Hair today, gone tomorrow

Chemotherapy has a lot of side effects.... most of them bad. Well at the end of the day it's expected as it is basically poison getting injected straight into your veins. One of the worst side effects for me is the nausea you feel after a 3 day chemo session. This is once again caused by the fact that you body has poison in it, so your body's natural defence is to try to reject it and get it out your system. But I'm given lots of anti sickness drugs to keep this at bay, and I know that this will wear off within a week after my experience from my first 3 day session a few weeks ago.

But one of the most distressing sides effects is supposed to be the fact your hair will fall out. This started happening to me about 3 weeks into my chemo. Because I knew I was going to loose my hair, I had not had it cut for some time... did not really see the point if it was going to fall out any way. So one morning I was having a shower, washing my hair, when a big clump of it came out in my hand, and then the more I washed, the more hair would come out.

For some reason I thought my hair would fall out quickly, or maybe I would just wake up one morning with no hair, but this is not how it happens, it seems to fall out gradually over weeks. When it got to the point I could see bald patches through long locks of hair, I decided enough is enough, and it was time to visit the hair dressers and get a trim. I went in one Friday morning, and rather than getting the whole lot shaved off, I decided to get a grade 3 at the back and grade 4 on the top. I thought this would be less shocking. The result looked something like this:

Over the next few days, the hair kept falling out, and my new shorter grade 4 hair cut was showing more obvious bald patches, and frankly just looked a bit silly. So by the time Monday morning came around, I decided it was time to lose my hair.  As I don't have an electric razor, I got the lovely L to shave my head using her Lady Shave. This is my current look one week on:

I have still not quite got used to my new bald "image", I sometime see my reflection in mirrors and think "who's that?". Also I think my ears are too big to suit having a bald head, and that I look a bit like Dobby the house-elf  from Harry Potter (not Dobby from Peep Show!). But the lovely L still says I look gorgeous, bless her. On the positive side, I will be saving a fortune on shampoo and hair product.

Also as my hair has not completely gone yet, if you were to stroke my head, it feels just like Velcro. So really handy for sticking fuzzy felt shapes to, or I would be great target practice for a Velcro ball game.

The good news is my hair will eventually grow back, and apparently it will grow back thicker. So even though my hair... or lack of it looks different now, and takes a bit of getting used to, it's no worse than some of my previous hair styles.. I now give you my life in hair:

Me as a baby with even less hair than I have now.

Aged about 5... check out those sideburns!

The hair I could live with, the teeth I got fixed.

On my 23rd Birthday. Blond highlights and curtains, what was I thinking? I rightly got the nickname of 80's boy. 

And finally me at a works Xmas party a few years ago. I like this one, quite 007 like.

So that's my life in hair, or part of it. We all have good and bad hair days, or as you can see from me I had bad hair years! But the main thing is we can look back at these times and laugh about them.

Until next time.