I’ve tried describing my experience with my mother’s cancer, and it always comes out sounding like I’m some sort of brat.

The following is a paper that was written by my mother for a creative writing class at Arcadia in May 2007. I think it tells her story much better than anything I could have written.

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A Bad Hair Day

By Patricia Wall

It wasn’t the color of flaxen wheat. It didn’t shine like new copper pennies nor did it tumble in a cascade of glistening curls down my back. But, dammit, my hair was long.

My mother-in-law thought it a good deal too long for a 40-something-year-old woman to sport—as if I was defying some deep-rooted propriety from World War II by daring to not do something—anything to my hair. It was so long that strangers stopped me on the street to tell me how much they admired my mane. I knew they were not impressed with the nondescript color streaked with gray or the texture that devolved into a fuzzy, dog-eared fringe at the very bottom. They were admiring the patience, the fortitude, and the simple willpower involved in the non-act of never getting one’s hair cut. It wasn’t a fashion statement. It was a conversation piece, a science experiment; it was part of my identity. And now, I was losing it to chemo.

“You’re taking this quite well.” Observed Dr. Kessler.

I already knew I had cancer. I also knew that it was Stage 4. I knew that I was due a surgery, a course of radiation, some newfangled antibody treatments made from the ovaries of Chinese hamsters, and a sequence of powerful chemotherapy treatments. The doctor was simply telling me that the treatments would also make me bald—completely—probably within 2 weeks of starting the therapy.

“Well, I kind of figured that baldness is the LEAST of my worries right now.” I shrugged.

I watched movies. I knew what would happen. I would go through chemotherapy. The makeup artist would draw dark rings under my eyes and put a bald cap on my head. After that though, the main character usually died. I saw Brian’s Song and Love Story and The Drum Bangs Slowly—and a dozen others. Cancer is a literary device exploited to easily evoke cheap emotion. Why, I’m using it right now.

Whether I survived or not, I determined that with every step of this strange trip, I needed to do everything I could to make this a positive experience. If I lived, it could be a constructive, life-enhancing event. If I did not, and pretended I was brave the whole time, then maybe someone might make a maudlin, made-for-TV movie about me and at least my inner attention-whore would get a last hurrah. Where to start?

Before the initial chemotherapy treatment, I went to the salon down the street to get my first real haircut in 15 years. If I was going to be bald, the first positive step I would take is salvage my resplendently-long hair for Locks of Love, an organization that makes wigs for bald kids. Going bald is often disastrous for a full-grown man; imagine how it is for a 12-year-old girl. So I purchased a haircut and wrapped up the furry proceeds in a fat envelope for Locks of Love.

It wasn’t solely for helping children with cancer—although that does sound sickeningly altruistic. If my hair was going to come out in large handfuls, I would rather they be six-inch long handfuls as opposed to 36-inch long ones. Plus I was able to see what I would look like in a cute little bob—a bob that would probably not last a fortnight.

It’s one thing if you’re a man. From Telly Savalis to Vin Diesel, there have always been oodles of cool guys that are bald. Bald girls are not cool. They’re crazy. They’re tearing up pictures of the pope on national television or moments away from checking into rehab. You stare at bald girls. You feel sorry for them. The only fashionable place for bald girls is in science fiction. Even Persis Khambatta cried when they shaved her head for her role as Lieutenant Ilia on the first Star Trek movie. Hair grows back. She should have been thrilled to have that opportunity-of-a-lifetime. But Persis wept. She wept for the loss of her hair.

My personal baldness arrived right on schedule. Every morning after the first treatment I would tug on my hair—and have a handful of nothing. On the 14^th day, I tugged and was rewarded with a sizable chunk of my feminine identity. My sister came over later that day and asked, “So, are you losing your hair yet?”

I opened my eyes maniacally, grabbed the back of my head and said, “You mean—like THIS!?” as I waggled a huge sheaf of freshly plucked hair at her.

We decided to shave the rest of it off that evening. My husband purchased a Floyd-the-Barber-style hair clipper. It was a bizarre rite of passage. I shaved off the front. My husband and two kids took turns shaving the rest. We laughed and joked and commented on how surreal it all was. When we were finished, we stood silent as I looked into the mirror and saw a bald me. It was shocking. It was shocking because it wasn’t too bad.

I didn’t know it, but my head is a lovely shape. I was certain that my head would be pockmarked with pointy lumps and big, smudgy birthmarks, or perhaps a little “666” under all that hair. It did not. I looked a little like Lieutenant Ilia, sans the tears. Without hair, I merely looked a little odd. Perhaps I could wear a wig. A wig turned out to be impractical.

