One year ago, I asked my hairdresser to cut off my hair. It was a pre-emptive strike. A few days later I would be admitted to the oncology unit at POW to undergo chemotherapy. Everyone knows that chemo takes your hair. I wanted to take control of what I could before the poison did its damage. But I left the hair salon in tears.
When I was given a cancer diagnosis at the age of 21, sitting in a doctor’s office, the room fell silent for 30 seconds, or maybe it was three minutes. Then I managed to blurt out two questions: Was I going to make it through this? My doctor told me that I was “high risk.” I would need to begin treatment immediately. The second thing I asked was whether I was going to lose my hair.
As I tried to prepare for my first round of chemo, I scoured the Internet, read the pamphlets my doctor had given me and paged through the cancer books that friends and relatives had dropped off at the house. I was still catching up on the basic details of my disease, its treatment and its prognosis. I had no idea how to prepare for the havoc it would wreak on my appearance — the part of the cancer experience that the world can see.
As the Gatorade-red poison made its way into my veins, my body began to morph within the first week. Many of my physical transformations — new surgical scars, drastic weight loss, chronic mouth sores and (maybe worst of all) infertility — were invisible to the world, the silent imprint of disease. With all of these things going on, I was surprised to find myself preoccupied by one of the more temporary side effects of chemo: the impending loss of my hair.
On balance with battling my disease, worrying about hair loss seemed petty. It’s only hair, I kept telling myself. It would grow back. But I couldn’t shake the idea that soon, everywhere I went, baldness would be my dominant (or at least most noticeable) physical trait. When you’re bald, cancer leads. Everything else follows. While much of what a cancer patient experiences is deeply personal, losing your hair is an undeniably public affair.
For the first few weeks after I lost my hair last year, I avoided going out in public. The mirror can be an onerous thing to a cancer patient, and I no longer recognised myself. Maybe I could wait it out behind the shuttered windows of my bedroom, I thought. I wanted to avoid the stares from strangers — even if most of them were just out of curiosity. I never expected cancer to make me so self-conscious.
Chemotherapy is a swift, sure stylist. Seeking inspiration and solidarity, I tried reading popular books about cancer that I found in the self-help section of Berkelouw. Many of the books sought to recast cancer as an empowering experience, even something that could be “sexy” or “cool.” But I couldn’t connect with that kind of upbeat gospel. Maybe it was too soon. I felt unsexy. I felt uncool.
I hid beneath hats and scarves, which I’d built a collection of since getting out of the hospital. But even hats felt like “cancer clothes.”