Hair.
My favorite nurse at chemo says “loosing your hair is just a bump in the road”. He’s right and it does feel sad. Curly hair is me, and here I am with straight hair. Enough said.
In 2011 the 30 year old cousin of my good friend Colleen was dying of GYN cancer. From hospice she wrote in her blog – “I feel I can get away with a little possibly inappropriate for a hospice chipperness because of my robe and lovely/pathetic IV pole (which is not an official IV just subcu which doesn’t involve my poor vein-i-poos).
I flash the robe or people check out the group looking for the patient finally landing on me and people’s energy changes. It isn’t all to pity, which seems to be popular. Then it often goes to curiosity, which encourages my energy to run away because being friendly and explaining is strenuous. Anyway, I get noticed and people treat me differently energetically, just as a natural course of things.
I maintain my awkwardness and have that feeling of not wanting to upset anyone. But, I also want to size them up, know what they are thinking, where I stand in their social hierarchy. So, I imagine their thoughts which go a little something like this: “Whoa she is young” or “I’m glad I’m not her”or “her poor family” or “I guess my loved one was lucky he/she lived to see his/her grandchildren.”
There is one that I especially enjoy, which I hope is there and I am not making it up to make myself feel better: “Why am I worrying about getting old?”
I would love to remind folks that getting old is rad.”
Source of hope, Please remind Alexa and all of us that hair or not, getting well, getting healed, being whole are life goals worth all the effort it takes to achieving them, and as Megan said, getting old is rad. Let us get old together friends.