Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair, but....... I DO !!! I'm absolutely thrilled right now. My hair on my head is finally growing in and my brows are too. YEA!
2 weeks ago:
Monday, January 2, 2012
I must admit, it's been rough. Ever since I found out I had breast cancer back in July, the last 6 months have been nothing but a roller coaster ride and I had to visually watch myself transform in to a completely different person. Every stage of the transformation I was somewhat prepared for except the last which was loosing my eyelashes and eyebrows. I took a class back in December called look good, feel better. It was all about makeup and how to adjust to the changes in your face, skin, etc. The cosmopologist suggested that we all take a close up picture of our face to capture the true shape of our eyebrows. That way, when the eyebrows fall out you have a visual guide of how to draw them back in. I looked in the mirror and thought to myself, huh, 2 weeks after chemo and I still have my brows and lashes. I'm all good. But wouldn't you know it, 2 weeks later they were gone. Well, not completely gone until just recent when the very last brow hair was hanging on for dear life until this morning when I woke up and it was gone. I should have taken a photo of how I looked with no brows but I was devastated and just couldn't. I knew my appearance was changing but it wasn't till I saw some recent photos of me that I really realized how awful I looked. I just wasn't prepared for this new look. To many tears made me realize that it was time.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Tonight I finally went to a Breast Cancer support group. I had to. I couldn't stand what was happening to me and I needed to talk to people who knew what I was going through. You know, the girls who had "so been there and done that." And you know what? It was GREAT!!! I met other women just like me but at different stages in the breast cancer process, me of course being the newest to the club with just getting surgery a few weeks back. They were interested in hearing all about me and my journey. I told them my story and heard some of theirs. These women had so much knowledge. They knew exactly what triple negative breast cancer was yet I barely understood what type of breast cancer each of them had. It's such a learning process and every woman that had cancer had a different experience with it. We talked about side effects, hair loss, support system (this is where I got to brag about all of you) and I got to hear a little about some of their radiation experiences which they all said compared to chemo, radiation is easy breezy. So of course that made me smile until one of them mentioned that it burned threw 4 layers of her skin. OUCH! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I won't blister or burn to bad. Since we touched upon the subject briefly I really have no idea how long each woman's radiation treatments were so I really don't know how my experience will be. I left this meeting feeling really good about myself and it truly made me realize that I'm so glad I did this. It was the fastest most informative 1 1/2 hours I've had in a long time. This group meets monthly and I'm already looking forward to seeing them next month.
Saturday, January 7th and 8th, 2012
This weekend I'm starting to see little hairs coming back on my brows. Let me tell you how happy this is making me. It's just a matter of time before I'll want to get them waxed. Ha-ha! But seriously, loosing my brows was the most upsetting thing that's happened to my appearance recently. To see them growing back in makes me feel like I'm coming back to life. Now if I can get a little color back in my skin too. I know, I'm pushing it. Baby steps Jen, baby steps.
So getting back to the beginning of this e-mail about Fuzzy Wuzzy and me of course. Now that it's Jan. 17th, the hair on my head is really starting to grow in nicely. It's actually not peach fuzz anymore, it's baby soft and more of my natural color (brown) is coming in. Not only am I thrilled but I'm so happy about not being bald anymore. The more hair I get, the warmer my head is and now that it's chilly out, more hair would be a huge perk. I'm attaching 2 photos of the back of my head. Sorry about the blurriness of the bald headed photo. I guess the camera didn't like what it was seeing and didn't want to focus on my head. Of course I didn't notice the blurriness until I downloaded it a few weeks later. Although I'm bummed I don't have a better photo for memories, I'm certainly not going to recreate the photo by buzzing off what I have now. That would be crazy and I'm not crazy yet. I want to keep my new hair.
XOXO Jen
Bald photo dated 11/8/2011
Hair photo dated 1/8/2012
No comments:
Post a Comment