My baby told me she just about plugged the shower drain with hair this morning. (Lola and Kayla are family dogs which shed even though they are NOT undergoing radiation therapy.) So Lila betook herself this morning on a trip to the "cancer cosmetician." This is the local--presumably herself a cancer veteran--shop-owner who ran the scarf-tying exhibition and through whom she had ordered her wig, and where she got a short (gi-short) buzz-cut. Not skin-close, but very short. She has been a well-spring of interesting and probably health-preserving information. Probably, we'll document this information at some point.
Lila's insurance didn't cover a wig, but she luckily had resources enough to afford a really nice one. It was close to $400. (You can always tell a cheap wig. Really.) Lila remarked that she'd be quite desperate, were she only 25, and going through breast cancer treatment, more or less losing everything socially valued and through which she was irreversibly attached to gender roles and expectations embedded in culture. It's Lila's ability to conceive that kind of compassion from inside her own experience that makes me both admire and adore her. We talked about setting up a little local 'foundation' to provide the kinds of cosmetic supports that would help enhance self-images of women with fewer means undergoing these debilitating and humiliating procedures associated with staying alive. I said I'd make an initiatory contribution in her name. "Lila's Locks"?
Marvelously, we laughed, loudly and often. She sounded so much better, so much less in pain. There is an astonishing--but hardly surprising--array of products for women (mostly, one supposes) undergoing cancer treatment. Some of which elicited bouts of merriment. As when she mentioned "halos," fringes of replacement hair worn on the head under a hat or a scarf. She said the halos reminded her of my sparsely covered dome., over which I ALWAYS wear a hat of some kind. I laughed harder at that than I had in at anything in it seemed like forever. I told her that, the next time I saw her, I'd be buzz-cut---down to my beard--in solidarity...I have no idea when that may be. But I could do it myself, though I haven't had a barbershop haircut since before I left Norman, OK, in 2000.
Lila said she acquired a set of bangs for herself too, to wear under a scarf. I have some lovely old silk scarves in a closet somewhere, which I'll send her. There are also caps, to the lower edges of which are sewn/attached semi hair-pieces. Mebbe bangs on the front, pony-tail off the back of a baseball cap, that sort of thing, I guess...
I asked her about why she resisted doing trials. She said, brutally frankly, that in her position she didn't want NOT to be experimental subject, and because the studies are double-blind, she'd just never know. Stage Four, folks. She said if she were in an earlier stage, she'd do it. She feels, and I wholly and totally agree, she doesn't need to be a "control." There's an element of time, or the lack of it.
We're (if I may use the collective here) cautiously interested in the near-by research into granulocytes. We're gonna find out, if we can, how far advanced the research protocols are. I figured out today that somehow we gotta keep Lila going for three years, cuz who knows what the researchers will turn up in three years. She thought that was a good idea, too, and agreed to help.
For which I cannot thank her enough.
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Woody - I can't stop by too often because the memories of my mother are too painful. But I want you to know you and Lila are in my thoughts.
One thing that really helped my mother was this tea called Essiac. It's green tea that supposedly has cancer-fighting properties. She felt great and pain-free while she was drinking it, and only after she stopped did she have a recurrence. It could have been coincidental, but it seemed to provide relief.
http://www.essiacinfo.org/
Hugs and good thoughts to you both...
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