(Image credit: Sue Williamson)
I would love to tell you that when I lost my hair to breast cancer, I gained some noble qualities, most likely self-confidence, a new perspective, and radical self-love. sorry. I can’t. Please don’t hate me. The truth is, I lost my hair to breast cancer and spent the next three years feeling deeply self-conscious as my hair slowly grew back.
My hair started falling out the morning of my second chemotherapy infusion, which is a pretty normal timeline. As I was brushing my blonde waves in the mirror, when I let go of my hand, the area I was brushing came too. It was gentle and painless. It’s really like a dream. I was surprised for a moment, but of course I knew it was coming.
Just a few months ago, in December 2020, I discovered a marble-sized lump in my left breast during a routine self-examination. This was the cherry on top of a truly chaotic year. I was 30 years old, a full 10 years younger than the CDC recommends women get their first mammogram, and I didn’t have the BRCA gene. (My then-young diagnosis came as a shock to my family and doctors, but the rising incidence of breast cancer in under-40s suggested I was just the beginning of an alarming trend.) ) I jumped into action and begged for a reservation. At the best hospital I found in Los Angeles. After a biopsy, a bilateral mastectomy, and a rushed attempt at egg retrieval, I started the chemotherapy that I hoped would cure my cancer. Toggling between shock and survival mode, I bought a wig on the way home from the hospital and waited for the side effects to appear.
That night, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror while my boyfriend shaved my head. It took years to grow my hair long, but it only took 20 seconds to shave it all off. He wanted to drag it out and take things slowly, but I told him not to worry about it. “Just do it,” I said. There were no tears. We actually had a little laugh. We had grand plans to superglue my shavings to the inside of a Yankees hat and make it some kind of impromptu wig for casual days. When my hair fell out, it became clear that neither of us had any experience in making wigs and this was a terrible idea. Afterwards, I looked in the mirror at my hair and patchy buzz cut in the sink and thought, let’s go.
Your head will be shaved during treatment.
(Image credit: Sue Williamson)
I’ve always loved my hair. It was long and soft and smelled like coconut conditioner from the health food store. Strangers stopped on the street and complimented me. It was my favorite accessory. But I knew that losing it was part of the price of saving my life, so I gritted my teeth and paid it.
Bald and vulnerable, I jumped into this unusual new world. Hospital floor plans had to be memorized and medical terms such as port-a-cathesis, pleural effusion, and PIK3CA mutation needed to be understood. Not recognizing myself in the mirror only added to the surrealism. Immediately my eyebrows, eyelashes, and body hair started falling out. I wore a wig at work, but I took it off immediately. My scalp hurt and my skin felt itchy from within. The wig only made the situation worse. Eventually, I reached a threshold of discomfort with the options and threw them away altogether. “Oh, I feel so bad,” my co-worker said the first day I showed up bald.
Ditching the wig alleviated the discomfort, but made it difficult to leave the house. Everywhere I went, my bald head was a bat signal to strangers who labeled me sick and were trying to assuage unsolicited advice, grief, and fear. “Excuse me, do you… have cancer?” a woman asked me at a coffee shop one day. “My cousin also contracted such a disease and died,” she said, shrugging her shoulders as if to say “Good luck!” Then I ordered a latte. I went home without even drinking coffee and cried. I missed my hair. I missed the privacy even more.
Cancer has caused irreversible changes in my physical appearance, range of motion, and fertility. My bald head symbolized everything.
People approached me with chemotherapy conspiracy theories at the grocery store, offered me hallucinogenic mushrooms when I went to buy art supplies, and looked away when I walked past me waiting for my mammogram at the breast center. I felt guilty that I had caused it. Just a few months ago, I was one of them. Now I have realized their worst fears.
Friends, family, and even strangers love to tell cancer patients, “It’s just hair!” As if only the hair was missing. It’s as if a $100 billion industry dedicated to hair care doesn’t exist and people aren’t traveling overseas for hair removal surgery in record numbers. Hair is important to everyone, and being diagnosed with cancer doesn’t flip a magic switch that says your hair isn’t important after all. People say, “It’s just hair!” They seem to believe that cancer patients no longer deserve to feel vanity and frivolity. What they miss by talking without listening is that cancer patients are missing a lot, and hair is just one of the more tangible things. It was there and now it’s not, and when you ask me what’s wrong I can point to it and say “this”.
My short play with the wig.
(Image credit: Sue Williamson)
When I looked in the mirror, I saw the victim of the disease. Cancer has caused irreversible changes in my physical appearance, range of motion, and fertility. My bald head symbolized everything. I knew my friend meant well, but it belittled my feelings and made me feel like I was being judged. To be honest, I was also critical of myself. I would look back at myself, frown, and silently scold myself. I think you should be able to love yourself as you are. You should feel beautiful! It seemed like every movie I watched had a cancer moment where the patient discovers how beautiful she is even after shaving her head. They lose their hair and gain self-love. This is an inspiration to all of us.
But the best card I received during treatment was from my friend Erin. “I don’t know if this is appropriate,” she wrote. “But your hair was really beautiful, and I think it was hard to lose it.” I hadn’t cried in months, but reading her words brought me to tears. She gave me a gift that no one else has. That justifies mourning my hair.
Between work, therapy, and life, I tried to practice self-love. I did guided meditation, breathing exercises, and positive self-talk. I made friends with other patients and felt relieved that I was not alone. Most of us hated losing our hair and couldn’t wait until we got it back. We told each other that we were beautiful, but we never really meant it. The real pain was that we had spent our lives building our identity and now it was nowhere to be found.
My hair after hair loss and regrowth during chemotherapy.
(Image credit: Sue Williamson)
Halfway through the radiation, my hair started to grow back, so I carefully monitored its growth. Slowly, it evolved from peach fuzz to a pixie cut to a mullet-like lambswool color and texture. It was darker, curlier, and coarser than the original wool. Lambswool grew at a snail’s pace over the next few years. Straighten the curls, spray with lemon water to lighten the color, match your previous hair, and fix with gel. (Where? I had no idea. As soon as I mastered a certain length, my hair grew an inch, and suddenly I was in the dark again, with a whole new start.) At each stage, I… I tried to love it, but I just couldn’t. Don’t evoke emotion.
I’d like to say that I stopped feeling sad about my hair, that I thought it was pointless and immature, but I never did. Like everything else in my cancer treatment, I military crawled through it because I had to. With each inch I grew, I crept closer to the person I recognized in the mirror until I was finally free of the disease that threatened to end it all.
