Embrace That Inner Pixie, Girl!

 PIXIE: a cheerful mischievous sprite.  

It's kind of a funny thing.  Well, it's funny to me.  Everywhere I go, people are stopping me to tell me that they "love" my haircut.  Nice, right?  Well, as you all know, this isn't really a haircut.  It's the regrowth process that follows hair loss compliments of chemo therapy- at least to me, this is no fashion statement.  I really have no complaints (other than the fact that the growing phase is a little too slow) about this newly found hair on top of my head.  It's amazingly soft, and the color is beautiful and shiny.

When we were having dinner in Georgia, one of the servers came over to our table.  She proceeded to tell my husband and I that she wished that she had the "guts" to go that short.  As she was going on and on about not having the courage to cut her hair as short as mine, I battled with telling her the truth.  I mean here she is thinking that I'm some kind of trail blazing woman trying to make a statement with a super short pixie, and the truth is that I really didn't have a say in the matter.  And honestly, since I'm being super truthful, if I had a choice in the matter, I never would have said good-bye to my long, blonde locks.  The gushing got to the point where I had to tell her- actually she asked me how I found the courage to do it and that was the kicker, the moment of truth I couldn't let her continue to think that I was something that I was not.  I told her that I had just undergone chemo for breast cancer.  And suddenly the babbling stopped, she had no idea what to say to me, her face went white.  I hurriedly smiled and said, "It's all right, I'm gonna live!  I'm cancer free!"

At a gas station 2 hours outside of Atlanta, the owner of the gas station complimented me on my "beautiful hair".  (I looked over my shoulder to see who he was talking to, yes, I'm still getting used to having hair on my head again!)  He proceeded to ask me if I was Scandinavian, and said that I had "amazing cheekbones".  Uh, no!   Again, I battled with the telling him the truth.  And just yesterday as I was cruising the aisles of Ulta looking for miracle products to help my eyelashes (more on that in another post), a women comes up to me and tells me how "darling" my haircut is.  I just said "thank you" and moved on- after all, I was a woman on a mission.

This is a rather award stage for me.  I once again find myself in a position where strangers are curious about me, but for different reasons than the ones that were around a few months ago.  While I think I did a good job of not looking like I was knocking on death's door the whole way through chemo therapy, my bald head was a tell tale sign that I was a cancer patient.  More often than not, I found myself being approached in public places and being asked what kind of cancer I had- I have talked to a lot of cancer survivors in the aisles of Publix and Wal Mart.  Now, I'm being approached because of my "super daring" haircut!

Yesterday, I was leaving the "chemo" room, and I stopped for a quick chat with the gentleman next to me.  I had overheard him telling the chemo nurse that he had lost his wife to breast cancer in 2007.  For the obvious reasons, these are conversations that I find myself wishing to avoid, but I make myself do it, because the cold hard reality of the situation is I could have lost my life to breast cancer and having these conversations makes me realize how fortunate I really am.  I talked with him for a few minutes, and headed out.  As I walked past another patient, she looked at me and said, "You're so lucky you're out of here!"  I chuckled and said that I had paid my dues, been there done that.  She smiled at me and winked and as I turned the corner, I heard the gentleman that  I had spoken with say "Boy, she's a sassy little pixie, isn't she?".  I couldn't have been more touched by the words that I heard next from one of the chemo nurses, "She has been that way the entire time she has been in treatment, and she had one of the toughest breast cancer treatments."  Wow!

So, as I jumped in my car and prepared to head out to radiation,  I wondered what the definition of pixie is.  This morning I looked it up and realized that my hair, however unintentional, is somewhat of a compliment to the attitude that I have embraced throughout this cancer business.  I'm not making any promises that this pixie  (at least the haircut part anyway) will be around for any length of time, but I have made the decision to embrace her- because I truly am a mischievous little sprite with a cheerful attitude!