A Cancer Story

Chapter 10

Weeks go by

You are still recovering from your surgery and now trying to balance chemo.  Thank goodness you were no longer in school so you wouldn’t have to deal with the “where are you questions”  the only person you received questions from was Logan.  You always just brushed it off as phone died or busy or stroke of bad luck with getting sick again.  Luckily it worked but you knew that these lies were eventually going to fall apart.  

As the weeks went by you began to notice changes.  First it was the clumps of hair on your pillow each morning, then it was a visibility of bones showing in places that should not be seen.  You hated going to all these doctors appointments and the chemo too.  The chemo made you feel sick and lousy so you practically lived in pajamas and sweats with a hat on to hide your bald spots.  You hated going for chemo the most because throwing up was something you hated and also feeling like you were living with the stomach bug all the time.

One day:

Mom: “sweetie, you’re hair isn’t going to last forever.. what.. what would you like to do about it?” She asked while trying not to cry

You sighed “I guess i”ll have to remove it.. it’s only getting worse.. anyways i’m starting to look like a monk.” You said with a grin on your face “maybe I should join a monastery” you then began to act like a monk singing ridiculously and headed to the stairway and continued to sing as you walked up the stairs.  Leaving your mom with a weird look on her face.  As you walked up the stairs you heard her laugh and sigh.  Something you hadn’t heard her do in a long time.  You wander into your parent’s bathroom and grab your dad’s electric razor and go back to your room.  You grab your big mirror off your door and set it up against the wall and then sit down in front of it.  You pick up a pair of scissors and look at them questioning if you should do this.  You sit there for a long time and finally with one look of courage took the scissors to your remaining hair and started cutting it off.  Pieces of hair began to fall to the floor.  Once you’ve removed all that the scissors could, you take the electric razor and plug it in and turn it on.  You begin to run it over your head removing the remainder of your hair.  Then you poke your head out of the room and luckily your mom didn’t hear.  You sneak into your bathroom and grab your razor and shaving cream and lock the bathroom door.  You spray a lot of shaving cream into your hand and begin laughing as you place it on your head.  You don’t know why it is so funny, it should be sad to see yourself without your hair.  You rub it all over your head and begin to remove the fuzziness of your hair left.  Once done you rinse the stuff off under the faucet and then sneak back to your room to clean up the hair on the floor.  Once that is all done, you put on a beanie and check yourself in the mirror.  A sadness fills your eyes as you see yourself go from such a healthy person with long beautiful hair to a sick person with no hair.  The change was almost unrecognisable and this was all in a one month period of time.  You put a smile on your face and slip back down into the kitchen to find a snack

“so what have you been up to sweetie?” your mom asks while searching through the mail

“not much..” you reply “do we have any popcorn?” you ask while bending over in the pantry

“um… I don’t know..” your mom looks up and sees your head and gasps.  She comes over to you trying to form a sentence over what happened but she knows.  She wraps her arms around you in an embrace and cries a little.  You stroke her hair

“shh mom it’ll be alright.. it’s only hair” you manage a small smile

Once she finishes crying you both let go from the hug and she directs you to where she thinks the popcorn is located.  Finding some, you pop some into the microwave and grab a bowl.