Hair loss, a common side effect of some chemo drugs, affects us all in different ways. Yet when hair grows back differently, it becomes a reminder of the changes that come with a diagnosis of cancer.
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 17, 2020
Felicia Mitchell is a poet and writer who makes her home in southwestern Virginia, where she teaches at Emory & Henry College. She was diagnosed with Stage 2b HER2-positive breast cancer in 2010. Website: www.feliciamitchell.net
Recently I participated in a Facebook "Ten Years" challenge. "Lost about 3/4 of my hair after it came back after chemo and my biological drug," I wrote, "but it all saved my life." Instead of posting two photographs ten years apart, though, I posted three. Without the photograph of me bald in the middle, the others would have lacked perspective.Although my hair was my one vanity, I was a patient bald person. Hair grows back, usually. All the while I was bald, I wondered if my hair would come back curly or a different color. In reality, it came back a little wavy, as before, but with wispy and fine strands of hair. I never imagined I would end up with the wispy baby-fine hair of a young child. With cancer, my one vanity vanished. Or did it? With my new hair, perhaps the vanity just became a distraction.
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