Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

According to my oncologist, I have a 95% chance of losing my hair. Wanting to control things as much as possible (I'm soooo Type A), I decided to take matters into my own hands (or rather, into the clippers of the woman who cuts my hair). By shaving my head now, I can get used to looking at myself with no hair and not be as shocked when it falls out. And if I don't lose my hair, then it's a new beginning in the Ryan hairstyle history.

Without shaving for the past week and a half and not having a hair cut for a month and a half, I was starting to look like Ahmadinejad. (Note, Once at Thanksgiving Dinner, I was voted by my family to be most likely to be confused with a terrorist. FANTASTIC)

So I made the appointment, and my friend Mike offered to go with me and also shave his head. (Ya Ya Sisterhood Solidarity!) After explaining to Athena (the woman who cuts my hair... it's a very Greek neighborhood) why I needed my head shaved, she was more than glad to do both Mike and I free of charge. I closed my eyes for the first 50% of it and managed to not cry (though I was close at times). Here's how Mike and I looked when we were done.

Thanks to my Portuguese features (cough... excessive hair), Mike looks like the cancer patient and I look like an army recruit! We also realized that we now look a lot like my nephew Luke, whose own blog will be direct competition for mine. It's hard to beat adorable baby pictures, so here's my best effort at "doing the Luke".

My facial hair should stay through the chemo treatments. Any androgenic hair, or hair that grows in during puberty, should stay. This upsets me for two reasons. First, it's the exact opposite of my ideal (ie. hair on my head and no where else). Second, I'm forced to wonder if I'll lose my arm hair and leg hair, since my Portuguese genes gave me hair in those areas by first grade! Oh the mysteries of science that I'm about to discover!

Since I'm planning on having facial hair, I will be experimenting with many different styles over the next couple of months. If I can't have crazy hairstyles, then I can have crazy facial hair. This brings me to a point that I realized last night when I went to a restaurant in Chelsea with my friend Josh. Looking around, I couldn't help but notice how everyone there puts effort into looking good (hair, clothing, body, etc.) That's normally how I am too. And I realized that since 8th Grade when I grew my hair out long, I have put time, effort, and a great deal of product into doing my hair, regardless of what style I was rockin at any given moment. Sitting there in this restaurant with no hair made me feel like I wasn't trying hard enough... that I wasn't stepping up to the plate with the A game that I should be. I think that's definitely going to be a challenge for me in the coming months. I need to feel confident in my image without putting product in my hair (or better, without hair!) I need to somehow feel that I'm bringing an A game without that. Can I look that good or learn to feel that comfortable with my image without putting in the effort? Here's hoping!