Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge Day 25 #HAWMC

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Day 25 of the WEGO Health Activist Writer’s Month which I have signed up for – a month dedicated to the art of writing about health. 

Today’s prompt: Third person post. Write about a memory you have but describe it  using the third person. Use as many sensory images (sights, sounds, textures, etc) as you can. Don’t use “I” or “me” unless you include dialogue.

Ten days after the first dose of chemotherapy, it starts coming out. She is in the shower washing her hair, and although she is expecting it to happen, she finds when it does, she is not quite ready for the shock of chunks of hair coming away in her hands as she shampoos.

It seems so real now – such a visual reminder – no denying that she has cancer anymore.  It’s not about vanity, she thinks,  it’s about holding onto your identity, your normality, your sense of who are. In the past her hair had always been the bane of her life and she had waged daily battles with it- it was too fine, too flyaway, too ordinary but ah! she didn’t know the beauty of ordinary then…

It is easier to mourn the loss of hair in one sharp shock than to do it on a daily basis. A fact she wished she had realised at the time with her rapidly diminishing sparse hairs hanging on for dear life.  She is like a shaggy dog shedding hair everywhere she goes.  She leaves a trail behind her – on the floor, her clothes, cushions – the pillows when she wakes up in the morning are covered in her hair and strands stick to her face.

Then three weeks later it is almost all gone, except for a few random wispy strands . She stands  in front of the mirror and sees…her  grandfather staring back at her, an old man, with greying skin and wispy bits of hair…

She decides to buy a wig. She knows what she wants and won’t be put off her task of finding the longest, blondest, sexiest wig she can find.  The shop assistant asks her what her hair had been like before and assures her she could get a wig to match it and no one would know the difference. Well what’s the point in that, she thinks.  She looks through the rows of expressionless mannequin heads – at straight, curled, long, short, blacks, reds, browns …until she spies it…..the long blonde hair of the shampoo adverts.  She tries  it on  – it looks fantastic and she feels transforms.  As she hands over her credit card, the expense momentarily flashes through her mind, but then she thinks of all the money she will be saving on hair cuts and highlighting over the next year.

She wears it out of the shop like a new pair of shoes.

Category : HAWMC
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