In the end, the wig ditched me

I was feeling really exhausted and fed up on Monday evening. When I woke up feeling much the same on Tuesday morning, I decided radical action was needed. The bike, I thought, could be the answer. I would cycle to my fourth radiotherapy session. It would be the first time in around three months that I’d done any cycling.

Just making the decision made me start to feel better. I got the bike out and pumped up the tyres. I stuffed the pump and everything else I needed into a little backpack and, with my cycling headband* and winter cycling gloves on, I set off.

The bike, as always, is part of the solution (Love that bike! & A lesson on living in the now). I loved every second of the 5.7 mile ride to the clinic, even the hill, and I felt great when I arrived. I locked the bike up, looked in the backpack for my wig to throw it on before making my way inside and realised to my horror that it wasn’t there.

I swear my heart skipped a beat. It was the same feeling of utter horror that I’d had when I was out having a meal with some friends to celebrate finishing chemo last November and realised that I’d forgotten to give myself my critical post-chemo injection (Emergency delivery of post-chemo injection – to the pub!). That time, my older son brought the needed item to the pub. That wasn’t an option this time.

I lost my hair to chemo last September. I hadn’t gone out in public without some sort of head covering since. I finished chemo at the end of November and so my hair is growing back, but I hadn’t yet taken the plunge. Now I had no choice. I simply (?) had to take a few deep breaths and go for it.

I remember thinking this must be what a panic attack feels like.

I phoned my husband Andy for some moral support. While frantically pacing the clinic car park, I treated him to a monologue that consisted mainly of me repeating down the phone the same four-letter word over and over and over (think the opening scenes of the film Four Weddings and a Funeral). I then phoned a friend who’s a couple of weeks ahead of me in terms of treatment (although it has to be said she didn’t lose her hair). This is the friend who said she wouldn’t have worried about not having had the injection and would just have waited until she’d got back home. The two of them found my discomfort all highly amusing, which I have to say did calm me down somewhat. As they pointed out, I couldn’t have picked a more receptive audience for my wigless public debut.

Deep breaths taken, I walked in. It wasn’t easy. Of course everyone I met said how good I looked, how well my hair was growing back, etc, etc, etc. I could literally feel the tension fading away. And when I explained it had been an accident and how it had come about, it felt even better.

It turns out I’d put the wig in one backpack and the rest of the stuff in another. If you must know, I swapped because the first one clashed with the cycling jacket I was wearing! (Bet that surprised you, my fashionista nieces Louise and Shereen.)

I haven’t worn the wig since. And it’s such a relief. Perhaps something was going on subconsciously that morning, because just a few days earlier I’d written about how and why I couldn’t wait to ditch it (One’s changing relationship with one’s wig). In the end, the wig ditched me.

Whether the wig stays unworn depends, I guess, on how my hair grows out. But so far, so good, and I’ve got a story I’ll be able to dine out on for a long time!

*No helmet, I’m afraid. In the three months of having been bike-inactive for want of a better term, my helmet appears to have “got lost”. No-one in the house is taking responsibility for said loss, but I didn’t lose it and I’d bet my life Andy didn’t either. That leaves just two possible culprits. They know who they are. 

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