Nothing in your life truly prepares yourself for waking up one morning and pulling out a chunk of your hair.
There's no warning, there's no easing into it...I woke up this morning, scratched my head and noticed that I pulled out a large tuft of Greg hair. That's disturbing...I had to check twice to make sure I wasn't having a nightmare and that any moment Ron Paul wasn't going to emerge from my closet and chase me around the room with a hammer. (Your nightmares don't involve Ron Paul?) It happened extremely suddenly. Last night, after EMT class, the other guy from my department in the class asked me if I'd been losing my hair yet, and I pulled on my hair and showed him my hand as proof...nothing. If I did that today, it would look like I plucked a muppet turd off the top of my skull.
And so it begins. Tonight's the night I'm just shaving it all off, because as my oncologist alluded to earlier, I don't want to sleep in a pile of my own hair like some sort of a mouse. I'm finishing up work, going grocery shopping with my wife, and then the trusty old buzzers will take care of the rest.
I had my oncology appointment this morning, and after getting checked in (which now amounts to me walking in, and the receptionists saying 'Greg!!' like I'm Norm on 'Cheers'), I sat down and did my usual casing of the room. Average age is always 65...I don't care if there are five people or 25 people in the room, that always averages out right. This is made even more obvious by the 1,000-piece jugsaw puzzle on a nearby table that seems to cycle out once per week. That's some serious jig-sawing, and jig-sawing is not a young man's game.
Now that I've had a chance to observe this treatment bit a little more, I've found that oncology departments are nearly exactly the same as prison. You walk in and sit down, and everybody's quiet. You see eyes look at you, but when you make eye contact, they quickly look away. The consensus is obvious - "I wonder what he's in for? He's way too young to be here...it must be bad." Then they avoid eye contact. Why? Respect, that's why. It's all prison-style in oncology.
I've always been the youngest person in these types of situations. Growing up doing archery and fishing tournaments, I was always the youngest; I was the youngest supervisor at my telemarketing job in high school; I was the youngest general manager of a bar in college; the youngest newspaper editor for my company; and now I'm the youngest person in the chemo ward. Unfortunately, I don't see that being anything I can put on my resume, unless I run for political office. That's always seemed strange to me...if you were applying for a job at a respectable company, you'd keep everything job-related, but when politicians run they'll tell you in the first 10 minutes if they've got a dead parent, if they've had cancer before, if they are a foster parent or if they grew up poor. Talk about exploiting a bad situation...maybe I should run for Congress now.
So, bleo treatment went well, and now I'm just waiting for the day to end so I can see how I'd look bald. Growing up, every single girl I ever dated told me not to shave my head, so now I'm a little bit excited to finally have permission to do so (although Lauren never forbid me from shaving my head...just from growing a moustache). By the way, the end of my treatment today essentially marks the end of my first round of chemotherapy. One down, two more rounds to go, and this first round was a cakewalk.
I'll post pics of my bald head when it happens, but until then, don't sit on any of my work furniture unless you want to be lint rolling your clothes all day...I'm shedding like a sheepdog in the summertime.
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