Hair and the dog

"No, no, I'll be fine," I told my mother-in-law. "I'm not ready for driving in traffic, but I think I can manage to get from Roanoke to your house."

This was the calm part. This was after I had performed my ADLs, picked out a cute outfit (with stuffing boob) and was looking forward to getting the drain out and then wig shopping! Which is like shopping, right, only for wigs!

The plan was foolproof. I would just get Riley to hop into the backseat, and then zip him over to Zach's for doggy day care, and then drive to mom's to start the drain/wig adventure.

But, nothing goes as planned right now, of course. 

Riley nearly ran under the wheels of the mail truck. He would not jump into the back seat. I had to shove him in and slam the door. He played keep away from Zach and had to be dragged out of the car at doggy day care. On I-69 a blue car coming off the on-ramp spun out on the wet pavement, hit the guard rail, swerved across three lanes of heavy traffic and was coming right for us before he regained control and sped off, leaving us breathless (I was never  happier to not be driving). And the parking lot at Parkview was full of angry drivers all seemingly vying for the same space and flipping each other off. 

Needless to say, drain removal was like an all-inclusive vacation with unlimited drinks compared to the previous 45 minutes. Now. my reward: wigs! 

Cancer services has two rooms full of wigs. That's what they told me and they didn't lie. Two rooms full of wigs. White, silver, black, blonde, brown, red, pink, purple, curly, straight, wavy, long, short, you name it, all displayed on faceless, white Styrofoam mannequin heads. All just waiting for a real girl to love. 

Our helper admitted she wasn't very experienced with the wigs, but she was the only person available at the time, and I thought, how hard can this be? She asked me what I liked. I told her I liked everything different than my real hair. I mean if you're going to go the wig route, why not try something fun, right? So we started there. I must have tried on 15 wigs. Some were easy nos. Some were worth considering. I fluffed and played. One was a clear winner and the color was perfect with my skin and eyes. The other was blonder and shorter and, while not my favorite, seemed like it'd be a fun option. 

After the morning spin-out (figuratively and literally), this was a nice experience. We left happy. We made a couple of other stops and then, exhausted, I went home. The plan was to eat something, lie down for a bit, and then play with my new hair. I should have stayed down.

Something happened. Mirrors lie. The runner-up blonde wig I tried first. I fussed, pulled, yanked, combed, flipped -- and then flipped out. Was this the same one I tried on? What was I thinking? Well, I still have the other one, the better one, I thought. I'll just take the blonde one back and exchange it. No big deal. I fussed with the "good" one for 20 minutes. When did it get so BIG? I look like a Q-TIP! What did I love so much about this? What am I going to do? I shoved it back in the bag, disgusted, and went back to the couch. It must be that I'm extra tired, I thought. 

When Bob came home I told him what happened. He was very understanding and supportive. We'll just take them back and get different ones, he said. I dissolved into tears. This was supposed to be the fun part. What happened? Later in the evening I went back upstairs to try again. The blonde one is definitely out. I gave it the old chemo try, but I can't do it. I was in the middle of fussing with the other one when Riley popped into the bedroom, and I heard Bob on the stairs. "Don't come in here!" I screamed, and yanked the poofy thing off my head. "Just let me see." For one second I thought, no stinkin' way. But I needed some verification. I put it back on and smoothed it down, and opened the door.

"I look like Joe Dirt. It's a Joe Dirt wig," I whined. There was just enough of a pause. "It's... not... you don't... look like..." Egad. There was my answer.

It all sounds very bleak and sad, and I'm not going to lie, I was/am sort of devastated. But, there's time to get this right, and either with new wigs or no wigs, it will be okay.

And, I learned some things this go around that I think will help me when I go back in to get new/different wigs from Cancer Services, or somewhere else.

Wigs are, by nature, poofy. To give the illusion that hair is growing out of a head, it has to be thick enough so you don't see "scalp" you just see hair. (Unless of course you're a zillionaire and can afford the really amazing nearly-real-life wigs that have skin parts and everything. Which I am not.) So this means that most people take their wigs to a stylist to have them thinned and shaped to better fit your face shape and size. It's not instant gratification, there will most likely be more prep involved, so I need to get over it.

The other big learning is that there is a reason why certain styles didn't work with my real hair, and why they still don't work with fake hair. Some styles just look plain weird on me, a 5'2" petite person. I will never pull off a long, curly red mane. Never.

Finally, you learn a lot by trying them on. Several people advised me not to order wigs online, and I'm glad I didn't. But now that I have tried some on I think I could eliminate many wigs I wanted to click on in a midnight online obsessive shopping binge.

I have no idea how this is going to end up. Maybe I go through all this and change my mind completely. Or maybe I find just the right wig(s) that will help me maintain some self-confidence in a pretty hard situation. I have a sneaking feeling when the chemo starts I won't be thinking about this nearly as much as I am now.

I love this promise from today's Psalm: "The LORD withholds no good thing from those who walk in sincerity."