Losing my Hair

Thursday, 15th July 2010, the biggest event of my business calendar - Pampered Chef National Conference - I get out of the shower in the morning, press my hands over my head to squeeze the water out of my hair and my hand comes away with loads of hair attached to it! Bloody Brilliant!

To be fair I actually expected it to start falling out 2 days before (two weeks from the date of my first chemo) as that is the earliest it was likely to start to come out. However as it hadn't happened yet I thought I might be lucky and get through my three day conference without having to deal with my hair loss until I got home.

No such luck.

I had totally prepared for this to happen though, I had already packed my headscarves (I even ordered a black one via special delivery to make sure I had something that would work with my Gala Dinner outfit), my sleep hat and my day to day hats, my roomie for the weekend Sara was totally up to speed with what to expect (a quivering mess) and the girls that I would be spending time with while I was away were all ready for me to arrive with a totally bald head!

Before it happened my mental picture of what to expect (despite this being completely different from what I had been told) was that the hair would all fall out in one great lump, or that I'd be sitting in a workshop and the person behind me would be distracted from the speaker by the clumps of my hair dropping to the floor at her feet. This was not the case however - although it seemed like a fair amount of hair had come out that morning, to look at me my hair looked no different.

I have to admit I'm a 'picker', a 'spot squeezer' and a 'scab flicker' having hair that came away when you give it a little tug is strangly satisfying if not a little disturbing, so for this reason I took to wearing a hat 24/7 while at Conference.
What was great with this was the fact that out of the 700+ delegates there, only about 15 of them knew my situation, the rest of them would have just thought I was a "hat wearer" or thought nothing at all, I was obviously constantly aware of the fact I was wearing a hat indoors but never-the-less thought I carried it off pretty well!
In the evenings I wore my previously titled 'cancer scarves' which actually are pretty cute and I dressed them up with flower clips from Accessorize (only 1 per outfit mind, I didn't want to look like I had a hanging basket from my head).

It may sound scummy but I didn't wash my hair again until Sunday - I was petrified if I did, it would all come out and I wouldn't be able to get away with just being a hat wearer, it wasn't too bad though as my hair seemed to have died and was no longer producing any oils so wasn't greasy (or smelly). Plus the showers at the hotel were super pressured and would have been a challenge for anyone with weak follicles to withstand.

When I got home late on Saturday evening I was totally knackered and couldn't face washing my hair, plus Jay was out and I kind of wanted to do the whole hair loss thing with him there. So I went to bed in my sleep hat (a terry toweling turban in baby pink) and prepared myself for the hair loss shower that I was going to experience in the morning.