Many aspects of my life are starting over at Zero.
I’ve come to learn that some things will never be the same for me, and I’m ok with that (under the circumstances). But some other things are feeling like the counter of life has been set back to zero and I’m starting over.
One of those is my new immune system. Under strict medical supervision, my compromised (cancer-ridden) immune system was taken down to nothing, and then regrown via a stem cell transplant (I’m still digesting how amazing that was). Another is my hemoglobin level, which technically didn’t get to zero (that would have been very bad), but is slowly building itself back up to acceptable average levels.
And one of the more obvious examples of this is my hair. I made it all the way through three rounds of chemo with nary a damaged hair follicle. But then, as predicted/warned, during the last mega-blast of chemo as preparation for the stem cell transplant, the shedding transpired (move over Daddy Warbucks). Since then, the skin has sprouted peach fuzz and the peach fuzz has advanced to soft stubble and slowly the phoenix is rising. So to even things out (the sides seem to be re-growing faster than the top), I had my first hair cut in over 5 months.
It’s a military-style brush cut, but it’s all mine and it’s coming back. The color has yet to be determined (there was a lot of white before, but we’ll see if any red re-emerges). And the coverage is still an uncertainty. But it will return and propagate - to infinity and beyond (as a famous astro-NOT once declared).
