The radiation treatment to my head did not cause me to lose all my hair, but it thinned it and damaged the oil glands, leaving me with a crown of dry, tangled clumps around my head.
I could not find a solution for this problem. The clumps of hair were so matted and dry that I could not comb them out, even when I soaked them with high-moisture hair conditioner.
Some friends from my book club proposed a plan. They said they would take me to a hair-stylist who had a salon in her home. “She's really good,” one friend said, “and she can cut your hair short. There are a lot of cute short hair cuts now.”
I agreed with her about the cute short hairstyles I'd been seeing, but I told her that they wouldn't work for me. “My face is too masculine. If my hair is short, I'll look like a man.”
She and my other friends rejected my prediction, saying that I'd look good with short hair. I knew they were wrong, but I agreed to try it. My agreement hinged on one condition, though: If the haircut didn't turn out well, the stylist would shave my head.
We went to the stylist's house and entered through her basement door, where the salon was. The hair-stylist introduced herself. Her name was Laura, and I knew within minutes that she was a very nice person.
Laura put me in a chair, and hung a dark drapery over the mirror in front of me, blocking my view and the view of my friends seated behind me. Then she began her work.
I heard comments from my friends as Laura snipped at my hair. “Oh, it looks really cute from the back!” they gushed.
When the snipping was finished, Laura turned me around so my friends could see the finished product. The disappointment was palpable.
“Well, okay, I guess we can shave your head now.”
The skilled stylist picked up her electric clippers and made me bald.
My hair grew back after that, but it didn't grow very well. There were places on my scalp where no hair grew and places where my hair grew in strange ways, some strands longer and curlier, and some short and wiry.
But when I began chemotherapy again, I lost my hair, so it didn't matter for long.
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