A Hairy Situation

It's a rite of passage every cancer/chemo survivor must go though -- the regrowing of the hair. And I think about 95% of us absolutely hate the process.

Basically, I like my hair blond, long, and straight.

Like this:

July 2009. For the record, I did dye my hair frequently and straighten my hair daily to achieve this look.

I don't care what you tell me about liking my  my current length, texture, color -- I do not currently like my hair. One bit. No matter what I do to it.

I've tried just embracing the wild natural curls. Like this...

This look kind of works in Hawaii. Kind of. 5.5 months post-chemo.

I've tried blow drying and flat-ironing the curl out of it and turns out it's just not the curl I hate...

A whole heck of a lot of straightening went into this mess. #notworthit. 6 months post-chemo.

What I do on most days is try to use a crap-load of product (gel, hairspray, fixation goo, etc.) to get my hair to stay down but it still has some waves/texture and isn't an unruly mess. And this is what I end up with...

Try not to be envious of how awesome my hair is mmmk? 6 months post-chemo.

Note: If you tell me about some hair product that's awesome that I should use and blah blah blah. Stop. I'm not buying it. I have no money and I'm sick of buying hair products that don't do much to change what I dislike.

The one thing I can do something about is the color. So I'm getting it dyed to tomorrow. Just to warm up the mouse-brown and cover my few greys. Maybe that will put me in a better mood about it.

The rest only time can fix. A lot of time. *Sigh* 

Living Life

I can't believe my last update was about two months ago! Since then we celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. We also went on a big family trip to Hawaii to celebrate being cancer-free!

Aloha!

I've fully entered the "survivorship" phase of cancer recovery. Where I'm trying to live life as "normal" but everything has changed...

Every ache, pain, or lump still scares the heck out of me. Recently I was worried I had a lymph node recurrence but both my surgeon and oncologist assured me that the lumpiness in my armpit is just scar tissue from the four lymph nodes they removed. I'm coming to terms with the fact that I just have to trust God with my life and trust that right now, the cancer is gone, and with His grace it will stay gone forever.

I'm less focused on the "am I going to live another year" thoughts I had in the beginning and find myself more focused on the superficial ways that cancer messed up my life. I fret about how I don't like my short, curly, brown hair. I hate the way my foobs (fake boobs) look in most swimsuits and some tops. I think about how I can't wait until I get my final implants and my hair grows out to a length where I can straighten it again.

This week I've started back to work. Already I'm trying to navigate how I balance work and the life I want to have. A life where I still work hard, but find enough time to focus on exercise and diet, and even more importantly, on faith and family.


I guess there's no playbook for how to live life after you've played ding-dong-ditch with death. I'm just trying to appreciate every day and live a life of joy, not fear.