Hair, Part 2

               “Don’t worry, your hair will grow back.”

              “Think of all the fun you can have with wigs! You can be a brunette one day and a red-head the next!”

              “Think of how much fun it will be to accessorize with head scarves!”

              “Ooo, maybe when it grows back it will be really thick.”

              “Maybe it will grow in all blonde, no more gray hairs. Wouldn’t that be great?”

              “I used to wear wigs when I was pregnant just to try having long hair. They looked so realistic, people who met me for the first time didn’t know it wasn’t my real hair.”

              “Sometimes I feel like just shaving my head because I get so tired of doing my hair.”

These are all things that well-meaning souls said to me both before and after I lost my hair to chemo, stated with varying levels of tact. The comments were well-intentioned, an effort to find a positive aspect to this depressing situation. The people who made these remarks meant for them to help lighten my hair-loss melancholy.  

In spite of motivations, these comments did not help.

In fact, they did quite the opposite. Rather than showing support, which was their aim, they trivialized my experience and how difficult it was to lose my hair. By trying to put a positive spin on my hair loss, these comments instead seemed to make light of it, as if it were no worse than giving up a favorite pair of jeans that no longer fit.

Take note, reader: These are all things you should NOT say to someone who is losing his or her hair to chemo.

It was bad enough that the makers of these comments were bringing up my hair loss and drawing attention to it in the first place, requiring me to engage in at least minimal conversation on the topic, which I did not want to do. Now on top of that they were actually being cheerful and making it sound like this hair loss thing could be fun or even have some benefit or that it ultimately wasn’t a big deal.

Let me tell you, it was a very big deal and I felt it keenly every day.

Playing with wigs and scarves is only fun when you’re doing it by choice, because you want to change your look or project a different persona or evade the law. Shopping for scarves is not fun when you’re looking for something to cover your now-bald head after your hair has just been buzzed off in a cancer patient ritual. I never even considered getting a wig. The very idea of a wig made me crinkle up my nose in aversion. They just seemed so itchy and hot and uncomfortable—definitely not fun.

For the cancer survivor whose hair has grown back, chemo-induced hair loss might seem less traumatic in retrospect. I wouldn’t know. I do know that at the time, it was very traumatic and no manner of potential bright spots, like those listed above, could console me.

Public Appearances

The Monday after I shaved my head, I went to work. My team was scheduled to have a big all-hands meeting that morning at 9 a.m. The whole office of 30+ people would be in one conference room for an hour discussing the latest developments and upcoming events. At the end of each meeting, we went around the room to give everyone a chance to speak if they had information pertinent to the whole group. This meant that for at least 30 seconds, all eyes would be on me and my headscarf.

I couldn’t face it.

I arrived at work about 15 minutes after the meeting had started and did not join in. Most of my teammates didn’t even know I had cancer and I wasn’t about to announce it—explicitly or otherwise—at an all-hands meeting.

I had already been sleeping a little longer and arriving at the office a little later than normal since starting chemo (on the days when I made it into work at all, that is), so on this Monday morning, I simply did that just a little bit more. Selecting an outfit posed a bit of a problem since I now had to coordinate what I wore with a very limited stock of head scarves (the one I’d bought plus those that Michelle had kindly given me at the salon). Accessorizing has never been a pleasurable past time for me and this head-scarf-outfit-coordinating-thing compounded that displeasure by at least a factor of 10. Thus, I had no small amount of angst as I was getting ready that morning which was no doubt heightened by the fact that I was emotional about losing my hair, didn’t feel 100% physically thanks to the chemo, and had zero confidence in my appearance in any head covering.  

I hid in my shared office as much as I could that day. At one point, one of the managers came in to give me a tasking. When he first walked in and saw me (and my new look), I noticed a very small start of surprise flicker across his face. It was just a microsecond, a hiccup, and then it was gone and we interacted as normal. Although I felt like I got stares in the hallways and cafeteria, my immediate coworkers didn’t miss a beat. They acted like I had been wearing a head scarf every day for months and it was nothing unusual. Bless them.

What to Say to Someone Going through Chemo-Induced Hair Loss

              “I’m so sorry.”

              “That sucks.”

              “Cancer sucks!” or “Stupid cancer!” (or both)

              “Do you want to talk about it?” (The answer will probably be no.)

              “How are you doing?”

Or don’t say anything about the hair loss at all. Just interact as if they look the same way they’ve always looked.  They will probably be very grateful to you for it.