More than just eyebrows.

Love in small gestures

Let’s be honest - there is something about a face that just looks bloody weird without eyebrows. Women lead the charge for ‘eyebrow appreciation’ as they basically act as a photo frame for the rest of our face.  There is so much attention on shaping, tinting, feathering, and waxing, that we have no doubt failed to remember the pure functionality of eyebrows. As someone getting back into an exercise regime (without eyebrows), I now have an abundance of appreciation for why I actually need them: to stop sweat from running straight down my face!  

But it has become more than that when trying to reconcile the weirdness in the mirror – thankfully I’m a fair-haired creature, so an absence of eyebrows and eyelashes hasn’t been as much of a shock compared to what my brunette cousins must experience. And for men as well. Nonetheless, there is something missing in more ways than the obvious. So in an attempt to look (and feel) more ‘normal’, I ordered fake eyebrows (called ‘eyebrow wigs’ … who knew !?). They are made of human hair and are stuck to some adhesive thingy already in the loose shape of an arch that are supposed to just get glued to your face. Sounds so simple! Weird. But simple.  It was therefore a surprise to me when the moment came to inch my foot through the door of ‘normal’ and apply said fake eyebrows, that I instead started crying in front of the bathroom mirror. With one half-stuck half-cocked eyebrow. Had it really come to this? That in some desperate attempt to look and feel more like me, I was sticking someone else’s hair to my face? And that those, plus a fake fringe, would fool everyone else (well, more like fool me) into thinking that I was regaining some semblance of self-confidence.

I was wrong. This was about so much more than eyebrows. This was about finding acceptance and recognition in a face that looked anything but familiar. And it was joining a long line of reasons about why cancer brings about so many reasons to ask questions without easy answers.

It also became about recognising love in small gestures. When my beloved walked into the bathroom to find me in this teary state, he looked perplexed. And not just because I had a half-applied eyebrow hovering somewhere on my forehead! I couldn’t get the first one to line up properly and didn’t even want to try the second. But he just took the glue stick from my hand, peeled off the eyebrow, and said “Let me”.

And there it is. The myriad of ways that people need people is beyond definition. It comes in any small gesture that just says: “I’m thinking of you in among all the chaos of whatever else is going on in my life right now”.  When someone passes away, or something devastating happens in a friend’s life (like hearing “Jodie’s got cancer”), people confess to not having made contact because “I just don’t know what to say”.  That is ultimately about them.  The opportunity for connection, for humanness, has been lost. Because it’s actually about the other person and what they need. And for the record, we don’t all need grandiose statements and offerings, because those start to look and feel as if they are about some publicly recognised act of giving for the ‘giver’, as opposed to the gift of simply caring. Of acknowledging that you can’t offer an answer to fix whatever the problem is, or to provide some profound life meaning that will make all the bad news wash away. It’s just about being present. Listening. Connecting. Saying “You matter”. And sometimes it’s just about helping to stick fake eyebrows onto a teary face that otherwise says, “I love you”.

Beyond the art of bald head maintenance.

Embracing the opportunity to start again  

Who knew the words: “Can adults get cradle cap?” would ever leave my lips.

Who knew there was such a thing in Google’s search results as ‘bald head maintenance’!? Apparently my chemo-inspired nudie noggin’ requires the same love and attention to that of a new born baby.

But dealing with the fallout (pardon the pun) of chemotherapy has raised a few questions that go far beyond an absence of hair.  

Cancer, despite being a life-threatening illness, seems to strip us back to the day we were born – when we came into this world free of self-imposed limitations or others’ expectations (or hair). It's now both liberating and yet bordering on debilitating to feel the freedom of a new beginning… Maybe that’s why we are born screaming – overwhelmed with the power of breathing in life, but also the fear of what and who we may become. Or not become.

Who are we when we stand naked, alone, no hair, no labels, no presumptions, and no clue about what happens next?  

Losing one’s hair brings with it a physical confrontation, because it’s a critical part of our exo-skeleton; our body armour. It’s how we identify ourselves, and how others, unintentionally or otherwise, place a value on us.  Not many would seek an opportunity in our adult lives to rip off the suit of armour we spend years building and reinforcing. But without one, I’m asking the question now, to what end did I fight so furiously to uphold mine over all these years? To protect myself on the inside from hurt, pain, failure, or fear? To give out some external representation of status or success; confidence or identity? Underneath the clothes and hair, regardless of the brand names and colour/style, we’re all the same.  We think and act in ways that try to protect our hearts from feeling anything but rejected, unwanted, unloved, or alone in this world.

And that brings me to the other question, which is almost a spiritual confrontation. There’s an honesty that comes with being stripped bare. It’s an unapologetic honesty because the body armour has been removed completely, and what’s left underneath is, by nature, vulnerable and raw and unprotected. And yet this is probably the strongest version of myself I’ve ever known.  

