“Brody! You’re getting your hair done?”
“I am,” he said. “I need a haircut.”
We both laughed. His hair looked fine, but I knew that was his way of saying he wanted to help me out. What a sweet kid. That was something you couldn’t teach in school. And he was so young.
“Are you all set, Alana?” Lepa asked.
“All set!” And I wasn’t just saying that. Everyone taking part had given me courage, and everyone I loved—Greg, Charley, and my mother—was right there in the front row with me. “Can you cut a lock for me that I can save?”
“Of course,” she said, and she cut a curl and carefully handed it to me. Then off she went. I could hear the scissors snipping away, feel the hair dropping onto my shoulders, the weight actually falling off my head. All eyes were on me, but I couldn’t bring myself to watch. I put on a big smile even though it took a huge amount of effort to keep it in place. I wasn’t going to let anyone know how scared I was about how I would look—or what would happen to me in the future.
“You’re done,” Lepa said, flourishing her scissors. Everyone clapped and said they loved it. I raised my eyes to the mirror.
“I love it, too,” I said. But my lips quivered when I saw my reflection. I wanted my long hair back. I clutched the lock in my hand. I didn’t want short hair. I didn’t want any of this. Lepa had done the best she could—she’d styled what hair was there beautifully—but what I saw in the mirror wasn’t me.
“You do look almost like Caillou, Mommy!” Charley said, all excited. She’d been watching TV more often since Rudy was born even though I’d always said I’d never let television be a babysitter for my kids. Caillou was the bald-headed main character of a kids’ show she watched. “I’m so glad you think so, sweetie.” I kissed her.
Greg came up and gave me a hug, then sat down in one of the barber chairs.
“I thought you weren’t going to get your hair cut?” I said.
“I changed my mind.”
People had asked him, and his answer had always been no. I was so glad to have his support. We were a team. We would do this together. When Lepa was done, Greg looked great. She’d given him a buzz cut! “You look so cute!”
Greg blushed.
“Gloria, you’re next!” Lepa said as she motioned for my mom to come sit in the chair.
“I’m ready! Lepa, I want my hair short to match Alana’s.”
I didn’t know she was going to do that. It was the most incredible gesture. “We’re going to look like twins!” I said.
The party was turning out to be an evening of surprises. I tucked the lock away in my purse. My uncle Jimmy, my sister-in-law, a teacher I worked with, and a good friend of my mother’s all sat down to get a haircut, and after that Brody showed up again.
“What are you doing back here?” Lepa asked him.
“I want my hair cut as short as the clippers can make it.”
“That’s pretty short.”
“Good! That’s what I want!”
I turned to my mother as we watched him. “I’ve realized something tonight. When their hair is gone, it doesn’t change who they are. I mean, your hair is so different now, but you haven’t changed all of a sudden. You’re the same person.”
“Of course I am, Alana. And so are you.”
“I never knew how much I could learn from someone like Brody. Or Charley. This is turning out to be an experience in ways I never would have imagined.” Mom smiled, although I think she also wanted to cry. “I think I might play a little trick on Charley tomorrow morning.”
“What kind of trick?”
“Before she wakes up, I’ll put a wig on from the Halloween Box with all of the costumes, and tell her that my hair grew back overnight.” I was completely joking, but I wanted to keep everyone’s spirits up.
Andre’s wife, Tina, came by. She’d been handling the hat and raffle ticket sales. She handed me an envelope. “Guess what?” she said. “We sold every single Believe hat—all ninety-six!”
“It’s amazing! You’re amazing,” I said. “Everyone here is amazing!”
I glanced at myself in the mirror one last time before we left. My next chemo treatment was the following Tuesday. I had one week to enjoy my new haircut.
Chapter 16
EVERYTHING IS CRAP
I had what felt like the biggest support group in the world, the most amazing friends and family who cooked dinners for my family, held haircutting parties, helped with errands, and more, and I truly felt blessed. But I often had moments when I found it hard to be positive, when I couldn’t help but think how horrible things were.
I didn’t like how I looked. I tried to like it. I tried to learn to style my new hair in ways I thought would look good, but it was futile. And I’d started having hot flashes and they were messing with everything, including my sleep. I didn’t even realize what they were until my period stopped, which is what clued me in. I never knew when to expect the flashes. I soon figured out that they’d typically start with a chill. I’d get cold, bundle up, then within a minute, I’d be ripping off the sweaters, toque, socks—all of it—because I’d be dripping with sweat. The flashes would last only a couple of minutes, but at night, they made sleep uncomfortable, and whatever sleep I got wasn’t a deep, refreshing sleep.
So I felt like crap. I lay low around the house, trying to keep myself busy, and tried not to think about how I felt or about what was to come. Even so, the next week sped by, and I found myself at my second chemo appointment, annoyed because I didn’t want time to pass, wanted to hold on to what little I had, even though I hated everything about what was happening.
“You’ve lost four pounds.”
I stared at the nurse in disbelief. I was at the weigh-in, and a vision of the painfully thin woman in the waiting room from my first visit flashed through my head. After all my determination, all I’d said to everyone about not losing weight, there I was.