In addition to my hair, chemo was also stripping me of another element of my womanly character. I was thrust into full-throttle early menopause, complete with a series of relentless hot flashes. My newly-bald head was constantly dripping with sweat. Any wig would have been destroyed within a week. I had taken to wearing washable scarves and hats during the winter—or as I affectionately dubbed them, “chemo-shanters.”

I quickly discovered that the term “chemo-shanter” is only funny if one actually knows what a ‘tam-o-shanter” is. I can’t count the times I used the term “chemo-shanter” and expected a chuckle, only to get a blank stare. I developed a scripted monologue which explained that the hat which Mary Tyler Moore threw up in the air was actually a “tam-o-shanter” which is a Scottish cap made famous by an 18^th century poem by Robert Burns. That usually ruined the joke and made me look like a freak member of the literati. Chemo-shanters were perfectly adequate headgear throughout the colder months (though I started calling them “hats” and “scarves” again to avoid confusion).

The problem arose in the spring. Still in super-schvitz mode, I cringed at the thought of wearing anything on my head as the temperatures climbed. I was scarcely comfortable in the winter, how would I survive the summer?

I was meeting some friends for dinner at a restaurant. I determined that I would not wear anything on my scalp. I picked out some extra-dangly earrings, drew on my eyebrows (another casualty to the chemo), and went out to eat. I drove into the restaurant parking lot and sat frozen in my car. I couldn’t move.

The fear surprised me. “Why am I afraid to walk out in public bald? What is the problem?”

I felt exposed—almost naked. I knew that the hats and scarves didn’t hide the cancer from anyone. But they covered my head. Yes, my nude head was beautiful, but so are some other parts of the body that have no business being whipped out in public. What was I ashamed of? The cancer? The baldness? The pity I might evoke? What was the alternative? Should I not go out? Go buy that stupid baseball cap with a built-in ponytail I saw in a chemo-shanter catalog?

I got out of my car and walked into the restaurant. My face reddened. I’m still not sure if I was blushing or just having another hot flash. I sat down with my friends and laughed about my baldness. They admired the temporary tattoo of a frog I had on the back of my skull. I ate chicken parmagiana. Life was normal. There were a few stares, but nothing disturbing. I started my life as a bald lady.

Which turned out to be very much like my life as a haired lady—only punctuated with both funny and poignant moments. There was a 4-year-old in the Dairy Queen who started yelling “MOMMY! That man gots no HAIR! HEY! How come you gots no hair?”

“Because I didn’t eat my vegetables as a child.” I coolly reported. Her mother apologized. She should have thanked me. That was a funny moment. Some were not funny.

There was Laura. I met Laura while waiting for an appointment at the radiologist. She was a freckled, petite woman about 10 years younger than I. Despite the cancer, she had a healthy, rosy look—like one of the Campbell soup kids. We started talking. My cancer was now in full remission. Hers had returned—and was now in her brain.

I learned a lot about cancer in the last few months. Cancer is bad; recurrent cancer is worse. Recurrent cancer in the brain is catastrophic. I realized that I was playing—and lost—the “my cancer is worse than your cancer” game in my head.

People can’t help but compare themselves to others and use their own situation as the norm. If you are an artist, anyone not as talented as you is mediocre, or a hack—or worse. Anyone MORE talented than you is a damn genius. With cancer, you meet a lot of other cancer patients—in the hospital, on-line, in the supermarket. You start to share your experiences. You begin to mentally calculate how bad everyone’s cancer is. (“Well she still has some nose hairs and eyelashes, so her chemo wasn’t THAT strong.”) I had a friend who had to quit her cancer support group because all the people kept telling her that their cancer was MUCH worse than hers and she should be happy to have her cancer and to stop whining. Laura’s cancer was worse than mine.

Laura was wearing a hat. I was bald. She told me that I looked nice bald and that she wished she could take off her hat because it was hot out—but she was afraid. We started sharing the advantages of being bald—no bad hair days, cool in the summer, no hat-hair in the winter, low maintenance, no shampoos or conditioners or mousses or gels or dandruff or split ends or frizz. I also shared with her my first outing as a bald lady. “It’s only scary for a couple of minutes. You get used to it quickly. I never went back.”

Laura took off her hat and crumpled it up in her tote bag. With a smile, she said, “I’ll just pretend I’m brave.”

“You know,” I mused, “I think it’s the same thing.”

I’m not growing my hair long again. Maybe Luella is right, I AM too old for hippie-length hair. Perhaps I don’t need the attention or the random admiration from strangers any longer. I don’t miss my long hair; I do, however, miss being bald. If it were socially accepted, I think I would shave my head in a minute—plenty of guys do. They’re lucky.

I don’t think I can even pretend to be that brave.