Month: July 2007

312 days, 23 hours, 30 minutes and 0 seconds

I got a haircut on Wednesday, my first cut in nearly a year: 312 days, 23 hours, 30 minutes and 0 seconds to be exact. What brought me to my barber wasn’t the length of my hair, but the fact that my sideburns were beginning to curl and have a muttonchops meets Hassidic Jewish look to them. It wasn’t a good look.

And I hadn’t thought about my hairless year until Teri, my haircutter for three years now, asked me if it was emotional to get the cut. Until she had brought it up, I, in my great desire to put as much emotional distance between me and chemo/lymphoma, had totally forgotten that I hadn’t had a cut since just after chemo started last September (during chemo I could pretty much wash my hair off with soap and water and finish off with a buzzer the few chemo-resistant patches on my scalp).

So, yes, it was emotional to get the cut, but it was far, far better than the chemo-induced-no-haircut-baldness that I put up with for more than eight months.


Sophia Drives to the Cape

Sophia parks the car in Wellfleet.

We made a triumphant return to Wellfleet, Cape Cod last week, almost a year after our last Cape vacation was canceled due to lymphoma. It was a wonderful 4 days of hanging on the beach, swimming in Great Pond, eating lobsters at Clem and Ursie’s in P’Town, and celebrating being healthy and lymphoma-free.

And although we had a wonderful week, we were both a bit distracted and stressed out by two things that, thankfully, turned out A-OK.

First, we found out while we were away that Sophia’s rash, which you’ve all seen around her mouth in person or in photos, turned out (after several mis-diagnoses) to be a zinc deficiency. And while we were assured that this was easily rectified and would have no lingering effects for her by our doctor, we were stressed out that there could be anything wrong with her, and wanted to hear that she’d be fine from the expert at Children’s Hospital where we finally went yesterday afternoon. The pediatric dermatologists at Children’s Hospital were wonderful and reassuring, and let us know that Sophia would be just fine with just a little extra zinc.

Second, though my last check up with Schuster was ok, my counts had dropped a bit which is a normal post-chemo side-effect, but it can also mean the return of you know what. While nobody thought that the lymphoma had actually returned, I unfortunately entertained it as more than a remote possibility and spent the last few weeks tying my descending colon into a knot. Today I returned for a blood count to make sure everything had returned to normal, which it had, and I am now busy trying to untie my now spastic colon. Yay for post-chemo post-lymphoma PTSD.

So life happily moves forward, Sophia soon-t0-be-rashless with plenty of zinc, and me, sitting on the you know what trying to straighten out my colon.

Sophia plays with a paper bag.

Sophia smiles in her new backpack (thanks Mark and Michelle) at Longnook Beach.

I love my mommy!!!

And I love my cousin Sarah.