A decade or so ago, in my journalism days, I interviewed a 22-year-old woman who had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. As shocked and saddened as I was to see such a young person facing what we often assume is a mid-life disease, I was even more surprised when she told me that she worried most about losing her hair. Not her breast; her hair.
I have thought about this young woman a lot over my pre-breast cancer years, trying to sort out whether, if I were in her situation, the loss of my hair or my breast would bother me more. I admit it: I was a late bloomer – didn’t see much in the way of breasts until my early 20s, and really, the big “growth spurt” didn’t come until my 40s. In the meantime, I had gone through adolescence refusing to look at my flat, “boy-body” in a full-length mirror, uncomfortable with what I saw as my lack of femininity (aka: curves). I only got over this when I heard boys making vulgar comments about a friend’s voluptuous form and what they’d like to do with it, just minutes after appearing to be polite and friendly to her. That day, I decided being small was a virtue. Still, as any woman will tell you, breast development is an important part of our sense of body image as we evolve from girlhood to womanhood.
At the same, though, I love my hair. Ok, that’s not entirely honest. I, like many women, have a love-hate relationship with my hair. Hate, in that its tendency to frizz makes me crazy. Love, in that when it comes out right, it makes me feel on top of the world. Powerful. Beautiful. My hair is my mask, my armor; it gives me the confidence to brave the toughest day.
The question of which would be harder to lose – breasts or hair – became all too real for me when I received my own cancer diagnosis. I wasn’t ready to give up either. But the odd thing was, I actually felt like I had more control over whether to keep my breasts. Continue reading
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transformed from something I thought I directed, to something cancer dominated. Before, I worried about my goals and how to get there — my writing, my activism. In the limbo after hearing that word in the same sentence as my name, I feared a life where every day began and ended with what to do about the cancer, what stage I was at, and the best way to treat/fight it. I feared that everything I once valued or thought important would be hiding in the shadows of this fight for my life. I wanted to keep everything as it was and put the illness in the shadows. Just deal with it like I might a cold or the flu, and then “get back to normal.” 
There is a tendency to fast-forward those of us with cancer to the other side, to race us from the afflicted to the well again. On some level I get it – cancer is such a scary illness with so many possible outcomes that loved ones want us to return as quickly as possible to “healthy.” They want that “happily ever after.” Trouble is, for those of us with cancer, the scars are more than physical.
hat one single fact. I could tell it was happening by the all-too-earnest, searching expressions –“Oh my God. How will you survive this?” — I saw when I told people what was going on with me. Vanished in an instant was all that had come before, all the other qualities that made me me — the fearless writer, passionate activist and champion of all causes, the confidante, lover and friend.
But my diary has always been the one place where I feel free to fully express my deepest thoughts, my darkest fears, my intense confusion and my secret hopes. When times are good, I don’t write; when times are confusing, painful or marked by rare joy, my diary helps me make sense of it all.