Hair Report

I was told, by pretty much everyone I know, that when I started chemo, my hair would fall out.  Mostly people were talking about the hair on my head - but I've come to realize that the hair on the rest of my body is doing interesting things too.  Some of my hair, in fact, seems to be quite confused as to what it is supposed to be doing.  Let's start at my head and analyze this situation, shall we:

My Not So Bald Head

HEAD: The hair on my head did start falling out as you may remember.  It got so bad that there was hair everywhere!  It was gross. I did what had to be done and had my husband shave it all off.  I was hoping for that cool Mr. Clean look that you see in all the pictures of cancer patients, but, alas, that did not happen.  I was left with a 5 o'clock shadow.  I was intrigued by this.  However, I was more intrigued when my hair started actually GROWING BACK!  I expected that once it fell out, that was it.  I wouldn't see it until chemo was just a memory.  But, for some reason, my hair seems to be really confused.  It started growing back almost immediately.  And now, a few weeks later, I actually have stubble - quite a bit of it.  This is really ridiculous if you ask me.  Even more disconcerting is that the gray hair seems to be growing at a faster rate than the dark hair so I have longer gray hairs and shorter dark hairs.  Not Cool!  I want my Mr. Clean look Dammit!

Brows and Lashes
(notice how bloodshot my
eyes are :( )

EYEBROWS: My eyebrows are falling out but luckily I do have pretty thick eyebrows, so, while they look a bit thinner, I don't think it's actually noticeable to anyone but me.

EYELASHES: I do find eyelashes in my eyes much more frequently than ever before but, since I have double rows of eyelashes, this isn't really noticeable either.  *whew*

NOSE: I remember a lady at the Cancer Center telling me that she lost her nose hair during chemo.  I was horrified!  Thankfully, my nose hair seems to be intact.  I'd take a picture for you, but no one wants to see that.

FACIAL HAIR: Yes, women have facial hair too!  I have some stray hairs that pop up from time to time that have to be taken care of.  Now, that I'm on chemo though, they are ALL GONE!!  My face is as smooth as a baby's bottom.  (Wow - that sounded really wrong as soon as I typed it)

HAIRY Arm!  (Very
freckly too - hmm)

ARMS:  The hair on my arms does not seem to be affected by all this.  Since I have much less hair on other parts of my body, this is a bit abnormal looking to me.  In relation to the rest of my body, I now look like I have really hairy arms.  It's a super cool look as you can imagine.  Another reason that my bikini modeling career has been ruined by all of this.

UNDERARMS: Like my arms, my underarms do not seem to really be affected which I find strange (and annoying).

THE NETHER REGIONS:  Oh, come on, you know you want to know but are too polite to ask (though a couple of my more perverted friends HAVE asked!).  And if I'm going to do a whole post meticulously outlining the hair on my body, I can't really leave this part out - I have to let it all hang out (sorry for that visual).  The hair in the nether regions is down to about 50% coverage.  Nothing happened down there for a long time and I just figured that nothing would.  But, then, I looked the other day and was shocked.  There are things down there that I haven't seen there for YEARS!  No pictures of this either - sorry.

LEG! (No need to comment on the pasty
white color - thank you very much)

LEGS: Once you come out of shock from reading the previous paragraph, you'll be interested to know (or not) that I've lost about 80% of the hair on my legs.  I had shaved a few days before my port surgery, in mid-August.  I had the surgery and my first chemo the following day - so probably about 5 days after I'd shaved my legs.  My leg hair grows fast and thick.  It continued to grow for a few weeks before it apparently gave up.  Then, I guess it has mostly fallen out.  I have just patches of long hair on my legs - just hair here and there and then massive bald leg spots.  My legs are mostly smooth.  It pretty much looks like I did a really bad job shaving.  It's AWESOME!

After reading this comprehensive hair report, you are probably wondering, as am I, where all this HAIR is going to?  I don't want to know honestly.  There must be hair falling off my body everywhere I go!!  I guess, if you think about it, there is hair falling off everyone's body all the time - I know that the average person loses 100 hairs a day just from their head.  Where do those end up?  Blech!

Doesn't make me want to visit a salad bar anytime soon...