Fun with hats!

For the first time in my life, I'm having an absolute blast wearing hats. They can look so positively glamorous!
But it wasn't always so. I'd always rather liked hats but my hair, which when I had it was impossibly curly, tended to make hats bounce right off. Plus, if there's one thing which I loathe with a passion, it's hat hair. Here's why.
In England, where I grew up, school children all wear uniforms, which is great because you can roll out of bed and put on your uniform, and off you go to school. No need to spend hours on the phone with your best friend figuring out what to wear the next day, or trying on outfits late into the night, which is how my three daughters spent most of their high school evenings.
Back in those days, an essential part of the school uniform was The Hat. We had a winter hat, which was a sort of navy blue felt thing with a hatband in our school colors, and we had a summer hat, which was a straw boater that looked like this and was unbelievably heavy.
My school had all sorts of impossible rules and regulations, including the color of your underwear and the thickness of your stockings, which we all bent whenever we could, but the rule governing the wearing of The Hat was the one we feared most.There was no such thing as a school bus in those days -- when the bell rang, we left school and walked: some took the city buses, others, like me, walked over a mile to the train station. I don't think anyone's mother drove to school to pick up her daughter. The minute you left the school grounds, you'd better have that hat on your head or you were dead meat.
We girls weren't the only ones walking -- the teachers were also heading home as well as the prefects, girls who were seniors and whose job it was to police the younger girls. So the roads were positively crawling with spies, and being spotted, and reported, for the serious breach of No Hat in Public, led to instant detention at school the next day.
One of the other hard-and-fast rules was absolutely no eating in public. "Very unlady-like," according to our headmistress. But we were starving teenagers and the London streets are thick with sweet shops, so we used to duck in for a packet of potato chips and a 1/4 lb of chocolate malteasers, stuff them into our blazer pocket and hope no-one had spotted us.
A group of us was in the sweet shop next to the train station one day, stocking up on munchies for the train ride, and I'd taken off my boater, sitting it on top of my book bag while I decided what to have. Suddenly there was a tremendous crash. Horrors!! A bottle of lemonade was stuck head first through the middle of my boater. We all froze. How the heck was I ever going to explain this?
Luckily my dad had the sort of glue you need to repair a boater with a hole through its top and I think I ended up concocting some complicated story that involved one or both of my brothers, so on that occasion I escaped punishment!Sorry, this has rambled on from the hat hair issue, but the point is that for all those school years I was positively tortured by those blasted hats, especially the boater which left me with a most extraordinary hair-do -- flat on the top and square on the sides. Really, really unflattering.
But now, my friends, I have turned into a total hat maven. I'm enjoying it while I can -- and that may not be for very long -- because I've suddenly got a layer of baby fluff growing back on my head! WooHoo!!

So what exactly is chemo?

In the life I lived before I became a cancer patient, I never gave any thought to what chemotherapy actually was. I'm the sort of person who's fascinated by all sorts of weird and wonderful things -- but finding out about chemotherapy just wasn't on my To-Do List. I thought it was a bunch of pills.
Well, let me enlighten you. Chemotherapy is nothing as simple as a bunch of pills -- it's a life-style and takes up huge chunks of time and leads to all sorts of worrying and fussing. I'll walk you through some of the highlights of my chemo experiences to date.
Once I'd finished with all the scanning and testing that the charming Dr. Z had signed me up for, I was given the green light for chemo. I was to report on Monday morning, every two weeks. On arrival you get a number on a blue card and go to the blood draw room for a finger stick. (Linda Madaffari and Edward Montoya are two of the fantastic phlebotomists at Norwalk Hospital) Your blood is sent off to check for white and red counts, which show whether you're in good enough shape to take the chemo. Then you're weighed, vitals taken and the good Dr. Z comes to poke and prod you, ask endless questions, all to make sure you're not sick in any way at all. If everything is A-OK, then you go and bag a chair in the infusion room, wait a while so that the nurses can custom mix your drugs according to Dr. Z's recipe, and finally you get hooked up. Getting the drugs doesn't hurt at all, which is one positive thing. The whole process from arrival to departure takes about four hours. You spend the rest of the day feeling a bit foggy.
The day after your infusion, you have to get a shot in the arm, so back you go to the hospital, get a number on a yellow card from the ladies at the desk and wait until the nurses spot you. The shot is something called Neulasta and it gives your white blood cells a boost -- and makes you feel achey as if you have the flu. Wonderful.
The reason for all the pre-chemo testing is that if there's any infection at all, you get a big F on your report card and are sent home with a prescription for antibiotics. Standing orders are that if your temperature is over 100.5° you must head straight to the ER. The chemo drugs are so toxic that they destroy both the bad cancer cells as well as other perfectly good cells that are just minding their own business. It's heavy artillery that knocks out everything within range. Nothing subtle about it. I hope that one of these days they'll develop fine-tuned drugs that can zoom in on their target more accurately, but for now this is what we have.
So the day I blew my nose and saw a version of Benjamin Moore's Grasshopper (a lovely shade that looks fantastic in my mudroom and really picks up the color of the slate on the floor) on my Kleenex, I knew I was in for it. I sent Dr. Z a text. "I think I've got a cold". Two minutes later he's on the phone. "What's going on? You need to come in. I'll see you in half an hour." The man is relentless. Back to the hospital. Another finger stick. More waiting. Another chance to get weighed, poked and prodded. Another half a day lost. I went home feeling ghastly, and spent three anxious days sleeping, taking my temperature and antibiotics, knocking back Tylenol like it was going out of fashion and drinking honey and lemon.
After eight weeks, I was done with the first set of chemo drugs and I'd survived. Phew!

