Im Bald

Merry Christmas everyone!!!  Guess what… I am bald.  I shaved my head after it started leaving a mess all over my pillow.  This is after me not taking showers for a whole week because I couldn’t stand washing my hair and having my hands just covered in my hair.  Make that not taking a shower for a whole week twice.   It left such a mess on my pillow that at some points I would roll around and end up with a lone strand at the right angle to stick right up my nose and tickle me awake.  So here I am bald.  It’s still a little shocking though when I see videos from Liliana’s birthday or pictures and see that I’m bald.  I think I can pull it off; it doesn’t look bad… in fact I was looking at myself in the mirror and told Renée “you know Renée, I’m not going to lie, but I look good.”  Well at least now I have a +2 to my intimidate checks…

I don’t like taking pictures anymore when I’m getting chemo or even look at the pictures that I have taken because when I do I start getting nauseas.  I don’t like talking about whatever the red chemo is that they need to administer via syringe, because it makes me nauseas.  Speaking of red stuff, my sister-in-law gave me Hot Tamales candy because she said that I would get a metallic taste in my mouth and that would get rid of it… well I ate them all before I had my first chemo.  So Renée went out and got me some more.  Well during chemo and after chemo I was downing Hot Tamales instead of actual food… the chemo still made me sick and gave me heart burn, I felt like crap.  Now I hate Hot Tamales and everything cinnamon candy.  It even affected me when we went to See’s Candy got their new cinnamon lollypop… I couldn’t even put it back in my mouth a second time.  Now here it is my fifth chemo and still not an expert on keeping that metallic flavor out of my mouth.

Well I am going back to get my fifth chemo treatment… I hate it.  But the great thing is I’m alive, and get to stay that way.  No matter how crappy the smell, feeling, or effect the chemicals are having on me I’m alive.  Who knows, if cancer detection and those horrible chemos didn’t exist I maybe could be dead by now.  The 105.5F tempter, night sweats, fatigue, violent shakes and weakness I had, was right at the end there before I started treatment and who knows how long after that I could have lasted.  I am grateful to live in this time where Hodgkin’s Lymphoma doesn’t always kill.

This past Tuesday was Liliana’s first birthday and I would not have been able to enjoy it if I had gone off and joined the Air Force.  It was so special a feeling to see what she has become one whole year after she was born.  So I am grateful that I was able to be here at that moment, and this one at Christmas.  I love my family.