The person in the picture

This post, like many of them, has been rambling around in my head for awhile. That's one reason I like to blog about this journey ... because it helps me sort out the things that haunt my mind.

I've mentioned our family photo before ... but this was taken in early April, just a couple of weeks after diagnosis by a Tremont friend who has documented my kids' lives and milestones over the years. One of my first thoughts in my foggy, cancer=death stupor after diagnosis was that we didn't have a recent family photo, and I wanted the kids to have a picture of who we were before cancer changed our world. It's a bit morbid, perhaps ... but it was so important to me at the time to document, for them, what I looked like before cancer treatments and side effects took over my life. We had just returned from spring break where I looked like myself on the outside, but hid the painful truth on the inside that I was about to start fighting the beast. Drew just happened to be home from college on spring break, and Jenny took time away from her family and photography business to be there for us, and get what we needed.

I started chemo treatments on April 17. They told me that my hair would begin falling out slowly, but that it would be gone completely by about days 14-21. I again had the support and help of a friend and her daughter, who is a stylist in Bloomington, and I went to a shorter style that was closer to the style of a wig already selected when another friend accompanied me to select one at the wig boutique at the American Cancer Society. And as you you can see by the photos, friends lifted me up and held my hand through this entire journey.

The first day I wore a bandana in public was a big one ... alongside about 12,000 people at the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Peoria last May. I remember saying to Drew that I didn't know if I was ready to wear it in public, and maybe I would just wear the wig. But he gently reminded me that of all places to appear in a bandana, the Race for the Cure participants would not gawk at me, but rather, would see it as a badge of honor. And he was right. Thank you for that, Drew.

The month of May held several important events that I was pretty worked up about going to in a wig. Even though most people told me they would never have guessed it was a wig until I told them ... it felt weird. Hot, itchy, odd, uncomfortable. I felt the constant need to adjust it, I worried it would blow off and embarrass me. Those feelings were especially strong at one of TJ's track meets last spring, and in hindsight, I was probably lucky that it stayed on my head in the strong winds!

But off to TJ's 8th grade graduation in Tremont, Drew's college graduation in Kenosha, and Beverly's high school graduation in Chicago I went in my wig.  (In case you don't know, Beverly is our former exchange student from China who is still very much a daughter to us).

I didn't want to be "the mom in the bandana" that people looked at at thought, "Oh, she must have cancer." I just wanted to be the proud mom that I was on the inside, soaking up those milestones with my kids and sharing in their day of joy. Probably at no other time would I have allowed myself to be photographed so many times in that itchy wig! haha

All summer, I wore the wig to work in my quest to "look normal" and avoid the pitiful looks I felt when I was out in public other times in my bandana. People were not shy about looking, staring, wondering. I felt very conspicuous, and often I wondered if they just didn't have any manners, or if their look was longer because they had walked this path before, for themselves or for a family member. At any rate, it felt weird, but I grew accustomed to it. By the time football season rolled around last September, I had the confidence to wear my bandana to the high school football game. I remember it was raining and I just knew the wig would not be a good choice ... but I had to get there and see TJ play with the high school band. That was more important than vanity.

By September I wasn't wearing the wig much. One thing you might not think of is I also lost my eyebrows and eyelashes to chemo ... which left the whites of my eyes red a lot due to not having eyelashes there to do their job and keep things out of my eyes.The last time I wore my bandana was on September 27 ... on the way to the hospital for surgery. I took it off at the hospital, and never wore it or the wig afterwards. My hair was growing again, albeit very short and thin ... but that surgery day was a turning point for me. I was ready to live in the "what you see is what you get" mode. I knew I'd be home for several weeks of recovery, and it just seemed like a good time to transition. Other than one time in a restaurant when a waiter referred to me as "sir" ... I think it went pretty well, haha.

As my hair grew, the waves turned into curls. Finally this week I decided I'd had enough of the curls and the fuzzy hair, and gave in for my first hair cut since last April, right before it fell out. I've come full circle, in so many ways.

And I finally feel like the person in the family picture again.