Jan. 20: More hair weirdness

I haven’t been wearing a wig when I go out lately. Hats or scarves are way more comfortable, and I don’t worry that someone will look closely and figure out that my hat or scarf is fake. ALL of my hats and scarves are real, by the way.

It’s not just that the wigs are hot and itchy, though they are. There are other irritating things, like the stretchy thing I’m supposed to wear under the wig, which is overly tight and actually hurts after a few hours. I’m also always worried that the edges of it will show near the edges of the wig. And I’m overly-conscious of any slippage or movement of the wig—will the part stay where it’s supposed to, or will it end up going horizontally rather than vertically on my head?

One huge temptation: to wear my wig askew out in public, with smeared lipstick, maybe while carrying a stuffed animal and talking to it like it’s my baby. How fun would that be? “Oh, look at that poor woman! Chemo made her cuckoo!”

(Clearly, chemo is making me cuckoo. You don’t need the smeared lipstick to know that.)

And the other thing that bugs me about wearing the wig is that when I put on sunglasses, they either go under the wig—which is an odd sensation and makes my head look all wonky, creating a bump above my ears that no natural hair would ever make—or they have to go over my hair, which I absolutely cannot abide. I used to put my glasses up on my head when I went indoors, and now if I do that I’m quite sure that the weight of my sunglasses will make my wig slowly slide back, exposing the fright that is my bald head to all the world.

Now can you understand why I’ve been doing the hat or scarf thing?

Today I discovered something that’s going to make me even crazier. I haven’t been wearing mascara ever since I noticed my eyelashes falling out, and as I looked closely in a mirror this morning I saw that I do indeed still have some eyelashes. Cool, right? I was getting ready to meet Loveliest Lori and Kim F’n for lunch across town and decided to not only wig it up, but do something to my face too.

(It’s hard to meet up with these two beautiful girls and not feel like the ugly duckling. Even a little bit of my grocery store makeup ought to help that, right?)

(Ha. False.)

I started applying my mascara and saw that it was making many of the few eyelashes I have left fall out. I used my eyelash comb to get at them because the loose ones were sticking to the good ones, but it mostly just smeared the mascara. For some reason I kept putting on more. By the time I was done, I looked like I had two black eyes and was also determined that I will not be wearing mascara again until I grow back my lashes for really and for true.

Stupid chemo. At times like these I have to remind myself very frequently that it’s doing something good.

Chemo can’t ruin my lips, can it? Cuz lipstick is really the only thing I have left. Pretty soon here I’m just gonna be a red mouth with a scarf. Look out.