There are 2 things that are floating around my head at the moment that are bothering me. These are to do with the side effects of chemo. One is around hair loss and the other is early menopause.
While I am totally at ease with losing my hair, after all it will recover and grow back, and in the meantime I will have saved 22.5 hours not having to blow dry and straighten my disobedient locks. Also I have an excuse to go back to the more manageable short hair styles I love! … What is concerning me is the need for my bald head to be covered up. I am not particularly bothered, but society again is dictating that this is what is required. Everyone I see on the street knows I am having chemo…why else am i wearing a scarf on my head in 30oC which clearly has no hair under it! Am I afraid of what people might think, am I embarrassed, am I just trying fit in, am I avoiding people staring. Why are we doing this, men don’t have to, so why are we, as women, held to different standards? Or is this niggling at me as it is another example of how we feel compelled to hide what is happening to us and that cancer too has a stigma attached. Not as severe as mental illness but some things we are still expected to conform to.
The second part is the early menopause. At 38 I am still horrified that this is a side effect which chemo patients can expect (around 60%) which is still seen as preferable to any alternatives. So yes, I am now suffering from some of these little gems; severe hot flushes, weight gain, night sweats, disrupted sleep, loss of mojo, mood swings, hair loss, memory loss and bloating. We are supposed to enter this next phase in our lives over a period of time and much later in life, so we can adjust both physically and mentally. But right now my potential future loss in fertility is only magnifying the fact that I will never have a little girl. I cannot describe the grief and sense of loss I feel about this. Aside from the fact that we only agreed to two little people, and there is no guarantee that number 3 would be a girl either. I have no gentle passage of time to come to terms with this. Bam here is a bastard hot flush at night that is going to keep you awake for the next hour!
This song was created to promote natural beauty as Colbie has been so sick of being photo-shopped. It is our thoughts, judgements of others and ourselves, the cool stuff on the inside, that we should see more of, not the shade of lipstick, size of waistline or colour of scarf that we see on the outside!
Enjoy
xx
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