Who the heck with hair

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Who the heck with hair

Long beautiful hair

Here baby, there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy

Hair,hair,hair,hair…..

Lyrics from the musical Hair

   If you’re my age, you should remember the song Hair. It was a time when the Beatles had shown the world that it was OK for a man to have long hair. Of course, if you look a bit further back you will see pictures of Wild Bill Cody and General George Custer, both with more than shoulder length hair.

   Then came World War I and the need for close cut hair to keep lice and other cooties at bay. The style persisted through past another couple of wars and then with a nation no longer with a threat of imminent world war, rock and roll was born. With it came the expected teenage rebellion. Music, style, and questioning authority. All generations have done this to some extent or another, but the baby boomers were here to set a record as to how fast it was to change. Add to that a giant leap in technology enabling us to go to the moon.

    I personally remember buying a LED calculator for $ 20 that was about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It ran on a nine volt battery and could only do basic calculations up to eight digits. Once I understood how this thing worked and knowing that if I could buy that, if you had real money to throw at the digital industry, it wouldn’t take long to be rich. Of course I was in the Army and had no money. The calculator had taken around a quarter of my month’s personal money. No eating out for a couple of weeks.

   But, I digress. ( Get used to it, I tend to do that a bit ) Hair from about 1964 has evolved into more of a personal statement. My personal statement has changed over the years, sometimes to please others, other times to please me. These days long hair requires too much maintenance and I’m a fairly low maintenance guy. I tend to keep my hair short in the belief that it makes me look younger. I didn’t really worry too much about trying to look young. I had great genes and when I was 21 could have passed for 15 if I hadn’t been so tall. My rebellion came late and after seven years in the Army I decided to let it all hang out. I grew my hair and beard out in an attempt to look older. Looking at pictures of myself back then, I just looked like a dorky hippy.

   I guess I said all of that to say goodbye to my hair. In the past week the shower drain has looked like a drain in a beauty salon- after a whole day. It doesn’t matter what product you use. Of course, if the cancer dies I’ll be happy- just wearing a cap to keep my head from getting sunburned. So far, it’s only been facial hair, which seems a bit funny to me. If a chemical you are taking has the side effect of hair loss, why is it only facial hair.

   Days have passed and as my hair started looking more like a bag of feathers was dumped on a sweaty head. So armed with a pair of hair clippers I cut some of it off to even it out. And now I look a bit like a dog with mange. My beard seems to be the only thing growing now, and I only need to shave about once a week.

    I’ll be ranting on about other things in the future, so stay tuned and if you see a tall, skinny, bald, Ichabod Crane looking guy, look twice. It may be me.

This week on Hee-Haw

   My chemo came and went with expected results from the side effects, fatigue for a few days and a slow return to what I now consider normal. My “now normal” is me having to accept the limitations of the effects of old age. After looking at my fingers the other day, Teresa said I was dehydrated. So, after downing a Gatorade and plenty of water when my fingers didn’t plump up as expected, I finally realized that the wrinkles in my fingers were just “old man hands”. Well crap, when did that happen? Really? Have you looked in a mirror lately? Umm no, it’s not good news so I’m not looking anymore. Besides, someone may have hung black drapes over the things and I’m not sure that they wouldn’t be for me.

   6-12     

                                                                

   Anyway, we headed to the north forty this past week intending on doing some things to get ready for the upcoming move. The problem with our plan though was that the weather had other plans. The only days that it didn’t rain were the day we got there and the day that we left. In the one week that we were there it rained 13 inches. I had taken my riding lawnmower up there to try to reclaim some of the area that we claim for yard. To be fair it is a fairly large area and I spent a fair amount of time over four days mowing in between rain showers. Most of what I had to mow was over the hood of the lawnmower so it was really slow going. Once I’m able to get our tractor running it won’t be such a chore, since we have a brushhog for it. Also, once it’s cut to a reasonable height it doesn’t take but about a day to keep under control…. and keeps the snakes and other critters away.

   We had taken the pickup and small trailer full of stuff as we almost always do when we head up there. So, the day we arrived, since it wasn’t raining I parked the trailer close to the house. Mistake. At least in not moving it as soon as we got it empty. When it rains there the ground gets so slick you can’t get enough traction to get out. The last time we were up there it rained, and not nearly as much, I got the pickup stuck on nearly level ground. It was on the second day of it being stuck that I finally got a winch and spent about four hours winching it out. So, with all of the rain it was too slick to get the trailer out and we had to leave it there. This was more of an inconvenience since we use the trailer when it’s here for staging the things we want to take up there. 

   6-19

   So, home again, home again, jiggity jog. We landed in the front yard for unloading at 2:50 PM and finally sitting down for a minute at 4:30. The suitcases will be unpacked and repacked, the vehicles switched out and reloaded, and we will be off for Houston again Sunday. We’ll stop at my daughters Sunday and head on for Houston Monday. This breaks the trip up so that my boney seat doesn’t cause me agony. When I lost weight from the first round of chemo, evidently I had a really big ass and no one was ever impolite enough to tell me. Who knew? Because now, after about two hours of driving I need to get up and get off of it because the bones are digging through what’s left of it. For a truck driver who is used to putting in very long days, this is almost like a handicap. That just makes long days longer and more tired. I do know that it’s always been easier on me to drive the big truck than the little one.

   6-22

   Finally settled into the room in Houston after spending the night with my daughter and granddaughter. Last night my daughter made lasagna, one of my favorites, for Father’s Day.

We have packing for Houston down to a science now. You would really hope that we would be capable of that, since we’ve been packing the big truck for over 13 years. Loading and unloading the pickup takes only about ten minutes. Of course, dealing with the stuff on either end takes a bit more time.

   Tomorrow it’s off for chemo 2.4

Ok, I’ve taken up enough of your time, so it’s off to the cloud.

Chemo 2.3 A small victory

 I'm still trying to figure out how to make this font more readable, so pardon the overly large type. I have yet to figure out how to do the in between sizes.

We came back to Houston Sunday. Yesterday was all about tests, blood, CT, and chest X-ray. Some good news there. When we saw the doctor today, she said that there had been no growth in any of the nodes and some had even shrunk. They seem to be really concerned about how I’m feeling about all of this as if I’m in denial or something. I’m not in denial, it just doesn’t bother me yet. Besides, how can you be bothered about no growth? What bothers me is being so tired for a week or so. I have lost 5 lbs. this time, mostly due to not eating much for the week after the last round. I got chewed out for that. The doctor said I was looking like Ichabod Crane. After the doctor we checked into the chemo area for 2.3 and were pleasantly surprised when after about 30 or 40 minutes I was called in to get started. My original time to start had been 5:45 which was going to have to put us in a cab to get back to the hotel. About 3 hrs. later I was finished and we were headed back to the hotel in the shuttle. The hotel we stay in has a kitchenette since we don’t really like to get out and drive around looking for restaurants and it’s a lot cheaper to fix our own meals. Besides, after 13 years on the road we kind of got used to doing it this way.

I’m still losing hair at a rate I’m not crazy about, but considering the alternative I guess I’ll take bald over assuming room temperature. One of the nurses mentioned going ahead and cutting it all off, which I will do eventually, but not until I look like one of those guys doing a comb over. It’s just a little disconcerting to see hair everywhere, the brush, the sink, the tub, and even in my plate.

Three more treatments over nine weeks to go.

I had started another blog about hair, but I felt that sharing this with everyone was probably more of what y’all might want to hear.

A huge thank you to all of you for your prayers. It means more to me than any of you will ever know.