I’m a little obsessed with my hair. Not in a need to be a fashionista kinda of way, just in a way in which my hair fell out, and the way in which it is recovering from the effects of chemotherapy.

Yesterday I got my first hair style in years (too many really). Even before cancer, I had pretty consistent hair style for about 3 years, and then with cancer I lost all my hair. So, it is a bit of a milestone to get a new haircut that wasn’t about trimming off the post-chemo frizz.

I have to say I’m really happy with the way it turned out. The stylist actually listened to me when I told him “I’m a wash and wear kind of gal”. I don’t even own a blow dryer or hair iron of any sort. So to have something that looks decent and doesn’t require a lot of maintenance is awesome.

I’m also not someone who typically wears make up. I never have been. But I noticed in all the video conferencing that I do that I don’t like how my face looks. I realized that something was not quite right. My eyebrows didn’t really recover from the chemo loss. I have eyebrows but not thick ones. This means that when I sweat, it drips into my eyes – which is exceedingly frustrating, but I also realized that in head shots, not having eyebrows makes my face look round and chubby. It took me quite a while to realize it was the lack of eyebrows that made me feel like I didn’t look right. And so, with that realization, I bought an eyebrow pencil/brush thing. I’ve started to fill in my eyebrows when I know I’m going to be online or going out to visit people (although not for hiking, as then I’d just get eyebrow make up in my eyes!

I find this new obsession with hair to be interesting. It isn’t just hair on my head, rather hair all over my body. When my arm hairs grew back they came up in every which direction. My original arm hair grew all one way. It felt tamed. Although no one other than me sees my arm hair (unless I show them), it still is something that is different. In some ways it is fascinating, in others it is just odd.