No-Hair Days Worse Than Bad-Hair Days

We had a milestone at our house last week. My wife Carol went out in public without a hat. This may not sound exciting to anyone with hair, but Carol has had no hair since Halloween. For the two weeks before that, she had only the wispiest of hair. That makes a total of 14 bad hair days followed by 210 no-hair days, not that we’re keeping count or anything.

Blame it on the adriamycin. This chemotherapy drug kills breast cancer cells, but it is not terribly intelligent about it. For instance, adriamycin is baffled by hair follicle cells. It thinks hair follicle cells might be cancer cells, but it isn’t sure, so it goes ahead and kills them anyway. Two weeks after the start of chemotherapy, Carol’s hair started falling out in great drain-clogging clumps.

Anybody would be traumatized by this, since most people are traumatized by a bad trim. But Carol decided to make the best of it by fulfilling a cherished dream: Dressing up as Uncle Fester of “The Addams Family.”

It wasn’t really a cherished dream, of course, but it was Halloween, and when Fate hands you the perfect costume, you grab it. At that point, she still had a few scattered clumps of hair on her head, so she allowed me to finish the job that adriamycin would finish in a week or two anyway. Shaving the head of a loved one turned out to be quite a meaningful experience; I urge you to try it at home tonight.

Uncle Fester was a hit on Halloween, but baldness wasn’t so much fun for the next six months. For one thing, winter came rolling in and Carol’s head got cold. For another thing, she was afraid that her Telly Savalas look might frighten small children and animals. Both of these problems were solved by Carol’s personal support group (about a dozen of her closest friends), who threw her a Hat Party.

Everybody had to come wearing a hat, and at the end of the party, they gave the hats to Carol. She ended up with an entire rack full of hats. She had floppy hats, flapper hats and earflap hats. She had straw hats, stocking caps and deer-stalker hats. She had panama hats, pill-box hats and pithhelmet hats. She had bowlers, boaters, beanies and berets. The only hat she never wore was her polar-fleece jester’s cap, not because she had anything against it, but because she never found herself ripping down a slope on a snowboard.

The only time she truly hated hats was when she had to wear one to bed. Her bare noggin was too cold without one, itchy and hot with one. And the cap always ended up askew over her eyes a few times a night. She probably woke up a few times and thought, “Oh great. I’m bald and I’m blind.”

By about February, Carol was fed up with hats. So in an attempt to improve morale at the top, I came home with a packet of tattoos, the temporary kind. The kids and I spent an evening plastering these over her shiny pate. My 15-year-old son’s only regret was that I had purchased nothing but butterfly tattoos. He wanted her to be a walking Harley Davidson advertisement.

She showed off those tattoos to a few select friends, but she remained hatted most of the time.

Which is why it was so exciting, a few weeks after the end of chemotherapy, to see the first new shoots of spring popping up. Within a month, she had enough hair to pass for somebody at boot camp.

It took another month to get all of those hair follicles back up to speed. To help the process along, she went out and bought a special shampoo which encourages growth. It seemed to work, which gave me another idea. I offered to mix up some MiracleGro plant food and pour it over her head. She declined. I used it on the asparagus instead.

Anyway, last week she finally had enough hair to look like somebody with hair, only short. So when we went to the theater last week, she took the major step of leaving her hat at home and exposing her black and beautiful fuzz to the world.

I have to admit, I wondered what people were thinking. I’ll bet they were thinking, “Wow. That looks comfortable for summer.”

, DataTimes MEMO: Jim Kershner’s column appears Saturdays on IN Life.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review