My oncologist, Doctor 7, wasn’t happy, either. “Because you got so nauseated, we’ll try you on Zofran,” she said.
My mom chimed in. It was her turn on the schedule to accompany me. “That’s the drug you got the night I took you to the hospital.”
“You’ll get it intravenously before the chemo drugs are started,” Doctor 7 added, “along with dexamethasone, as before, and Emend, which you’ll take orally about an hour before chemo. Then for the next three days you’ll take Emend and Zofran orally, along with dexamethasone.”
“I guess I have expensive tastes,” I joked, desperately trying to see the funny side of things.
“Well, if that doesn’t work, we’ll even have a home-care nurse come give you antinausea drugs intravenously,” she said, playing along.
I wondered if I should ask for a housekeeper while I was at it.
Mom and I picked up the new prescriptions, then headed to the chemo suite. When my number was called, I tried to make myself comfortable as I took the new drugs and the chemo nurse started my IV, but I was having a hard time relaxing. I surreptitiously crossed my fingers as the nurse started pushing the Red Devil through my veins.
“Everything okay?” the nurse asked as she sat there with me, syringe in hand.
“Fine, thanks.” As usual, I found sharing my feelings wasn’t easy.
“You’re nervous,” Mom said. She knew I wasn’t okay.
“I just hope the new regimen of drugs will do the trick. I definitely don’t want to get so violently ill again.” She put her hand on my arm and rubbed it. There was nothing either of us could do. We just had to wait and see.
I sat back. There were two young girls sitting on either side of us, and I couldn’t help but listen to them as they talked. One was about twenty years old and was there with a guy who said they were dating (she disagreed). They had a slew of board games and were cracking up the whole time. The other girl was quieter, around eighteen years old, and was there with her mother. I whispered to Mom, “I wonder what their stories are.”
&n
bsp; She shook her head. “Could be anything.”
“But we do know they have cancer.”
“That, definitely.”
The nurse came back to check my vitals.
“How old are the patients you treat here?” I asked quietly.
“Anywhere from sixteen and up. A lot of the young ones are boys with testicular cancer.”
I sat for a while when she left again, then looked at my mother. “Whatever rough time I’m going through is nothing compared to what’s happening to a lot of people. And when I think about kids that young going through what I am, it’s awful.” I promised myself I would try to remember that the next time I was feeling down.
“No vomiting—hooray!” I was so happy, I couldn’t help cheering to Gabby, who’d come by with another delicious meal. It was three hours after my treatment, and I was feeling fine.
“That’s great, Alana. You’re making progress every single time. Way to go!”
“The nausea hasn’t gone away entirely, but not throwing up is such a welcome change.” I was glad, too, because I didn’t want to play around with the combination of drugs anymore for fear the vomiting would start up again. “I can handle a bit of nausea. After all, with both of my pregnancies I had constant morning sickness for eight weeks.”
“Then you should be able to eat some of this.” She dished out some pasta.
“What is it?”
“Chicken Parmesan and rigatoni pasta.”
“Gabby, I’m going to gain back all the weight I lost eating just your food.”
“Good! That’s exactly what I want to hear.”
It wasn’t even dinnertime yet, but I had to have some. It was delicious. “You have to give me the recipe. When I feel better, I’m going to make this for everyone.”
“I’ll come over and we’ll make it together.”
“Deal.”
After Gabby had left and we’d eaten and cleared up, my mother came over to me on the couch to see how I was doing. I was tired, I was definitely nauseous, but at least I wasn’t throwing up. She put my feet on her lap and rubbed them the way she did when I was little. “I’m so grateful I’m feeling much better. I can keep food down. I ate such a huge plate of Gabby’s food.”
“No aches?”
“No, they’ll come when you give me my Neulasta needle in a couple of days. But they only last a few days and then I head into my good week. It seems that exactly one week after treatment, I begin to feel better and get progressively better. That is until the day of the next treatment comes.”
“Those needles are payback for me,” Mom joked. She’d started telling people she would enjoy giving them to me because I’d given her such a hard time when I was young. I smiled. Like me, she tried to joke about the things in life that were tough, but I knew the truth: She hated the thought of the needles. Hated that she had to hurt me. But she knew each one meant a step closer to the end of chemotherapy.
“You’re doing an excellent job taking care of me, Mom. Everyone is.”
Even Charley had started “checking up” on me. One night she came into our bedroom, where I was lying down. Although I hadn’t outright told Charley that I was feeling sick or complained to her about the side effects of the chemotherapy, she was definitely starting to be more observant, maybe even a little worried.
“How are you, Mommy?”
“Feeling a bit tired tonight, honey. Are you getting ready for bed?” I asked. I kept trying to keep the focus on her, not on me, in our interactions. That was hard if I was feeling particularly ill, but I definitely didn’t want her to worry.
“I’m ready. Can you read me a story?” she asked, holding up the book she’d hidden behind her back.