Why then, without cancer or chemo or complete hair loss, and with access to a full suit of body armour, did I used to find it so hard to be unapologetically honest with the simplest of truths: You hurt me. I’m scared. I think I love you. I need your hand. 

I will need to rebuild some kind of exo-skeleton again, because I won’t be existing in this cancer treatment bubble forever. But I will make sure that it does not have electrified razor wire this time, or an emergency eject button if I’m having a bad hair day. I now trust that my greatest strengths remain on the inside; borne from vulnerability and a voice that speaks my truths.

Welcome Poss.

Wearing self-confidence

My new best friend is Poss. Short for Possum (aka Roadkill).  It’s because she resembles a piece of roadkill attached to a head band … Enter stage left, the fake fringe. She is by far the best $30 I have ever spent. Versatile little bugger – front, back, even doubles as an Adam/Eve fig leaf if you really need a giggle!

Despite my best attempts at embracing all that chemo brings, including a bigger bank balance (no hair care bills for the next two years!), I still look like a chemo patient.  And I still feel self-conscious at times that there’s just no way of hiding that bald section near my ears or covering my massive forehead that was once the background to a flick-over fringe.  

People who don’t otherwise know me have actually commented on my cool hat/scarf/Frenchie chic look (that would be Poss+ when she's out in combo with my ‘couture bamboo soft cap’). I smile and thank them... if ONLY they knew what lies beneath…  

But other than fluffing out my head wear and my self-confidence, Poss brings a big lesson: that even the smallest of gestures can counter the greatest of grief.

A serve of self-love (with a side of coffee).

Support can come from the most surprising places

Self-love lessons can appear at any time, assuming we’re open to it. For me, a stand out was the day that my beloved local barista, Michael, invited me around to the other side of the coffee counter to do a baldie selfie (me, newly follicly-challenged; Mike, a result of the natural course of men aging gracefully!). I had not ventured outside once with my new chemo-do. And other than the occasional hot flush/fever at home, I rarely walked around with my noggin doing a nudie run. But this day, I was embraced by compassion and comfort as I stood for an iphone selfie pic that was surely in need of its built in ‘best portrait’ option!  

I didn’t know if I was going to laugh or cry when I saw my reflection in the camera lens. But the beaming smile to my right told me that crying was NOT my story today. All I felt instead was proud. Proud that I could stand in public and be accepted. Proud that perhaps one person who may see Mike’s social media post might just be one little bit less self-conscious about their own reflection. That they may borrow some of my self-love in that moment and help celebrate that I conquered that moment on that day; that I chose that moment to be happy. And that a good guy (a bloody awesome guy!) helped me believe that I was going to be ok.

Here's Michael and Me @ Walt's Espresso Bar, Hamilton, Brisbane.  

Under the shower.

Losing my hair from chemo

I sat in the shower as the water washed over my head and ran my hands over, knowing that I was about to bear witness to loss. At first it was wonderment. And relief that this moment was finally here - the one thing everyone fears the most with chemo. I'm always one for planning and preparation, but I just couldn't reconcile that there were literally hundreds of hairs on my palms each and every time I touched my sore head. It was as if I was seeing it for the first time, every time. Like those tv infomercial ads that never stop..."But wait!! There's more!!"

Then I cried. I'm not sure why. It's not like I didn't know it was coming. Maybe because this was about more than just hair, because it felt like a moment to be reborn. Under the shower. Peeling off hundreds of layers. Of memories. Of lost wishes. Of new hopes. Is this really what it means to have so much of ourselves wrapped up in our hair? Men are now becoming more able to save/regrow/regain otherwise lost youth or confidence. But for women it's so much a part of our path into becoming a woman and owning who we are. It's every compliment. Every touch of a lost love. Of a heated embrace. Running fingers through fringes - that was my thing. Every hairdresser that would comment on the colour, the wave, the texture. Red. Ranga. Strawb.

My self-confidence, like almost every other woman, was so intricately tied up in my hair (pardon the pun). I applaud anyone who, like me, has sat in a hairdresser's chair, waiting for the big reveal to match the expectations and future hopes that come from the new look - sometimes it's for a new job, or to cut/hack off the pain of a breakup. But there are also those times we silently cried at the realisation we just didn't look like the photo. Or that the pain was still there despite the dead memories on the salon floor. And yet we still paid our hundreds of dollars only to walk out, go home, and find ourselves in this exact moment... crying under the shower.

Chemo: Friend, not Foe.

Embracing the fear of chemotherapy

Last time I checked, the number 1 fear for most people was public speaking, but I would make a calculated guess that number 2 would be chemotherapy. I can only relate it to the fear of the dark I had as a kid – I didn’t know what monsters might be lurking under my bed or around a dark corner. And until I could muster the courage to turn a light on, my childhood mind continued to be convinced that whatever may be waiting for me was intending to do me harm.

