I finally decided on a shoulder length wig which sported bangs and a slight curl. It was promptly boxed while I replaced my handkerchief around my head. I wasn't bald… yet. I'd have plenty of time to wear the wig. It was a relief to escape the peopled store. The wig would prove to be my ally and my foe in the months ahead, being both a concealment of the truth and an object of mockery and bewilderment.
The next morning I woke to find hair on my pillow, and rising to look at myself in the mirror, saw plainly that I could consider myself bald. No hair remained except for a few stubborn wisps which clung fiercely to my scalp like December leaves that refuse to fall even after winter's icy blasts. My lashes, brows… everything… had been depopulated. The mirror seemed to reflect incredible youth and fragility. Painfully thin and hairless, I resembled the gaunt and disciplined Buddhist student. Withdrawing from the mirror, I went in search of a pair of scissors to bob my wisps to a more reasonable length of one inch, then took my wig from its styrofoam head and placed it on my own. I peered at myself with disgust; "It couldn't be much worse," I thought, and headed toward the kitchen for breakfast.
PAGE 87
Chapter 13 Year at Home and Diary
"Chemotherapy ravaged the body and tainted the mind just as the cancer against which its debilitating powers were supposedly aimed."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Year At Home And Diary
Due to my poor and unreliable health, I never re-entered junior high; it would have been both risky and impractical. I would have forever been involved with past homework because of frequent absenteeism, as well as further depleting my energy level through normal, daily activities. Individuals having good health were often taxed at the day's end; I knew I could not have kept the steady pace that school demanded of those desiring to succeed.
Standing 5 ft., 8 ins. I weighed, at times as little as 75 pounds. My eating was sporadic; on certain days I wouldn't recall having eaten at all. When I did eat, my nauseousness would span 20 minutes to several hours. Sometimes my only relief would come after vomiting, although that seemed a rather drastic and unpleasant measure, I found this voluntary vomiting to be more agreeable than sitting motionless in a chair for the entire evening to humor my stomach, when the eventual result was to be the same anyway. I was soon quite practiced at manipulating my stomach, as well as determining whether my nauseousness would irreversibly result in oral elimination or if it would finally subside without an event.
Ideally I was to eat several small meals throughout the passage of the day; this would better allow my stomach to process food, as well as give my body the sustaining energy it so desperately needed. I was not overly thrilled at this proposition, as eating seemed only an open invitation to sickness and discomfort. To facilitate my obedience to a greater degree, my dad offered a monetary reward for drinking a quart of milk each day. I accepted the offer, yet remained wary of food. Although there was nothing which did not, at one time or another, turn my stomach, I discovered that certain foods disagreed less than others. One of the "sure things" was bread… the more refined, the better. So called "health foods" were always a mistake, as were foods rich in fat or sugar, such as salads tossed with mayonnaise or pies of any concoction. Oddly enough, I seemed to be able to eat cake; I determined that this was due to its bread-like consistency. Perhaps other successes such as my aptitude for chocolate, were based more on luck than digestibility, yet chocolate was eaten quite frequently throughout the year in which chemotherapy treatments were administered.