DAY 030 -- "Wrong Reality!"

And then there was … Korea.

No … wait! … wrong reality! Today, the unmasking, if you consider a head of hair a disguise, which I do, now that I’ve seen me without it.

It was reverse déjà vu all over again after the deep buzzcut, because I haven’t looked at this frozen mug or felt this fuzz since Parris Island boot camp. The only difference this time is the cancer, and no footlocker pushups. Otherwise the pain was/is about the same. Hoorah. Semper Fi.

 High praise and thanks to the lovely Split Ends Salon stylist at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. I told her going in that she could relax through at least one clipping today, because unless she used a flamethrower, it would be hard to do it wrong. She then took me in without an appointment, did a stellar job, then didn’t charge me! I insisted, however, on tipping her. She did have to suffer through my bad head puns, after all.

If anyone would care to offer a verdict, a commentary, an insult, a dirty joke, or any other evaluation of my freshly clipped dome, please do. Diane’s comment: “I like it!” Part of that might be that she’ll no longer find my hair in the supper stir-fry, but I do believe her.

Isn’t there an historical superstition about head-rubbing that is applicable here? Ah! My crackerjack columnist research shows that the jury’s split on this one. I’m going with the host of photos I found of George W. Bush publicly polishing the pates of total strangers. He was very nearly obsessive about it. Hmm … okay … good enough for Dubya, good enough for rubya! (See what I did there?)

So, before the day was out, I did press a few nurses to give me their opinions on my new headtopper cropper. The most popular answer: “It makes you look so much younger!”

Uh-huh. Bless them for the redirection, but I’ve been a nurse for a long time, and nurses will say things like that after you’ve had a successful heart surgery or bowel movement. We’ll call it praising with a faint damnation. Still, it helped to recharge my day and give me a break beyond these nagging short circuits everywhere else in and on this body.

Oh, and one last woohoo! I’ve just discovered that the cueballs among us have an annual Bald Is Beautiful! convention in Morehead City, North Carolina. There are even contests and awards for categories like “Sexiest Bald Head.”

Here comes Diane: “You’re a shoe-in for that one.”

Okay, now I’ve gone to the head of our class. Meet you there.

More as we go, El

DAY 029 -- "Bald Is Sexy"

Okay, I need a head’s up (I couldn’t resist).

I told you yesterday that my hair is falling out. Little clumps, not all that noticeable right now, but I’m increasingly de-tufting, and because I know now that I’ll soon look like a poster boy centerfold for the mange, tomorrow I’m shaving my head.

Why do this? Sure, I suppose there’s a little vanity at play there, but I was receding on top, anyway, and I also don’t want to go out amongst ‘em looking like a half-plucked chicken and scaring the bejeebus out of little children and dogs.

There’s also bound to be a type of persona out there unsupervised who thinks they can catch baldness from a toilet seat, and I don’t need to stir up trouble and be challenged to a duel in a public privy.

Of course, the humorist in me wants to carpe diem, let my fluttering pate go all shaggy-waggy, and use the opportunity to get a laugh or two when I’m eventually asked what happened to me:

“Way too much charcoal lighter fluid at the BBQ.”

And, just now, after telling Diane my plan, she assures me that “bald is sexy,” again calling upon her knack for knowing precisely what to say.

But, lately, I’m not sure if I’m in a time-in or a time-out mode. Can you go with me on that? Can you relate to feeling like you’re stuck in a cross between a freefall down a rabbit hole and a hot air balloon ride?

I barely can, and I’m in it.

Still, I’ve trusted you this far, and I know that you’re trying to vicariously don my disease duds for yourselves: rehearsing how you’d check the fit, shrug the shoulders, pull at the collar, snug up or loosen the crotch, just to see how they might feel and look on you in case you wake up one morning in cancer pajamas.

Don’t be embarrassed: we all do it all our lives. George Carlin had a wonderful bit about it, when he talked about attending a funeral. There we are, looking at the coffin, and the first thing we do is subtract our age from theirs. It’s old human math for trying to figure how much time we (possibly) have left. There’s some comfort in it.

Or, we will often offer this: “I know just how you feel.” We don’t, of course; we can’t, but we say it kindly anyway, hoping to support and console. It can never fit us exactly down to the ground, but we mean well by it. All of us, at one time or another, have tripped and fallen into the abyss of best intentions.

We’re also clumsy at commiseration, and that’s normal, too. We get scared that we might say the wrong thing at the wrong time, or the right thing in the wrong way. Don’t worry about it. I’ve found, in 35 years of nursing, that people are suckers for the truth. The closer you stay to that, the better.

Anything you level at someone with love in your heart will never be wasted.

But, even if you lived through cancer, or a shipwreck, or the Disco years, you never lived through my versions, nor I yours. Maybe yours was brain cancer. Maybe you were marooned with a talking soccer ball. Maybe you got a groove on with KC and the Sunshine Band (if so, I forgive you).

