An Ode to Hair

I had a few silly moments this morning, I thought I'd post for everyone to enjoy. I think the biggest misconception about cancer is that you will lose all your hair, not true. There are many cancer patients who never lose a strand, or have just a slight thinning. But, there are those of us who experience a more than slight thinning and are driven crazy because we still have enough hair for two people. I am one of those people. Every day I think about shaving my head, to get ahead of the total loss that I expect to happen and never does. Count me lucky or blessed, but despite the shots, the IV treatments, and the surgery, I still don't fully feel like I've got cancer. Unbelievable but true. And as the Friday following my surgery dawns, I find myself in a new kind of war, to shave or not to shave. Besides the dull nagging pain that hovers just below the edge of needing to take a pain pill, I fight minute by minute in what I've come to call . . .
The Battle of Lost Hair!!!

Through out my time in the hospital, one thing besides the bleeding had come to bug me, the never ending picking of hair. Hair on the bedsheets, hair on my gown, hair on my pillow, and even hair caught in the sticky residue left behind from the removal of leads and tape. Running my hands through my hair and coming away with no less than 3-5 strands at a time, each time, and having to clean the brush head after each use is becoming annoying. As is finding my pony tail feeling smaller and smaller, yet looking in the mirror and not being able to see any spot or patches for the now vacated hair. Visions of shaving my head torment me from minute to minute, not because I'm scared of losing my hair but because I'm just tired of picking it like lint!!!! As I sit here thinking about my thinning situation, I find myself in a bit of a hairy mess and trying to put a positive spin on it. Something funny and humorous to keep me from pulling the rest of it out and hence, my. . . . . . .

ODE TO HAIR

Wavy, curly, straight or brown,

watch a strand fall to the ground.

Red or blond or maybe black,

when it's gone it grows right back.

Pick a strand here and there,

yet I still have much to spare.

Hair that comes and hair that goes,

when it leaves no one knows.

I fight the war to shave it bald,

to see it gone and stand enthralled.

A sight of baldness, crisp and clean,

to watch is take a special sheen.

Yet I'm in a place that's in between,

a bald head yet has not been seen.

A crowning glory worn up or down,

and yet another strand falls to the ground.

Mix of brown and of gray,

yet my gray is here to stay.

With all the brown falling down,

on my face you see a frown.

One strand here, one strand there,

one quick shave, I CAN be bare.

I'm told not yet, just wait and see,

you have plenty of hair for you and for me.

And there you have my ode to hair. Hope you all enjoy a little bit of silliness and a look into the trials and tribulation of Gestational Trophoblastic Disease.