This Machine Killed Cancer

I am back in the hospital for the mobilization round of chemotherapy to prepare me for my bone marrow transplant (if that sentence doesn’t make sense to you, check the previous two posts for explanation).  Today I am going into surgery to have a central line inserted into my heart. A central line is a lot like the port I already have, except that the central line will send a tube through my carotid artery instead of my jugular vein to connect the outside world to the core of my being. Why do I need two of these things? No idea, except that perhaps, like Texas, you don’t mess with a bone marrow transplant.

Once they have finished putting the central line in, they can begin my heaviest round of chemotherapy to date. I will probably be here until Sunday getting the drugs, but then because I have been such a good patient, I get to go home for the three week recovery period. This was one part of the good news we received after my scans last week. The other piece of good news is that my cancer has reached a stable level and the bone marrow transplant can begin. It is strange to think that major surgery, a month of intense chemotherapy, a month long hospital stay, and another month of recovery at home when it’s all done can be considered good news, but cancer makes a lot of things relative. 

The other thing that happened last week is that I started losing my hair again (due to the strength of the relatively mild chemo that I got in August). Hair loss is always listed as one of the most difficult side effects for cancer patients, at least on an emotional level. This is as true for men as it is for women. As my hair started coming out I felt a profound loss of identity, coupled with a fear of looking sick and a strange fascination with what was happening to my body.

Before having cancer myself, I always imagined that cancer patients simply woke up one morning looking like the kid in the Leukemia fundraiser pictures. That their hair had magically disappeared somewhere during the night, all at once. I now realize that it comes out slowly. One morning you are in the shower, you lather up with shampoo like normal but when you pull your hands away, you notice they are covered in hair. Even though the same thing had happened last December, it is still a shocking and terrifying moment. As the week progresses, your hair comes out faster and faster. No longer confined to when it is wet in the shower, now every time you run your hand through your hair it comes way with a clump. You begin to look and feel like someone who has survived a nuclear explosion and is dying of radiation sickness. And that analogy is not far from the truth. Eventually you tire of looking like a zombie and go for the Lex Luthor look instead, shaving your head down to the skin. 

I’ve been through this twice now, and I’d like to share some discoveries I’ve made about the head shaving process:

1) Get a hat. Otherwise, after you shave your head you look unbalanced. 

2) Possible alternative solution: ditch your clothes. Your newly naked head would then seem appropriate paired with your naked body. 

3) A freshly shaved human head feels surprisingly like shark skin. 

4) A freshly shaved shark, however, feels nothing like a human head. (Corollary: ow, I wish I had my hands back)

5) I listened to several different albums as I was shaving. Ironically enough, Piebald provided the best accompaniment for the event. Harry Nilsson didn’t work at all. 

6) Even with my hair coming out in patches, it took almost two hours to fully shave my head. (Potential theory: is this why skinheads are so angry?)

7) Your wife can help you get those difficult to reach spots at the back of your head. Be sure to provide her with ample opportunity to laugh at what a bad job you did first. 

8) If you have a man-servant, he can also help you out here. Jeeves never laughs at anything. 

So here I am, with a freshly shaved head and wearing a baseball cap for the first time in my adult life. I’m sure at some point I will get used to looking like this. My brother-in-law has been shaving his head for years and he looks awesome. Bruce Willis, Patrick Stewart, Sinead O’Connor - all handsome men who flaunt their shiny domes. I keep thinking of my grandfather who passed away from throat cancer several years ago. When we asked if he was nervous about getting chemo, he said he didn’t mind so much, he just didn’t want to lose his hair. He had been bald as a stone since the 1960s.