A week ago Thursday Jeannie had her first chemo
treatment. Leading up to this everyone simply flatly said you’ll lose your hair.
“But it will grow back”. “Often thicker
than before”. Well to a male bystander who’s been follically challenged most of
his adult life this is low impact. I knew she’d lose her hair. Didn’t really faze
me. Fazed her though. For a girl with long blonde hair it was devastating. This
was HUGE. But all these people who assure her that they’re there for her seem
to keep leaving out details. And for the past two days we’ve been busy with a
little investigation work, and getting over some anger.
Seems for some time now there’s been a cold cap
therapy that’s done at the same time as the chemo. Doesn’t work for all cancers
or therapies. Doesn’t work in all instances. But has been used around the world
(not FDA approved in this country of course but there aren’t any big pharmacological
companies campaigning for it either). It’s also been used for years and years. Such
that anyone working in the cancer field is either very familiar with it or has
been snoozing under as rock. Plenty of centers in other states clearly support
it, participate in test programs and so forth. None in Ohio though. Glad they
all advertise how cutting edge they are.
In a nutshell the way this works is you wear a cap
that cools your hair follicles to protect them against the damage caused by the
chemo. You cap up before during and after treatment. It’s supposed to happen
with the first treatment and you change the caps every twenty or thirty
minutes. Aha, a bit of an inconvenience for infusion centers. But from all
evidence lots of them cooperate. A patient who looks better feels better. I’ve
heard repeatedly how much better a certain person would feel if she looked in
the mirror and saw herself rather than some “circus freak”. Or can go to the store and not have people
look at her and realize she has cancer. Makes sense doesn’t it? But of all
these people who are “there for her” not one brought up this possibility. There
is an expense. It’s not necessarily covered by insurance. But it’s not
something we can’t afford. And a lot of people have blown any sense of trust we
might have had in them. They’ll be told, bluntly but politely when we show up
for Thurdays treatment with caps on ice. As her friend with thyroid cancer
told her when she started down this path “you’ll find you’re all on your own”.
She’s done plenty of internet searches since this
started and has learned a lot. Of course with the internet you have to filter
out a lot of crap. Lord knows the internet pumps out crap by the ton. It
makes television look like a chump. But
we’d both accepted the baldness as fait accompli. Well her hair has been
hanging tough and though the cap people said they can’t make any promises we’ll
give it a try. Not much to lose at this point. Maybe she wins. But I could name
for you a lot of people who’ll never win back her trust. I figured this out
about her from right around when we first met. Burn her once and you’re done.
No second chances.
Something else we’ve found is that people who might
want to post a comment in the comment section can’t necessarily do so unless
they have a Google account or something. Still trying to figure that one out
but in the meantime feel free to email us if you’d like, we read ‘em all and
all are appreciated.
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