Here Comes the Fuzz

The thing is, we confuse recovery from chemo with recovery from cancer. Cancer doesn't always make you feel bad. As my friend R says, You're feeling great, then you find out you have cancer, and the treatment makes you feel lousy. So as my hair slowly grows back, I start to feel that I'm cured, that spring is in the air (though it's an autumnlike day, time to bring the basil crop inside). My scalp now feels like a tennis ball, according to my friend G., or peach fuzz, according to L. I have some dark stubs, too, on my scalp, along with a few wayward one-inch white hairs, and dark little dots on my otherwise pale eyebrow area, and my eyelashes are moving from sparse to less so.

My black head-decoration is wearing off in back. I will need a touch-up soon, though L says soon the fuzz on my head will keep the ink or henna from sticking. As if he knows. Even though I'm optimistic about the near-future return of my hair, I just sent off for more jagua AKA genipap ink, this time from a place in the UK instead of California, because of the lower price and the different shape of the container--a tube instead of a difficult-to-squeeze needle-nosed bottle.

The book "The Summer of Her Baldness" contains a sequence of photos of the author's hair re-growth. You can find something similar on this site, and here's the blogger's hennaed head. The blogger has since become a Christian-based life coach. (NOTE: The last two links aren't working at the moment.)