As expected, the first hairs to grow back were on my legs — and then those annoying random facial hairs which women rarely talk about but universally hate — and finally, the hairs on my head.
About 95% of my head was bald, but several dozen hairs stubbornly clung to my scalp. A month ago, new hairs sprouted from the bare wasteland. As the new hairs grew, I cut down the little old-hair fuzzies so everything would be the same length.
Now 95% of my head hair has returned (and at least 250% of my leg hair.) Sides and back are completely grown in, although the crown area is still sparser than I remember.
In 1998, my post-chemo hair was wavy with a lot of body — two words that were never applicable to my hair before. The waves disappeared in six months but some of the body remained. My 2016 post-chemo hair is worse than it was before, if that’s even imaginable. No body, as in zero. The texture of cotton fuzz. (More fuzzies! Yeah…) Same salt-and-pepper. And straighter than straight, which has been the status quo for 66 years. My Bad Hair life is resuming, which is at least better than my recent No Hair life.
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As for the rest of the cosmetic stuff:
My nails did not fall off during chemo-heavy (a not-uncommon side effect) but they got necrotic. The good news is, I have twenty-one colors of nail polish with which to hide the ugliness. The better news is, they’re growing back normal, with 1/3 pink at the base.
My eyelashes are growing in nicely.
My eyebrows are mostly filled in, but still a little patchy. I’m augmenting with pencil until further notice. During chemo-heavy, I would go outside my house to do yard work with no hat or scarf, but I would not exit the front door without eyebrows.
The picture below shows me with penciled eyebrows, the only non-nail make-up I’ve worn in 25 years. Hopefully, I can put away the pencil soon. I snapped six pictures and seem to be genetically incapable of looking straight into the camera while taking a selfie.