Eyelash Batting Plans Laid to Rest

It's a good thing I didn't bother to invest in an assortment of fake eyelashes because I bumped into my friend, Gina, this morning and she gave me some astonishing news that put an instant kibosh on any plans I'd had for batting sexy new lashes at Dr Z. next time I saw him.
Our conversation went something like this:
F: Guess what! My eyelashes have all fallen out and I'm going to get some fakies!!
G: But without eyelashes, they've got nothing to stick to.
F: Don't they stick to your eyelids?
G: No, they rest on your eyelashes.
Gina is an absolute wizard with make-up, while I consider myself a third-class citizen at best in that department. After all, my entire arsenal consists of a Lancome mascara, a freebie eyeshadow I got when I bought the mascara, an eyeliner my daughter threw out, a bronzer my girls gave me for Christmas 3 years ago and the new eyebrow pencil, so my repertoire is very straightforward. Wait, I forgot. I own a couple of lipsticks, though one just melted when I left it in the car.
I decided to give Gina my full attention. I should also mention that she teaches a class for people with cancer called Look Good, Feel Better, so if she doesn't know what she's talking about, no-one does! First she gave me a great tip for making lines on my eyelids with a dark grey eyeshadow which will look as if you've got eyelashes. Hmmm! my one eyeshadow is half beige and half brown. I'll give it a shot with the brown one. Next I should draw some little "c" shapes with the brow pencil, very lightly, and that will look like eyebrows. I think I can handle that. I promised Gina I'd give it a try.
I decided it might make sense to sign up for the make-up class at the Smilow Breast Cancer Center and see if I could pick up some other tips. Who knows, when I have my new lashes, brows and hair (please not the facial hair!!!) in a few months, maybe I'll have turned into a make-up wiz too.

Update on my phone

I know you're all dying to know whether my cell phone recovered from its bath with the salad, so here's a brief update.
The hairdryer, neglected under the sink since I shaved my head, sprang eagerly into action and blasted the phone with heat. Every now and then I tried to shake more water out of the keypad. As soon as the phone got too hot to hold, I'd let it sit, open, for a while before doing it again.
After the third or fourth blasting with the hairdryer, I put the battery back in and crossed my fingers and toes. Hooray!! The phone turned on! To be honest, my expectations were a big zero, so this was brilliant. Never mind that the screen had an odd line down the middle so you couldn't read anything -- it was working! I took the phone down to the pantry and tucked it into a box of brown Basmati rice for the night.
The next morning I brushed off the rice and turned it on. Amazingly, the screen was back to normal. I made a call. Yes! It worked! I set off on some errands and soon discovered that things were still not quite right. Water was beading up on the screen again. The phone vibrated. Incoming call, but why wasn't it ringing? I tried changing the setting. Nothing. Darn.... guess it only works on vibrate.
I figured if I could get the rest of the moisture out of the phone, maybe the sound would come back, so I left it on the dashboard to sweat it out. All that accomplished was to overheat the battery, so the whole thing kept shutting down. Keeping the phone warm seemed the best way to dry it out completely, so I kept it in my pocket for the rest of the day and this evening, exactly 24 hours after the bath, the phone rang!!
And that's the story of how I nursed my phone back to a full recovery. Guess it just wasn't my time for a new Droid!

