I’ve got no eyebrows now
But my hair is pretty nice
No, not there. That’s a picture of me when I’m about 2. With hair and eyebrows. You get used to seeing these things on your face over 32 years.
When I was about thirteen years old I was invited to a slumber party. A hilariously misnamed event where upwards of two, but often about ten, pre-pubescent girls arrange themselves on one bedroom floor (lounge, or in one memorable incident, bath tub) and stave off sleep with junk food and a smuggled horror movie. I can vividly remember being pinned down at one while one of the popular girls plucked my eyebrows.
I’ve naturally got quite heavy dark eyebrows and, raised pre-Cara Delevigne, this was a Bad Thing. I never got heavily into thin eyebrows as my mother had warned me they never really grow back, but I regularly tidied them up. My 1 year old daughter now has distinctly more impressive eyebrows and eyelashes than I do. Chemo for my breast cancer has made mine almost all fall out and I am faced with new make up dilemmas in my thirties.
Previously, an eyebrow pencil was up there with eyelash curlers, foundation and lip liner. Basically stuff my mother owned and used that never made their way onto my make-up radar. Do you know how hard it is to draw an eyebrow on and not make it look like you’ve done it with a marker pen? Very. I actually remember there was a girl in my high school who shaved her eyebrows off (probably egged on at a slumber party) and actually did draw them on with marker pen. It was not good. (I’m acutely aware that eyebrow-drawing-on is actually a Thing again, but I think I’m too old to have caught this recent wave).
What seems like a lifetime ago, I started writing about losing my hair. It’s all gone now. Well, enough of it is gone so that it makes no matter. I shaved the remaining wispy bits with my husband’s clippers and what came off was less than I used to pull out in the shower.
So my head hair’s gone. On my arms too. My upper lip remains a bit furry and my big toe hair is still holding on (It serves no purpose. Thanks mediterranean heritage). But my once lustrous eyebrows are firmly in retreat.
So with my eyebrows newly drawn on, I also have new hair. I don’t think I’ve addressed acquiring my new do. It goes something like this: Before chemo, you have pre-chemo, which is a chat with a nurse about your concerns and worries about the treatment and the illness. After noticing my long (long) curls, the nurse asked me how I felt about losing my hair and I guess it’s not surprising that I cried a bit and felt silly about crying over vanity, and then cried a bit more and pulled myself together. Anyway, the NHS kindly offer wigs, if you want one, so they arranged an appointment for me to go and try some on.
Now, this is the NHS, so if you’re imagining some salon event with giggles and grand unveilings (like some deleted scene from Legally Blonde), that is not what happens. You go to a department called Patient Appliances. This covers all the things that patients might need, from zimmer frames and prosthetics, to hearing aids and wigs. There aren’t enough people who need a wig referral every day so once a week you can get an appointment. After a bit of arranging, my mother and I (with baby in giant pram), found our way through the maze of corridors to the half-hatch, stable type door. We squeeze our way into a room the size of a (small) disabled toilet full of filing cabinets, a mirror and some catalogues. It was all very Roald Dahl/BFG/Narnia.
So there’s three of us in there (and the baby munching on soggy toast in the pram), and I’m sitting in front of the mirror with an increasingly sweaty face (it’s warm and we rushed). The nice wig-lady then opens one of those roller cabinets and starts handing me wigs I’ve pointed at in the catalogue. They don’t have every style but they can order you what you want and there’s no real obligation (beyond not taking the piss) as they can keep them as samplers. She’s amazing, this woman. Really helpful and not pushy. Basically the opposite of every hairdresser I’ve ever had (although she did keep trying to get me to go for the dark red wigs. Think Cheryl Cole circa 2010).
I tried on long brown curly wigs but I just looked like a crap version of myself. Long curly wigs also have the tendency to look like they were styled by a 5 year old who’s been watching Disney movies on loop. Ringlets. Lots of them. Wigs are pretty good these days but natural curls (and their inherent scruffiness) are hard to mimmic. I tried long straight wigs in all sorts of colours, but they were a bit dull and I thought I should try something a bit different.
I tried a few short hair wigs but they looked appalling. Have you seen Salt with Angelina Jolie? Basically she’s a spy (or is she? Yes, yes she is) who’s on the run and wears a series of increasingly unflattering, unrealistic wigs. It was starting to get a bit like that and then I spotted something in the catalogue that looked nothing like me. The kind of hair I’d see someone with and think “Ho hum, my hair would never look like that”. So I picked it. I tried it on with my mother going “I’m not sure about that colour…” I wriggled and shiggled it over the wig cap (basically like having the sock of your tights on your head but without a bank to rob), pulled my head back et Voila: new me. It’s taken a bit of getting used to. It’s very different. But, for now, it’s part of my armour against this Cancer Thing. The armour that I need right now. And that’s ok.
It also means that I can get ready really quickly. Technically.
The wig won’t last forever, it’s already started to lose it’s shape a bit. But it just needs to last long enough. Bit like me, really.
If you like any of my writing, pop a little click over the little heart at the bottom, would you? I need the validation only internet stats can give. Ta.
