Part 3 Choose Your Healing Attitude

A Few Funnies

Did I lose my hair? Yes, and no. It took three long years to grow it and I had shoulder length hair. However I was so weirded-out about losing a few hairs that I got a shorter cut. Just because I didn’t want to deal with the thought of finding hair on my pillow or in my hairbrush I rushed it. I got my head buzzed just a few weeks after the shorter cut. My friend—the one, who also got diagnosed, shaved my head for me. I didn’t stop to think about it before that, but the chemo drugs attack fast growing cells like cancer (and hair). Well my hair doesn’t grow fast, its very slow in fact. So, I may not have lost all my hair, but it was already shaved before I thought of that. Joke was on me. I ended up having the equivalent of razor stubble on my head for something like three months before it started growing again. Can you imagine that? I tried wearing those little soft knit head covers. I abandoned that idea cause the fabric kept catching on the stubble. If I had a chance for a do-over I would have gotten one of those super short boy cuts or Jaime Lee Curtis haircuts and just waited to see. Oh, and when your hair grows back its like it belongs to somebody else. I had fine hair before, and coarse curly hair after—but only for the first seven or eight months. My hair started getting back to normal then.

Now here’s one nobody thinks of ahead of time, but I’m telling you—buy good toilet paper. We had the cheap stuff on hand and well, I did not like it a bit. If this isn’t clear to you remember I just spoke of losing hair. Well by the end of chemo I was down to eight eyelashes, and almost no eyebrows. Getting the picture? My bottom was as bald as a baby’s butt too. How’s that for clarity? Yes, I think this is funny. Especially when I tell people about it and get their reactions. The looks on their faces are priceless. I laugh until tears fall, and so do they--after saying OMG! Really and truly the cheap tissue just lints and balls up like crazy and it sticks to you. I even got the chemo nurse to laugh about that one. I told her there are many things I’ve learned since I got cancer and most of them were funny. BTW, there are a bunch of make-up tricks to cover up the no eyelashes and eyebrows dilemma. I figured them out myself with no problem. You could take advantage though of the American Cancer Society’s program.

Dignity is yours as long as you choose it

What about your dignity? I was thinking at first that cancer didn’t allow you to have your dignity considering all the procedures and certainly it doesn’t allow for modesty. But who’s modest after four kids, right? Not having dignity was just a thought. Then, within days, my daughter shared with me that her husband, who had lost his mother to cancer just five months before my diagnosis, said something that changed my mind. He said cancer was one of those diseases that didn’t allow you to have any dignity [especially in advanced stages]. Isn’t the universe a wonderful thing? I was abruptly faced with my own negative thought. I didn’t like it. My impulse was defiance (again!). Nobody can take my dignity away by what is happening to my body. Dignity is like honor, no one can take it from you and only you can surrender it. Boy did I turn around! It really put the ball in my court as I chose right then to maintain my dignity and show my son-in-law—and I did!

Feel Better Faster after Chemo

Here are a few more serious items to help you out. What helps you feel better faster after a chemo treatment? Things you would do after any routine poisoning. One thing that helps is water, along with drinking as much as you can try hot soaks in the bathtub. I’ve got to say that my sweat never smelled so bad in my whole life as it did during and after chemo. Even if you prefer the word perspiration, I’ve got to say the stench was awful. I had this problem in late spring and summer. Winter shouldn’t pose as big a problem. I even got brown stains in my underarms for several months from the toxins in my body. Hot soaks in the bathtub will help immensely. It will help you feel better as well by opening pores and speeding the release of the toxic chemicals. I also found I liked to munch on salty stuff to control the nausea, along with smaller more frequent meals. The steroids they give you help there too. I actually gained about fifteen pounds over the course of treatment. A year later I still hadn’t been able to lose the weight. At this point I’m trying EFT on the weight issue.

Yikes! Cancer feeds on nicotine!

I didn’t smoke cigarettes but I have to be honest, it scared me to read an on-line article saying that nicotine actually feeds cancer cells. Do you know how many people are doing chemo and still smoking? It’s only my opinion but that’s just nuts! That’s a death wish! If you continue to smoke nobody should feel sorry for you! I also read that cancer can’t live in an alkaline environment. I got the little PH strips and checked that out. I ate more vegetables and cut back on sugar of all kinds and other sweets. Coffee turned into a once a week treat. I don’t drink alcohol but that is also acidic (bad) for the body’s PH. No moral judgment here at all - just PH. It creates an acid environment, that where cancer lives and thrives. You want to kill this crap, right?


Most Important Healing was Self-healing
I did some reading--but not much information about cancer the disease, rather I looked for information on how to get rid of it. I engaged in anti-cancer activities (I considered myself an activist). My anti-cancer activities were centered on the Emotional Freedom Technique, EFT for short (go to emofree.com), Louise Hay books (You Can Heal Your Life), Caroline Myss books on energy, and digging deeply and fearlessly into all my past emotional baggage.I learned a long time ago forgiving is not something you do for others. You do it for yourself. Until then I just hadn’t uncovered that particular hurt yet. There were lots of past disappointments, shocks, injustices and wounds buried so deep I didn’t know I still carried them. Ladies, they have to go. If you keep bad feelings inside your body they will poison more than your attitude, they will fill you with aches, pain and disease.