Day 222 - Manely hair

I've noticed that I don't start in a very interesting way usually. I feel like the second grader who writes their life story as "then I ate dinner. Then I took a bath. Then mom said I could stay up late and I watched TV. Then I went to bed." If I were speaking with you, I could at least wiggle my eyebrows and use a dramatic voice.

Most of today's energy was spent on work: work meetings, seeing patients, more work meetings, followed by signing, a little visiting and home.

Once home, Ellie, Terry and I went to the hair shop for Terry's haircut and Ellie's first hair dying! You may remember the story about the hair shop, but it's such a nice story and so emblematic of my leukemia story that I'll tell it again. The first question I had for Dr. Manno when he gave me my diagnosis was "Is this one of the treatments that will make my hair fall out?" When he said "yes," I knew I had to take action. I hadn't gotten my hair cut in a long time (remember how long it was?), but Terry had gotten his cut every six weeks by the same person. He called her and explained the situation and she called her last appointment of the day and asked them to come in later so she could cut my hair off so at least the leukemia wouldn't get it. She cut it very nicely and somewhere we have a long pony tail of my hair hanging around. I hadn't seen her since then so she was really happy to see me looking well and on the other side of the leukemia. We showed her photos of what I looked like bald, but not really any of the ones of me at my sickest. Here is a picture for those of you who have forgotten how hirsute I used to be. Tommie took this picture a week or two before I was diagnosed. I don't look like a person has leukemia, do I? Gives one pause.

So, we went to see Robin and she dyed a little section of Ellie's hair bright red--actually about the color of the shirt I'm wearing. It looks really good and is kind of peek-a-boo-ish so as her hair swings around you see it and then you don't. If I had enough hair to swing around, I might get it dyed like that, too.

I've done all my work for this week so tomorrow I will dedicate myself to being a lady who lunches.

For tomorrow, I am hoping for a rejuvenating day. You know what I notice? As I get more like a normal person my wishes for myself become more universal and I can wish you the same thing as I wish myself most of the time. It makes me think of that Tolstoy (?) line about all happy families being the same; each unhappy family is individual. All healthy people have the same wishes; it's the sick ones with idiosyncratic wishes. Maybe.