Chemo had the same effect on my adult mind leading up to my first round.  In my working life, I had mastered the art of treading water in a sea of information-overload with data analysis, projections, and evidence-based recommendations. Following my cancer diagnosis, I tried to do the same thing. From reading all the information booklets about chemotherapy, talking to medical staff, taking a ‘sensible’ approach with the Google search button, to listening to other people who had been through chemo, or knew someone who had been through chemo. And yet at the end, I was left scrambling around unable to find a light switch in the dark scary world of The Unknown.  The only fact I knew was that my hair would eventually fall out. Everything else was as scientific as guessing how many jelly beans were in a jar. 

The most comforting reflection I received from a dear friend was that the fear of what might happen is nothing compared to what actually does happen.  Our brains, after all, are hard-wired to fill in missing pieces of a story. They love to speculate, to imagine as many possible scenarios as we give space for, and to ultimately allow our deepest fears to wreak havoc during what otherwise feels like a car crash in slow motion.  So, I decided to make good use of all the information and stories I had collected and created a chemo shopping list (otherwise known as my ‘just in case’ list). I added everything from black nail polish and a chair for the shower through to a wig and cold press juicer. 

It was while I was methodically cleaning out my bathroom cupboard the day before my first treatment that my newly-claimed stoicism began unraveling. Strangely enough, it wasn’t the light-hearted jokes about not needing hair styling products for the next two years. Rather, it was finding the salt and bicarb soda purchases from my chemo shopping spree and realising I had no idea what the answer was to a seemingly innocuous question: whether to start mouth rinses that first night, or just wait and see if I developed mouth ulcers. And so I sat on the bathroom floor and cried.  

It was a timely reminder that regardless of how much planning and preparation I had done to that point, I still didn’t have the answers. All I could do was choose to be ok with ‘just in case’.  I didn’t know how many of the 20+ potential side-effects I would experience or to what degree. But then I found a packet of an old antibiotics script and saw that those too had a list of 20+ potential side effects, some similar to chemo, and yet I never thought twice about taking them because I viewed those drugs as medicine. 

And there it was – the one resounding fact in all of this: whether I thought I would get through it, or not get through it, both scenarios were right. It came down to how I viewed my chemo treatment: as a friend or a foe. I chose friend. I embraced it as a much-needed respite from being stuck inside a hamster wheel since diagnosis – the futile frantic pace of running in one spot not going anywhere. That’s how it feels. The five surgeries/procedures in six weeks, follow ups with surgeons, oncologists, radiation oncologists, physiotherapists, exercise physiologists, CT scans, bone scans, colonoscopies, pap smears, dental chairs. And still no god damn apple pie on the hospital dinner menu! Chemo was now about slowing down, catching my breath, and trying to process all that had happened.

Despite pulling myself back together the night before, I woke up with what I could only imagine would be similar feelings for someone walking a tight-rope between two skyscrapers. Completely pumped up with confidence from all the preparation and planning, but yet breathless with self-doubt about whether I tied the ends of the rope correctly.  All the sanity and comfort of the chemo shopping spree had flown out of my mental window while I was driving to the hospital.

Walking into the waiting area of the chemo clinic, I imagined putting on a new pair of glasses. I looked around and saw faces of support from a community that I didn’t even need to meet, rather than those of other cancer patients. I saw smiles on the faces of each nurse invested in my care, rather than those of clinical staff in a hospital just doing their job. I saw bags of medicine hanging from an IV stand intending to save my life, rather than toxic drugs intending to cause me harm. So the casual conversation with the nurses, the reciprocated smile on my face, the tea and biccies trolley, the quiet time to read and refocus my thoughts, making jokes about red cordial in the IV drip, all became part of a silent dialogue on repeat: I am ok. I will be ok.   

A few hours after coming home, I felt anything BUT ok. I was wired. In fact, I was contemplating a stand-up comedy career.  All I could feel was a bang bang bang inside my head. Jumbled garbage coming out of my mouth. Twitches and ticks from my hands. Talking 200 km/hr.  It was like going to bed with a ticking time bomb. But it wasn’t the chemo – it was the steroids.

To get to sleep that night, it took 10 deep breaths. And a sedative. I put my hand to my chest and heard my heart beating again. It was a reminder to change the dialogue: There is life saving medication flowing through my veins, not poison. I repeated two words in my head to the sound of every heart beat: In. Out. This was not the time to check out of The Unknown and roll over into Freak-out World.  And I learned a valuable lesson – take the sedatives early on treatment night and go to bed!

In the end, I embraced the dark. I chose to trust that my feet would continue to move one foot in front of the other, that my outstretched arms would prevent me from face-planting into a wall (or a monster), and that whatever may be out there around the corner could just as easily sit with me rather than chase after me.   

I've included more about how I prepared for chemo and have managed my treatment in my learnings page, Planning for 'just in case'.  

A version of this blog also appears on patient blogs for Icon Cancer Centre and Starts at 60.