Today I did something tremendously unusual. I went to visit a professional who attended to my bodily needs – and this visit did not involve any pain, it did not involve any needles, it did not involve anyone saying, “Just a little prick!” and then hurting me horribly, it did not involve any IVs or drugs or radiography (and evenlarger needles … “Sorry! Just had to push through your abdominal wall … can’t get any local that deep!”), or having my vital obs taken, or tablets or alcohol smell oranything.
I went to the hairdresser. It was so mundanely normal I am tearing up even as I type about it. I’ve been growing my hair back for a year now (the last lot of chemo thinned my hair but it didn’t leave me bald, thank God) and it has grown back a disastrous mouse colour and in a tight patch of unruly evil curls. I am going to kill the next person who rattles on about how lovely curls are. I don’t give a damn. They are cancer curls and they are vile. Anyone who has cancer and who has been ravaged by treatment can’t wait until they start to get ‘normal’ back – and thus my hair. Over the past 6 months I’ve been too ill to make it the 3 blocks to the hairdresser (and that’s too short for a taxi to want to take me) but today Chemo Bitch* managed to get down there … and the normal me came home.
Gone are the evil curls. Gone is the horrid greying mousy thatch. Back is the wavy-haired soft blonde me. I keep going to the mirror and looking. I can’t believe it. That’s me. Looking normal.
I was so amazed, and so normalized, that I immediately went out and weeded half the bog garden’s path. (Which is more gardening than I have managed in about 8 months.)
The poor garden. It has suffered but not too horribly. It needs a good weed. It needs attention. It will get it, I hope, in little bits over the winter. While I am, hopefully, going through a ‘normal’ stage.
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*Chemo Bitch is a superhero. 🙂 Spangly tights and all. I save the world from evil medics who can’t get an IV in the first attempt. I can take out consultants with a single snarl.