I was meeting with Monique, the wig lady. She was a very large black woman with alopecia. She told me she had no hair and no prospect of ever growing it. She was quite chatty and so I had plenty of time to look above her (very taupe-Munchkin-colored) hair at the Styrofoam heads covered with wigs of every shade. I was seriously having an out-of-body Wizard Of Oz moment-from-hell. There would be more Xanax when this trip was over. Face it. This entire cancer thing is one big trip with no way out other than consuming large amounts of drugs and begging Jesus and Mary simultaneously to make it go away.
I sit in the swively chair. I turn it around twice. I contemplate why (at 60 years-old) am I still so immature that I feel the need to twirl the chair around and around. Developmentally, I have come to terms that I am a five year-old in an older body. God. As I’m twirling trying to get dizzier Monique says…
“Stop.”
It wasn’t a demand but more of a sweet gesture of “we can do this… face the facts, you can't twirl this one off, girl.” Clearly, she had been down this awful road with other women and knew the drill. She asked me to close my eyes and promise not to open them. Monique was my angel. She was the first of many in this diseased journey of mine.
*This was the moment when I got it. I got cancer. I got fear. I got death, but (more importantly) I got life… for until you face death (and a wig) you don’t appreciate living life at all.*
You don’t comprehend cancer until you confront this kind of crap. For it is downright evil to shave off your crown of womanhood, and even more sinister to put on acrylic strands of hair that make you feel like a clown at a circus.
Truth is, I opened my eyes and I never looked better. Talk about white girls’ hair. This was more like smooth Beauty locks when (traditionally) my curly mess was like flat-ironing the Beast. Talk about twirling. I was convinced that I would be having a great time with this wig thing.
That lasted around a week.
It was the beginning of spring and the sunshine and there is nothing worse than wigs and sunshine at the same juncture. Too hot. That was when I got online to a place called LIDS and bought ball caps. I bought them in every shade. This was very difficult for me because as much as I am a gym rat, I have more of a Boho funk style and do not consider myself “Sporty Sal.” I always wanted to wear a tennis skirt, Nikes, and a ball cap and pull off Sporty Sal but she (frankly) doesn’t exist. It might be better if my body weren’t so curvy, but juicy women with big boobs do not fit the sporty ideal. This would be a challenge but I didn’t care. The wig was out. All $285.00 of it. My four year-old granddaughter, Reese, is in love with it, so okay. It’s hers when she comes over.
So, there you go. I was forced to be “Sporty Sal” until my hair grew back. I hated it, and (not to mention) the ball cap doesn’t cover around the ears, so I look (um) cancerous anyway. No way out. I was forced to look sick even on my good days. Whatever. More pitiful pity to endure.
I even bought a Bob Marley wig and Princess Leia ear-braids. If I couldn’t laugh about it who could? Most days I was just bald. Lonely, bored, scared and bald. My granddaughter, Lily, gave me her baby truth in a nutshell as she visited one Sunday… “if you take that hat off, Non… I’m leaving.” Then she added, “I mean it. I will ask my daddy to take me home in the car.” Poor dear. She was as uncomfortable as I was.
Ah cancer. The big life-changer. It made me a totally different person. It also changed everyone in my family in sweet ways. I appreciate every day and have perspective of a lifetime. Most people with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma live five-seven years after the diagnosis. I’m going for twenty-five years.
It could happen, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment