My hair is falling out. In drifts and tangles it comes away. Settling on my pillow, in my hair brush, on my collar, like autumn leaves. My head still has hair but it is frizzy and lifeless.
The exodus cannot end well. Despite the dreaded cold cap, I am now succumbing.
I have finished 12 rounds of weekly paclitaxol and carboplatin and two fortnightly rounds of doxorubicin and chlorambucil. But it is the doxorubicin which is doing for my hair.
Once so lustrous and thick. My eyelashes are virtually gone, and my eye brows. My pubic hair is sparse as is that on my legs and arms. Lack of eye lashes leaves my eyes feeling dry and blinky.
I feel detached from the world often. I had not quite realised how important hair is.
I had just recovered from a virus which sent me to hospital with a temperature one night only to come down with another. I cough at night. Deep hacking coughs as I gasp for air and try to find a corner in the house full of people where I can cough without keeping them all awake.
Eventually I ask my partner to move and in doing so it wakes the baby who then wakes the whole house including a room of children who now won’t sleep. It is 4.30 am and I have been coughing for hours. I succumb and take a sleeping tablet and wake next at 11.30. Two rounds to go.
