In January of this year I made a decision to do something rather extreme. I signed up for the #NoHairSelfie event and pledged that if I raised $10,000, I'd shave my head in support of cancer research at The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation (not coincidentally my place of work).
Yeah. I got a nice toque out of it, though. ^ Right?
Another of my stellar WTF was I thinking moments.
But there were so many reasons to do it. We're all touched by cancer, so it's impossible to not have a list a mile long of people we'd be doing this in support of. And more recently, my friend Kris had been diagnosed with breast cancer. We're the same age, and all of the sudden cancer loomed very large, very close to home.
Kris is amazing. Her attitude through all of her diagnosis and treatment has been awe inspiring to behold. And while I can only imagine that she's had her less than stellar days, she's taken everything they've thrown at her with an 'okay, what's next?' mentality and a shrug that makes me feel mad respect for her. 
She decided to shave her head about nine days after her first chemo treatment as they said it would probably start to fall out 10 to 21 days after and she didn't want to go through all that. So she took the power back and shaved it all off.
I decided that I'd give this #nohairselfie thing a whirl to support Kris and all the other cancer patients that lose their hair during chemo. And hey, if I could raise some money at the same time for research, all the better.
I set a massive goal - $10,000, that I'd have to raise in less than a month because the big shave off was on February 4 - partially because I thought hey, maybe I won't make it and won't have to go through with it!
Right?
Wrong.
In a mere 20 days I'd surpassed my $10,000 goal and by shaving day I was well over $11,500.
Bugger.
And I mean that in the nicest, most grateful of ways.
Then I figured that if I was going to get rid of it all I was going to have a bit of fun, so I dyed my hair bright pink. It was quite a process getting it to this stage, but I adored the end result and wish I could only have had more time with it this way! Not necessarily the best for a business setting but for a week I could get away with it. 
Sigh. I loved my pink hair.
Hell, I loved my hair, pink or otherwise.
Then
the big day came and down we went to Steam Whistle for the Buzz Off
party. To say that I enjoyed a pint or two that night was an
understatement. The entire cut whizzed by (no pun intended) and I
actually have almost no memory of how it all went down. It was a
complete out of body experience.
That was of course videotaped so I
could relive it. Goodie.
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| Me and Micheal post shave. Almost twinsies!! |
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| So glad Kris and her husband Doug were able to come |
They were even kind enough to bring in a professional photographer to do before and after shots:
Then it was all over and life returned to normal. The funds had been raised, my scalp had been razed, and now it was all about the regrowth.
What I hadn't really counted on was pink stubble. Ha! I kinda love this picture, but in actuality I resembled a pink cheetah with all sorts of spots on my head. It had to go. Back to the bleaching phase we went, getting rid of the pink this time and returning my hair, via yet another chemical cocktail, to what we expected was my natural brown.
Man, was it short. I must say, I hated it. I really did. I didn't feel feminine at all. I loved that it was low maintenance and that I got extra sleep in the morning (still do!) but I lost a part of me for those first few months. I didn't see a woman looking back at me in the mirror each day and that was surprisingly hard to process. Gave me an entirely new and deep understanding for what women who lose their hair during chemo experience. The difference, of course, was that mine started growing back the instant it was shaved off. Theirs, not so much. Their process is oh so much longer.
And since this all went down in February (FEBRUARY!!!) as February 4 is World Cancer Day, it was frickin frackin cold. I bought more hats during those months than I had cumulatively in my life thus far.
Slowly (very slowly) but surely, my hair is coming back. To me, it's taking forever. Like an insanely long period of time. At this rate I figure it will take me up to a year to get back to where I was before, and I had pretty short hair to start with!
Never in my wildest dreams did I suspect that the regrowth period would be this lengthy. Ha. Ironic.
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| Three months later - May 4 |
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| One month later - March 4 |
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| Two months later - April 4 |
I'm ever so gradually getting more comfortable with my constantly evolving new look and am the first to admit that I'm very fortunate that it's coming back at all. I've also lucked out in that people seem to think - or maybe they're lying to my face - that they like the short cut, that it suits me, and I should stick with it.
Fat chance, that's all I've got to say! Still some more growing to be done, for sure!
Today was also the public launch of a Princess Margaret campaign that focuses on research. We use the phrase 'Why is in Our DNA' when we talk about it, and ask people to consider who is their why? Who they think about when they get involved in any kind of cancer cause?
A massive group of us stood in front of the new Princess Margaret Cancer Research Tower on College Street this morning, clad in lab coats and holding up signs explaining who we were there for. And while sadly there's not enough room on that one sign to include everyone I think about when I go to work and do what I do each day, I was sure to include Kris and my amazing mother in law on that sign as representatives of my 'why'.
They were all my why's then, on a cold February evening four months ago, and they'll continue to be my why's for the months and years to come, through all the hairstyles, long and short, in my future.
For more information on either of these efforts, go to www.nohairselfie.com and/or www.whoisyourwhy.ca.
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