Who Loves You

Yesterday was another typical shower before Holy Coffee. Things went as you'd expect: there was soap and water and a towel and delusions that it may actually be Saturday, and I'm up for no reason. When I snapped out of it, I found them. They were sitting on my shoulder haphazardly, like I rolled over in bed and they just stuck to me. Then I looked over at the other shoulder and reality steamrolled me like the Bull Charge to Little Mac: I'm finally going chemobald.

Now I've been pretty lucky with this whole cancer thing so far, but there are times when you just can't escape what's really going on here, and that's the fact that the C Note (another great title for a cancer blog, BUT NOT THIS ONE, FOOL) is really the master plan of the Hair Club for Men gone horribly awry. Oh, you scoff, but see it as I do: businessmen with newly regrown flaxen locks chide their woes in a board room when one of them says, "hey, fellas, I think I figured it out. First, we make people kinda sick. Not too sick, but it'll suck monkey nuts all the same. During the treatment process, we invent a drug called VinBLASTine [editor's note, actually the way it's labeled] that will also kill your hair follicles! Hand over fist, I tell ya! Hand over fist!" Stupid fake hair people.

To be fair, my hairline is on the same trajectory as Caine from Kung Fu; it is slowly wandering from one end of the globe to the other. It's been this way since my late teens. Knowing that hair loss was a possibility with my treatment, I was mentally prepared for my dome to be exposed for all the world to see after I first heard the happy news. Not to beat that dead horse, though, but it's different for everybody. My nurse, Julie (a lieutenant in the war), even warned me not to do anything drastic like shaving my head because I may thin out, I may go totally bald, or I may just be the hairy bastard I've always been.

Here's another wacky thing about going chemobald: it's gonna grow back, and chances are, it's gonna be totally different. There are not-too-uncommon reports of people gaining natural curls and even different colors post-treatment, so let's dare to dream and speculate together, just you and me...


You may not know how metal I am. Well, I'm fucking metal. So metal, in fact, that I don't need any face paint to let you know how serious I am about my metalocity. Never mind the smirk; it's just there to throw you from the trail. Fun Fact: I am wailing on a flying-V in this same picture, some idiot intern just cropped it a little too much. That kid's fired.




So you thought I'd make a Kung Fu reference and just leave it, didn't you? Silly reader, Kung Fu is like a high five: you can't just let it hang. In a past life, my Wing Kong brothers and I freed David Lo Pan from the Hell of 1000 Upside Down Sinners. Know what the key ingredient was in that martial arts pie? ME, TURKEYS. Now I'm going to put cancer in the same kind of Shaolin-style grip. Just wait.






This requires no explanation. I want it to happen. Badly.

Fingers crossed, everybody!