How's My Hair Wednesday (on an actual Wednesday)

Picture 8, seven weeks post chemo.

I feel like my hair actually looks better in person than it does in pictures. I might even be a week or two away from being willing/comfortable going out in public without a hat, which is nice because next week is supposed to bring warmer temperatures with it. So, yeah, it's time to put the stocking caps/beanies away and let my hair blow in the wind. Hahahaha.

So without further ado:

How's My Hair...Friday? Yikes!

So yes, radiation fatigue is a real thing. I'm apparently suffering from it. Which is my excuse for not posting How's My Hair Wednesday. But again, the picture was taken on Wednesday, so that's something. It doesn't take much to take a picture. Well, I do have to take the clothes off the hook that hangs from the door and then take the hook down but even that doesn't fatigue me that much.

But getting up and moving around? Yeah, pretty tiring.

Enough of that. Here's the seventh photo, six weeks post chemo (please ignore the fact that it says post-chemom...I blame the radiation fatigue.)

Radiation So Far

As of Friday, April 13, I've finished 13 rounds of radiation. I have 20 more to go. That means four weeks of daily, Monday through Friday, appointments.

So far the side effects include redness at the site of the radiation (ie, my left boob looks sunburned) and tiredness. I'm not sure I'd call what I'm feeling fatigue but I am pretty tired these days. Now that I've finished my round of antibiotics for strep and an ear infection, I'm sleeping through the night. It's a novel experience and quite lovely. The side effects of chemotherapy made it pretty hard to sleep through the night so I'm loving not dealing with dry mouth, sinus congestion and several trips to the bathroom a night.

But even sleeping through the night doesn't take away my need for a nap in the middle of the day. I can sometimes go without a nap for one day but only for one day. The next day requires a nap to get through the evening.

All this isn't helped by the fact that it's currently track season. Alyssa has two track meets a week and anyone who knows me knows I don't like to miss her meets. I just feel like if she's going to put in the work at practices and compete in the meets, the very least I can do is make it to the meets themselves. So on Tuesdays and Fridays, I make sure I take a nap so I can make it to her meets.

Tom is still very supportive and loving. I do know how lucky I am that he's being so great through all this.

I don't think it's affecting the girls all that much. I still help Liv with her homework and as noted above, I'm still going to Lyss's track meets and spending time with her when she's home, which, these days, isn't as much as I'd like. But then, I suppose high school is the time when kids start spending less time at home so they can get us used to the idea of going away to college. I know these next three-ish years are going to fly by.

How's My Hair Wednesday (Thursday Edition)

The picture was taken yesterday (Wednesday) but I didn't have a chance to post it. Radiation makes me sleepy and I still have fourth grade homework to do supervise and a teenager to pick up from track practice. Between all that there are so many naps to take.

Anyway, here is picture #6 taken five weeks post-chemo.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Last weekend (Easter weekend) my mom invited me and the girls over to her house on Good Friday to dye eggs with Jaxon, Connor and Sabella, my cousin's daughter.

This was the first time Sabella saw me without a hat since losing my hair. She asked me what happened to my hair. I told her I'd had to take some medicine that made my hair fall out. She took that as a good enough answer and went back to her eggs.

Later, she glanced up at me and informed me, "You look like Zordon."

I had no idea who Zordon was so I just accepted her word for it.

It turns out that Zordon is the mentor of the Power Rangers. Good to know. We googled images of Zordon and...wow, the resemblance is uncanny.

I'm considering changing my profile picture to this:

I mean...I'm not sure anyone would even realize it isn't me in the above picture. Hahaha. I do so love the honesty of children. They're so refreshing.

Speaking of my hair, I tried to take a picture of the epic case of hat head I happened to have on Friday but it didn't photograph well. But trust me, it was awesome.

How's My Hair Wednesday - Week 4 After Chemo

Here we go. Picture 5, four weeks post chemo.

Some Days Are Better Than Others

Yesterday was a good one. I think part of what made it good was that I made myself get off my butt and actually do something. My mom took me to radiation (I think she misses spending every Tuesday with me.) and then we went to Walmart for a few things. I then spent most of the early afternoon with her at her house watching HGTV. That's always a positive.

I got home about an hour before Olivia did. I ended up falling asleep in the recliner. I vaguely heard her say to Tom when she got home, "Mom looks dead."

Huh.

Anyway, at 4:15 I woke up and realized it was time to do homework with Liv. I then remembered that I'd planned to make potato soup for dinner that night. I sighed with frustration at myself. Tom offered to peel potatoes. I knew he was busy. He'd been busy all afternoon and I didn't want to take him away from his work. I told him, "I can do it. I need to do it. I always feel better when I move around anyway."

And so I did. I told Olivia we'd work on her homework while the potatoes boiled and got busy.

I didn't sit back down for several hours and I felt pretty good for having kept busy and gotten some things done.

Olivia ended up eating three servings of potato soup, to it must have been good.

I'm hoping looking back I will be reminded that keeping busy and active definitely feels better than sitting around, no matter how tired I think I might be.

But gosh, sometimes that recliner looks so inviting.

Sprigs

Okay, so I've been posting weekly pictures of my hair. I've been posting them here, on FB and on Instagram. Part of the reason I'm doing this is because I like having a record of how things are going. And yes, it's funny. I mean, I have like seven sprigs of hair on the top of my head but damn if they're not growing.

My mom swears that this is exactly how my hair grew in when I was a baby/toddler. She says I was bald until I was almost two and when my hair did finally make an appearance the last place it grew was on the top of my head. So...okay, it's coming.

But right now I feel like I look like a dude with male-pattern baldness. The hair on the sides and the back of my head is pretty thick. At least thick enough that you can't really see my scalp much anymore. But the top? It's shiny and well, kind of ugly.

Just saying.

I try to post each week without using Snapchat filters because I want to be real and honest. But I'm getting a little tired of real and honest. I know it's just hair. I know it's growing every day and new sprigs are probably popping up. But from week to week, even though the comments on FB are so kind and nice about how fast it's growing, I don't see much difference. I still see my scalp and I'm tired of it.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I guess I'm just keeping it real. Even though I can laugh about it, there are moments when I get discouraged and frustrated and just want this whole cancer chapter of my life to be over.

But you know by Wednesday, I'll be over this little moment in time and will post yet another "How's My Hair" pic. It's what I do.

And on the slightly brighter side, on Saturday, I had serious bedhead (even though I was awake from 2am to 7am watching Sharknado movies...I think my ear infection was keeping me awake) and kept complaining about how messy the left side of my hair was. I looked like a freaking baby chicken. My sweet Alyssa protested that I did NOT look like a chicken but I think she just looks at me through the eyes of love and couldn't see the mess that was on my head.

This too will pass and I will continue to laugh about more than I lament it. But I want to continue to be honest about it all, the laughter AND the lamenting. If I can't do that then what's the point?