Ever since she was a baby, Greg and I would read to her in her room before bed. Even when she was nursing, I’d tell her stories. It crushed me that I wasn’t able to keep up the routine of going into her room, but at the same time I loved that she came to me. Bedtime reading was our time. I knew the location didn’t matter. “Of course,” I said. No matter how tired I was, how could I say no to that? “Crawl up next to me, and we’ll read it together.” She did, and I began to feel better. “I wish I could lie here forever with you, Charley.”
“Me too, Mommy.”
I began to understand why people would want to skip their treatment days, because after all the nausea and horrible feelings start to fade away, you began to feel like yourself again, but you know that the next chemo treatment will make you feel that same horrible way, again and again. I sighed. “It’s time for bed, though, honey.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. But we’ll read again tomorrow night, I promise.”
She got up, tucked me in and gave me a kiss, then picked up her book and left. I watched her walk out. I would willingly go through the hell of chemotherapy again and again, I thought. And yet again.
Part Three
LOST
Chapter 17
TAKING IT ALL OFF
The experts were right: I began losing my hair on day seventeen. I’m not sure when precisely it began. It might have started coming out in my brush that morning or sometime during the day, but by evening, when I took a shower, all of a sudden a pool of water was swirling around my feet. I looked down and saw a massive amount of hair clogging the drain. My hair was so short that I was shocked at how much there was. I couldn’t believe what was happening. But I was losing my hair—all of it. Tears began to run down my cheeks, joining the water from the shower.
The next day, more fell out. “It’s becoming thinner and thinner,” I said to Melanie during a phone call. Each day I gathered clumps of hair from the shower drain and threw them into the garbage. I picked bunches of hair out of my hairbrush. I found tufts all around the house.
“What is that, Alana?” my mother asked one afternoon. She saw me heading to the kitchen garbage.
“I keep wishing this wasn’t happening, but it is,” I said, showing her the fistful of hair poking out of my hand.
It was tougher and tougher to look in the mirror. The whole thing sucked. I wrote e-mails to close friends describing how I felt, using precisely that word. I would have used much more vulgar ones, but I didn’t want to worry anyone and was also worried that the e-mails wouldn’t get through.
I often wore a toque for comfort.
“Mommy, take your hat off. We’re inside now,” Charley said. Rudy tried to pull it off. But I forgot to take it off sometimes, except when I went to bed. One night I even considered leaving it on.
“Greg, can you turn off the ceiling fan?”
“Why?” He turned it on in the winter, too, to keep the air circulating.
“My head gets cold.”
One morning while I was standing in the bathroom avoiding my reflection in the mirror, Charley said to me, “You still look beautiful.”
I forced myself to look. I ran my hand over my head. My little Charley. How could she be so young and so perceptive?
Greg was passing by and heard what she’d said. “You look cool, and you’re lucky you have a nice-shaped head.”
I stared at myself, harder this time. My scalp was becoming more and more prominent. I don’t know if Greg and Charley were trying to make me feel better or if they meant what they said, but I didn’t feel beautiful. I wanted to be super strong, to say I didn’t care about my looks, but that wasn’t true. I did care. Who didn’t? I could handle surgery, I could handle vomiting, I could handle not sleeping, but what it turned out I couldn’t handle was having my hair fall out.
That night I received an e-mail from Monica in response to the update about losing my hair.
Alana,
I am crying for you, your children, your husband and your hair. It truly does suck.
I am crying because you feel sick to your core, because it isn’t fair that you have cancer and not only have to feel awful, but now you think you look awful.
I will stop crying, though. I will think of your beautiful children and husband and
how lucky they are to be with you. I will smile at the fact that you have courage and enough energy to be mad at losing your hair.
Buy a wig. Feeling good about the way you look is important—it’s making the best of the situation.
I am learning that every day I need to thank the earth for being here. I will hug and kiss my family today because of you. You’re shedding light on the darkness called cancer, and will make us feel less afraid if we too are forced onto this path.
Thank you.
Monica
Monica’s e-mail made me cry. It also made me feel stronger. I called Melanie once I’d wiped away my tears. Greg was out, I had just put the kids to bed, and I couldn’t stand it any longer. “I’ve had enough,” I said. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m sobbing every time I take a shower, every time I see hair go floating down the drain. Will you buzz the rest of it off?”
She came over right away. “Ready?” she asked, clippers in hand.
“So ready,” I said. When I felt the cold metal brushing against my skin, I felt both depressed and glad. After she was finished, I faced the mirror again. I couldn’t help but smile—I looked tough, and I felt tough as well.
“What do you think?” Melanie asked.
“It looks way better buzzed than it did with those stupid uneven clumps. I wish I’d buzzed it after the first strand fell out.” I ran my fingers over my scalp. “It feels good. I’m relieved. Although it’ll take some time to get used to being bald. But I will.”
“Can I?”
“Sure.” I bent my head towards her.
Her hands felt warm on my skin, and when I lifted my head up again, I saw she was smiling. “You are going to rock this, Alana.”
“I look cool now, don’t I?”
“Not just this,” she said firmly as she touched my head again.
I thought for a minute. I was going to rock it—the haircut and the struggle. I was feeling more hopeful about that with each passing day.
Holding on to Normal Page 9