See you on top of the bottom.

More as we go, El

DAY 028 -- "Edge Of The Brink"

What we did on our summer vacation? Geesh.

Here we are on the edge of the brink of the beginning of the end of my last week of radiation/chemo treatments for lung cancer. Two days off, then we’re back in it and going down the home stretch next week.

After that? Well, you’ll know when I know. The greatest truths (and half-truths) will come when they do the follow-up diagnostics and we’ll see what we see. And, yes, it might make more sense to look for what we don't see.

Point of order: I’m not sure why I’ve taken to dragging you into this with the plural pronoun. Guess I didn’t think you’d mind, and I feel like you’ve been in the fold here with me all along anyway, as we both find the way through it.

I’ve danced with this devil many times in my nursing career, especially those years I spent working in elder and hospice care, attending my patients as nurse, facilitator, advocate, witness, doing my best to always be objective, think & work holistically, and … and … wait … wait---

Oh, hell. I’ve just reached up to scratch my head, and my hand has come back with a clump of hair. Dammit.

I was hoping I’d miss this one Rad Chemo undoing. Right this minute, we can’t know to what degree I’ll get all sparse and sprigly on you, but first … let me get this good whimper out of the way.

**whistling, looking stunned, wiping off tears, thwapping forehead**

Next order of business, and to keep from going mad, is to get ahead of this (pun intended) and find a good bald joke. And, because this is New England, you can't get there from hair.

Let’s drop everything (what else can we do?) and get the bad hairless humor established. I’ll start:

“Even though I’m going bald, I’m keeping my comb. I just can’t part with it.”

More as we go, El

DAY 027 -- "Taking Off My Skin Suit"

Okay, time out! Whoa! Hold it! Stop right there!

Cancer and cancer, then the cancer cancered more cancering inside cancer’s cancerous cancer! Then, cancer! And, cancer! And, what’s this? Cancer!! Well, Cancer Cancer Cancer Cancer Cancer Cancer!!!!

Whew. That should do it. You see where I am today. These side effects, beginning with this irradiated skin, may be doing what the Docs predicted (imagine a constant itchy sunburned sunburn), but knowing that everything is proceeding according to plan doesn’t help to get outside of it.

So, bullpuckey! Enough already! With an assist from Diane’s brilliant camera hand & eye, I’m stepping outside of it for today, taking off my skin suit and body casts, at least mentally, and redirecting my spirit to the grand beauty in our world.

Why, look there! Just today, right out in our back yard, gardens and woods: Mother Nature’s free show of shows. Hawks and deer and monarchs, oh my!

Let’s just enjoy it (the cancer will be here when we get back). Let’s take time for a few shots of the best life has for us, free for the asking. No artsy-fartsy effects needed. Ma nailed it.

Watch, breathe, live.

More as we go, El

DAY 026 -- "The Hitchhiking Gorilla"

Here we’ve gone again into the late early hours, writing yesterday today.

I used to joke, and I suppose I still do (once during therapy, and my Dr. Wannabe Freud didn’t like it), that I was in the past, tense, and though I didn’t feel like I was in the present, tense, the way things were going I probably would be in the future, tense.

Another ho-hum day in the radiation glow room on the terrible table (eleven more to go) and I don’t mean to sound blasé about it. It’s probably the least blasé thing I’ve ever been through. But, an odd thing is happening:

I’m setting up some tension on my mind’s back burner, and I can feel it beginning to simmer. This regimen I’ve been in for more than a month, radical and un-blasé as it is, now also feels like a kind of sanctuary for the anti-hero in me.

The side effects of radiation treatment have now become fully realized, and with two weeks to go, the Doc says I can expect some worsening before the bettering begins. My chest skin over the target area reddening and on the brink of breakdown, painful all the time, itching at the edges, -- bad as it is, and as much as it and other fallouts may not have reached their peaks, they're also the outward manifestations of the inner healing: a shrinking tumor.

We won’t know what degree of healing until we re-assess with the follow-up diagnostics at the end of radiation and chemo.

That’s where my anxiety sits like a soup about to boil over. I was going to say like a hitchhiking gorilla up ahead, but I’ve already mixed enough metaphors and clichés in this diary to touch a ten-foot bridge like there’s no tomorrow.

Point is: while I’m being treated, yes, there are these side effects we’ve been reading about, some annoying, some damned painful. But, underneath and inside, I’m on the mend.

And, as long as I’m being treated, I’m healing, and everything else is on hold.

But, when the treatment(s) stop, that’s when my “normal” life jumpstarts and we’ll find out just HOW MUCH healing.

And that will determine where my cancer has taken me, and where my next stops might be.

So, screw it, I’m going with the hitchhiking gorilla visual. I’ll just have to hope he’s got gas money.

More as we go, El