Bad Head Day

Today I made my first appearance in public wearing the dreaded “Hey! Look at me! I’m the cancer lady!” head scarf….I don’t really think anyone noticed/cared/treated me different. What a relief.

It was a very odd moment I had this morning standing before my bathroom mirror trying to decide what to do with my head. In the past I would think thoughts like “Ponytail? Headband? Down? Up? Bun?". But today my thoughts were “Wig? Scarf? Hat?”. Such decisions. The wig, of course, is my first choice. It’s hair. And it looks like hair. It feels like hair. If you didn’t know me and know how my hair looked a few days ago you wouldn’t know it was a wig (at least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). But, the wig is hot. And itchy. And hot. Michelle wants me to wear it, of course she does. But it’s hot. And itchy. Have I mentioned that? And I think it needs bangs because it hangs over my face and if you know me, you know I don’t like that. I would always at the very least tuck my hair behind my ears. You can’t do that with a wig tho, because then it will look like a wig. And since we were heading to an outdoor event, and the wig is hot and itchy I chose not to wear it.

So how about the skull cap/baseball hat combo? By far my favorite. Easy to put on and take off and put back on again. Lightweight, manageable, not hot, not itchy. But….that really shows that I am bald…well, not quite bald yet…but you get the idea. I like to wear the skull cap around the house. Throw on the baseball cap when getting the mail, watering the plants, sitting in the back yard, etc but I don’t know yet about going out in public like that…

So that leaves the scarf (the head-huggers people have made for me are being saved for the colder days). I have about 10 to choose from now. But I still don’t know any fancy tying them on methods (that situation will be rectified on Friday tho, thanks to my good friends at jmorgan salon(.com). But whatever, I wrap one around my head and off I go. Completely afraid of how I will be perceived once out and about at a local festival…will some people I know who don’t know be there? Will some stranger come up to me and tell me she knows what I’m going thru because her mother/sister/aunt/cousin/self went thru it? Will little kids stare at me? Will Michelle be embarrassed? Will I?

No one seemed to care. One nice old lady sitting near us at the food tent gave us half her funnel cake, but I think that’s because it was huge and she was tiny, not because my head covering screamed “cancer lady!”. And one little boy did give me a weird look but then he smiled at me so I don’t think I scared him.

Let me re-phrase that…no one, other than me, seemed to care.

I care. I miss my hair. And I hate what the scarf and all the other head covering represent.