gone in a weeks’ time anyway! As you can see, it is VERY short! Somehow, I surprisingly didn’t cry during the whole experience. I’m not really sure why or how I managed to do that. It could have to do with the fact that I’m just straight up tired of crying, or that I had mourned the loss of my hair for about 3 months, or because the thought of donating it really did just turn the whole thing into a special and meaningful experience. I truly was ready for it to be done, to finally have the opportunity to move past it and start the next chapter of this journey. And for goodness sakes Diana, it’s going to come back!!

Recently I was talking to someone about my hair and the wig and they said “so are you for sure losing your hair??”….. she made me question it myself. But then I shook myself out of the thought because every single person I know who has gone through my exact treatment plan has lost their hair….so yeah, obviously I am too!! I’m not some super star exception. But it did make me freeze and think “um well frig, at this point I hope it’s falling out because I’ve already spent a small fortune on my wig and I’m chopping it off tomorrow!…..”. It was an amusing realization because it occurred to me how invested I was now in it actually falling out!! To think it doesn’t fall out and I had cut it all off….. #notwinningatall. It was such a weird feeling to actually have the thought of “well it better be falling out!!??”.

Lora fitted me to my wig right after the haircut. It was a weird feeling looking at myself because I couldn’t decipher between whether the wig looked fake, or if it was just because the hair was a different colour and style so the feeling was more just “change” than it was “fake”. The wig thankfully isn’t overly uncomfortable, it mostly just feels like I’m wearing a hat. I would say the only part that’s uncomfortable is the fact that I can’t put the hair behind my ears. I’m big about that – almost without realizing it. But when you all of a sudden can’t, it occurs to you how much you relied on the ability to do so in order to keep your hair out of the way. I’ve since figured out I’ll just keep the one side pinned back so it doesn’t bother me anymore. I would say I’m pretty content with it. I’m not at all expecting it to be perfect or to make me feel like myself by any means, but it does its job of disguising, which is all I really need.

What I’ve figured out through these past 3 months is my life is now in a new category. It’s in a “cancer” category, meaning that any fun times, laughs, feelings of happiness, feeling beautiful – are all in a different category now. Instead of “Diana happy” I am now “Cancer Diana Happy”. Instead of feeling “Diana beautiful” I feel “Cancer Diana beautiful”. You might think “ok common, I saw you having the best time the other day”…. Yeah but, what you don’t realize is that cancer is a nagging feeling, sitting in my head, reminding me every day, every moment.

Everything now feels different. It’s not sad, per se, and in all honesty, I kind of appreciate that my mind has done that to me, because this is all temporary, and I am not myself and certainly not my best self – so I’d prefer to see it as a new and different category, to remind me that this is not who I am. Cancer does not become me or define me. I am just preserving the true “Diana” category for when this is all said and done. I’m ok with that. This way, my expectations align with my reality and there isn’t a gap between the two causing anxiety, frustration, and disappointment. So today, I feel Cancer Diana beautiful with my short pixie cut :)

Next step: losing the pixie cut. Stay tuned.

PS. Turns out apartments aren’t built to have a good place to store a wig (weird!?), so I currently have it on my dresser in my bedroom facing away from us because the hair is too long to have it the other way, although in the dark it looks like there is a short person standing there. It’s extremely creepy. Mark didn’t know I had put it there, so the first night he came back from the bar late and had a borderline heart attack. Poor guy. Unfortunately she might be a constant visitor in his nightmares for the next while.