GULP

Clumps of hair are filling my wastebaskets. One finger-brush through my scalp yields a good 30-50 strands, I suppose. I look at the heap piling up and I think, well, if I just don't touch it, maybe half of it won't be lost. 

My scalp feels like it is on fire. They told me that would happen from the radiation. No remedy.

I am not ready for Richie to get out his shaver yet.

I imagine that I am not unlike most. There is that image in the mirror that is the us that we know. Familiarity.

I am the least vain woman on the planet when it comes to hair. I keep it super short so that out of the shower I basically "shake it out" and go. I am very low maintenance. My hair is not my "crowning glory" and I don't labor over it ever.

And yet.

It is hair. It is mine. It covers me.

ACS let me choose a wig. There was nothing that was "me." I got one closest to my style but I don't like it. It is wiggy. It is artificial. It is not me.

I think I will stick to trying to find some pretty turbans or caps.

My sister-in-law Shirleen, who walked cancer's path 20 years ago (and won), assured me that she knows someone who can make me something elegant and beautiful to wear for Sam's wedding. I don't want pictures that will show "mop-head wig."

And so there are some tears in my near 48 hours, I am afraid. They will need to be released, and then I will be OK.

God's Holy Word says in Luke 12:7 that God has numbered the very hairs on my head. I believe every word God says in His Scriptures. If He said it, He meant it. And so Richie and I prayed last night that in His infinite mercy, He would return the exact same number to every follicle.