My bad hair week!
View(s):October is breast cancer awareness month. I am a three-time breast cancer — this happened over a period of 10 years.
I did not know that there were many different types of breast cancer. The first time I had breast cancer it was what is known as metaplastic breast cancer and it is serious because it a rare and aggressive malignancy that accounts for 0.2–5% of all breast cancers. As such it carries one of the worst prognoses in comparison to other breast cancer types and plays a significant role in global breast cancer mortality. Being rare it has not been possible to do clinical trials that could give clear indications for treatment. It is usually treated with chemotherapy and radiation which is what I had.
The survival rate for metaplastic cancer is not as good as for some of the other more common types of cancer. So I feel blessed for having had the opportunity to survive for 13 years.
Luckily for me, the second cancer – ductal cancer which is more common was identified quite early. The third time was just last year so I will have to wait and see.
The worst part of cancer treatment of course is chemotherapy for many people.
This is my experience with the chemo with a bit of humour.
I wake up to this sunny Monday and the little brown birds trilled clearly in song.
The clock muttered its monotonous tick, tocks, nudging all people awake.
Lemon grass tea warm in me belly, I shower and dry as the mirror looks on.
My large toothed comb makes its familiar way through the frizzy black hair.
I feel a slowness, a drag, and the once smooth sweep takes a weensy bit longer.
A strange new sensation – a foggy moment -awareness spins, a realization dawns,
This is the day! this is the day that my hair loses its unseen, yet heroic stand.
The indiscriminate war on cells has come and gone, the chemo tanks rolled, and won.
Overnight, with not the faintest warning, my hair is falling thick in clumps,
No gun shots felt, nor cannon blasts heard, but the battle is won and the flag is raised.
The rest of me, the self I know, has sailed through the deadly red cocktail – intact, ‘normal’.
But not so blessed my hair, so glossy before the dye and frizz, ‘I let you go now’, and await the new.
The fallen dead lie everywhere, the decay spreads, no surface high or low is spared,
Black hair in funny curves holds fast to the mirror and stares, crackling to touch,
Prickly ends falling down my shirt, sticks to the rough dry skin and itch, and itch.
The pink and white top has a new ebony weave, messy tangles on the even print.
The marble table top, the cereal in the bowl, screams in raw disgust, stunned,
While the toothpaste, the pillow, the kitchen sink, and the beige car seat,
Are hit by the locust like invasion, and helpless, suffocate in the clutches of its web.
Only the breeze dances with the strands and they sway gracefully with laughter and joy.
How to explain the strange phenomenon to the joyful little children I ponder?
Inspired I tell the doubting five-year-old, “I can do amazing magic and shed my hair”,
“You can’t, you can’t, so show me, go on show me”, the chirpy voice dares.
The comb comes free with wads of bunched up hair, an assorted lot of black and grey.
The mouth goes ‘oh’, the eyes grow wide, ‘do it again’ he says, and I oblige and smile.
‘See magic’. Eyes pop and words spill out, ‘tell me the secret? show me how?’
I keep the truth locked away and hold the thought of magic to the eager eyes,
A Bad Hair Week for me, a Week of Magic for the Kids, the thought races in and so I decide.
The remaining locks salvaged and cut, before the forced molting ends, I wrap in paper
To make well placed wisps to peep under the scarf or beanie, and pretend to what is gone.
Now to face the world uneasy with ‘strangeness’ in its midst – a daunting task. I take a breath.
Will hands reach out, can the talk of the everyday integrate this change – it is still unknown.
Often, people look, wordless, even expressionless, leaving the observed to make their own stories,
Of the stares, the quick glancing away, the avoidance, – stories that may bring bruising and pain,
With no landmarks or maps to read, the territory is prone to such navigating ills.
Today in church I first saw that look, that averting of the eyes on seeing a beanie in the tropics.
I caught the withdrawal, and leapt in to grab the drifting gaze, “Look, my first beanie day!”
Simply meaning “Yes it’s cancer and I am ok” I guess. The energy turned, and stories of ‘others’ ‘Bad Hair Weeks’ flowed.
My ‘Bad Hair Week” – you are almost gone, only amusement and a strange liberation remains,
Grief for the loss just a light shadow, and the hairless venture to the world a dire threat no more.
Unanticipated lightness, a reaching out to the world, sprang gently from deeper springs.
Many were eager to share untold cancer stories of their own or that of relatives or friends.
So, to this cancer I said, “I can do this, yes I can”, and heard the hum of the new born butterfly spreading wings to strengthen, fly.
Support flowed freely from near and far and
I spread my arms in gratitude for the loving kindness,
And trusting prayers of warm hearts across our lands.
An expansive fullness flows through my being
and there is more space to be, and be of substance.
So now I say, “wait my soul, more wisdom shall surely flow from deeper wells yet unknown”.
‘So Bad Hair Week’, you are many things to many people – yet to me you were gentle. Prayer deepens. Soul foundations hold.
Yasmin Perera
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