Pixies and Poison

It’s 35 degrees Celsius today and I’m lying on a blue hospital recliner with a blanket shivering while chemo #2 courses it’s poisonous way around my veins. Has anyone else noticed how Hospital air conditioning always seems to be set 5 degrees below comfortable? I might be menopausal but I’m not a penguin. It was worse in the psych ward though – I recall a fellow inmate commenting once that he suspected they were doing it on purpose, “trying to freeze the crazy out of us”!

I got my long blonde hair cut off into a short pixie style yesterday (V has been wanting to try this cut for years) and dyed it purple for posterity. If I’m honest I hated it at first, I left the salon in the throes of regret and repeating a mantra to myself “it’s going to fall out anyway” while quietly freaking out that I’d be one of the few people who doesn’t lose all their hair on this particular chemo after all and I’d done it all for nothing.

At least V loves it, apparently it expresses her true self or something – which I guess means she feels it’s more reflective of her sexuality, something that she doesn’t really get much chance to express…

Despite me being me and running out to the hair dresser on a whim, it wasn’t a totally impulsive decision. Our hair was thinning rapidly anyway and I wanted to take control of the situation, gain some power back by choosing to chop it all off before it fell out. My original intent was to dye it unicorn colours (pink/purple/blue & aqua) but alas I was too impatient to wait and ask my wonderful hairdresser friend to help and so we just followed up the cut with a DIY dye job (and the help of Miss 11).

The husband wasn’t exactly impressed, he doesn’t particularly like me colouring my hair bright colours in general, apparently it’s something “crazy people do” – to which I reply with all of the reasons why his argument is false and offensive and he just laughs because I’m getting riled up and suggests that perhaps I’m a little manic and thus apparently proving his point…

It’s busy on the chemo ward today, every recliner is filled with people in varying stages of their treatment and the waiting room is overflowing. Tomorrow is a public holiday for Australia Day so I guess they’re fitting more people in than usual.

Different levels of baldness and the odd brightly coloured wig are present throughout the room, not all chemos make you lose your hair and in fact most of the bowel cancer ones don’t. Unfortunately I can’t take the ideal chemo treatment for my cancer which wouldn’t have affected my hair as badly and I’m on one that does cause ‘alopecia’ (hair thinning, hair loss and bald patches). This is why when I started getting fistfuls of my long blonde locks come out in the shower I decided it was time to bite the bullet and cut it off.

If this chemo cycle is anything like last time I’ll probably be out of action for the rest of the week. They’ve given me some different (and apparently better) anti nausea meds to try and prevent the incessant vomiting that happened last time so maybe it won’t be quite as bad.
Well Hubby has returned from the cafe with some lemonade for me so I’ll leave it here.

xoxo Kate