Going Bald and Getting Bulky

Here is what it feels like to be on chemo treatments:

Your once lovely and thick hair is now thin and balding like a middle-aged man.

Your body is doing the opposite. Once thin and trim it is now getting thicker and bulkier from the steroids and lack of exercise due to these treatments being hard on your heart and hello, the lack of energy to do anything more than go to work and play with your dog.

If that isn't enough for you, your eye is consistently twitching, your back hurts from "bone pain," you are simultaneously exhausted and wired, and your brain took a vacation and left you behind.

And just for good measure, add in slowly disappearing eyebrows.

It isn't fun.

And it sucks because I want to date and not look like I'm slowly transitioning to a less appealing me. I want to make new friends in my city and not have to feel self-conscious about my new fashion statement, the headwrap+braid.

And it sucks because I feel bad for feeling mad about this. I want to just be grateful to be alive, grateful I found the cancer early, grateful to have the hell that is a cold cap so I am not completely bald. I want to feel grateful for the friends that have come together to help with my medical bills and the ones who have flown across the country to be by my side.

I want to see the bigger picture, but all I can see is my ever-widening hair part.

So with a strange mix of guilt, gratitude, frustration, and pride, you go to bed and you wake up each morning and just tackle it all one day at a time.

Because you are 2/3 done with chemo. And that means this shit won't last forever.