I miss my eyebrows

I cannot believe that I've been going through chemo since March.  I'm on the home stretch and if nothing stalls me, I will finish the first week of August.  A lot has happened during these 5 months and sometimes I wonder if it's all for real.  I've had my head shaved.  I've been too sick to get off the couch for full weeks at a time.  I barely made it through the end of the school year.  I am finding out that "chemo brain" is a real and evil thing.  I have been exhausted and the exhaustion just compounds week after week.  We found and purchased a new house all within this terrible time.  I have lost my eyelashes.  I have gained weight and look puffy.  And I have lost my eyebrows.  I don't even look like myself anymore.  I take my glasses off before I undress for the shower for fear of seeing myself in the mirror.  It still takes my breath away.  My mastectomy looks like a Frankenstein horror show.  I have no feeling in any part of my stomach and the hip to hip scar is ugly and purple.  I have a huge lump where my port sticks freakishly out.  I will never get used to seeing myself without hair.

I try to tell myself that this is not permanent.  My hair will regrow - but it will takes years.  I will have another surgery to make the mastectomy match my other side - but I will never have feeling there.  My eyelashes will regrow - but the jury is still out on the eyebrows.  I have had two people tell me that theirs never grew back.  My fear of cancer will never go away.  There is no way to know if the chemo did its job other than if I am still alive in 10 years.  I will start taking Tamoxifen in August.  The side effects of this drug are awful, as well.  I will be on that for 10 years.  None of this is going away.  But, I have gotten through the last 10 months of this ordeal by force-feeding the message that this is just a chapter, not the whole story.  I'm not really sure if this is true.  I am definitely changed - physically and emotionally.

So, as I face the last four treatments, weird thoughts run through my head.  I will miss going to the damn chemo appointments.  Miss them!  How can that even be?  The people there are amazing.  My nurse makes me laugh and I enjoy her company so much.  It has been the only social outlet where people really understand what I'm going through.  They see bald and eyebrowless women there all the time.  I can close my eyes and drift off and nobody judges.  They truly care about all my weekly symptoms - and actually ask me about them.  I am in that office three times a week!  And there is nothing like a smile and a laugh with another woman wearing a headscarf.  We know.  We just know without speaking.

I miss having the energy to do things with my family....with my friends.  I miss feeling like I can be attractive and feminine.  I miss being able to think clearly.  I miss being able to socialize and laugh without it taking so much effort. I miss the taste of food.  I miss the clear, refreshing taste of water.  I miss being able to plan anything ahead of time.  I miss not taking medications every day for every single symptom I have.  I miss getting through an hour without a horrible hot flash.  I miss having the stamina to do things I love, like gardening and cooking.  And I miss my eyebrows.