In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month … my memories from the day I lost my hair due to chemo.
I woke up that morning, and my scalp hurt. It was a strange, exquisite kind of tenderness, a bit like the feeling when you let down a high ponytail you’ve been wearing all day. As the hair falls, after being tightly pulled in the up direction, you can feel it throb into the follicles.
I reached my hands up and gently pulled on the hair, trying to relieve that bizarre ache, and it came away in my hands. I sat up, and looking at the clump in my hand I felt no emotion at all – – only wonderment at the knowledge that I alone held in that moment: today was the day I would lose my hair.
I didn’t want this to freak out my children. I wanted it to be funny for them, a joke. I wanted them to laugh. So, we went outside. It was a breezy, beautiful spring day. 
I said, “Look what Mommy can do,” as I pulled handfuls of hair out and let the blond strands go on the wind, floating out of the yard, over the fence, down the street. I said, “We can check birds’ nests this summer, and see how many have Mommy’s hair in them.” My two-year-old ran around, giggling. My eight-year-old, quiet and absorbed, was harder to read, but even she couldn’t help but catch some of the hilarity of it. I, too, laughed.
As the day progressed, the pain became intense. When my husband came home that night, I told him I couldn’t bear it and asked him to shave my head. He buzz cut the longer hair off, then used a razor to shave to the skin. The relief was immediate, as the hair was no longer there to irritate the scalp. I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror and thought, “This is me.”
This is me.
The Disorganized Perfectionist 