By the Time You Read This, I Will Be Bald
After more than 50 years, I finally got my hair to look just the way I wanted. So of course I got cancer.
I’d recently gotten my best perm ever. (Yes, here on Planet Blowout, I’m a curly girl by choice.)
Ignore my old author’s photo above, and those still too stringy, frizzy, “beachy” waves:
In September, a new stylist somehow tapped directly into my brain and sent me home with the long, chunky, glossy ringlets I’d always been assured were achievable only through the tedious (and temporary) application of rags or hot rollers.
And this week, that same stylist will be buzzing off what remains.
This is about what happened in between.
October: For three weeks, I try to ignore the persistent, piercing pain in my guts, while also googling “irritable bowel syndrome” and “appendicitis.”
I didn’t have to google “ovarian cancer.” My mother died of it almost 20 years ago, so I know the symptoms all too well: They include being on a seesaw of constipation and diarrhea. Check. Severe bloating. Check.
(I’d actually never experienced even mild bloating before — I know, right? — and had to google that too. Usually, if my pants didn’t fit, I…