There's a Cell Phone in My Salad

I’ve got a fantastic excuse for all those irritating things that cause hiccups in my daily path – it’s called chemo brain! The wonderful Dr. Z (see above) warned me about this during our first consultation. “You’ll be tired, you’ll lose all your hair, you might get numbness in your extremities, you’ll get sores in your mouth, you could sunburned more easily, you’ll get chemo brain, you’ll……” “HANG ON!” I interrupted. You have to shout to get a word in edge-wise with Dr Z. He’s from Brooklyn and talks as if he’s addressing the top row of the bleachers in a large football stadium. “What the heck is “chemo brain”? I asked, hoping it wasn’t terminal.

Turns out that when you’re on chemo, at least breast cancer chemo, your memory can get a bit iffy. This was not the best news to give a middle-aged woman whose memory is already a shadow of its former iron-clad self. “Don’t worry – it usually comes back,” he continued. Now Dr. Z might have thought this was reassuring, but usually was not what I’d hoped to hear.

There didn’t seem much point worrying about something beyond my control, so looking to put a positive spin on the situation I announced to my husband that the next time I called him Toby (the dog) or Barnaby (the cat), he was to understand that my brain was clouded and it was all the chemo’s fault. He looked at me over the top of his reading glasses and rolled his eyes. What is it with men? Just because he can remember everything that’s happened since this morning …..

I quickly got into the swing of blaming everything on “chemo brain”, though to be honest I don’t think my memory is any worse than it was. But you’ve got to admit – it’s a great excuse. And it is, of course, the reason that I left my cell phone in the bottom of the salad spinner and thus, finally, joined my daughters’ Sopping Wet Cell Phone Club.

I know it sounds funny, but I’m really annoyed with myself. How stupid …… “oooh, no, poor thing, don’t you know she has chemo brain. She can’t think straight!” Well, what happened was this. I was talking to my mother as I went off to my vegetable garden to pick lettuce for dinner. Having hung up, I cursed my pocket-less skirt – and tried tucking the phone into my bra. That didn’t work because every time I bent over to pick something the phone fell out, so when it finally landed in the salad spinner, I left it there. Seemed a good temporary solution. I wandered off to the front flower beds to add some nasturtium flowers and leaves to the mix, and to check on the tomatoes. I picked two early ripe ones. Had a chat with a neighbor. Gave my nephew, Lucas, directions for his run. Did some weeding. Went inside and had a chat with my brother, Andrew, visiting from Jamaica, while I ran water over the salad, giving it a good swish.

The phone bobbed to the surface. NO!!! Dead as a dodo. I charged upstairs to the bathroom to get the hairdryer, took out the battery, water dripping from the microphone and out of the keypad. I’d recently coached Emma on how to dry her wet phone with a hairdryer, and she’s back in business, but I don’t think her phone had actually been submerged like mine.

Being the sort of person that tends to have a Plan B up their sleeve, I’m thinking that if I can’t get my dear little phone back in action, maybe it’s a sign that I should upgrade to something a bit fancier. I wonder if the nice people at Verizon give discounts on a Droid to people with chemo brain?

Oh no.....my eyelashes are vanishing!

My eyelashes are falling out and there aren't enough words to express how irritating I'm finding this. And I don't mean the annoyance of trying to fish them out of my eyes!

As you all know, I prepared for losing my unruly mop by hacking it off. I prepared for the loss of body hair by throwing away my old razor. I bought an eyebrow pencil and practiced drawing fake brows for when my eyebrows went. I was, quite frankly, delighted at the thought of losing the mustache I had acquired as part of that bizarre aging process that women go through after menopause.

The fact is, dear friends, that things have simply not gone according to plan. My head is still covered with spiky bristles, though the top is finally getting smoother and quite shiny. To be honest, I wish the bristles would all fall out because they aren't very comfortable, especially at night when they dig they into my head as I lie on the pillow. And wouldn't you know it, my husband complains that I'm too prickly to hug! Excuse ME!! That's what it feels like when you don't shave, buddy!

My eyebrows are thicker than ever and I should probably get the tweezers onto them -- and I really need to borrow my daughter's razor. The mustache shows no signs of getting lost, despite my best efforts to ignore it BUT my eyelashes, for chrissakes, which I had really thought would stay put, are thinning out and I don't like it. Not one bit!!

Anyway, there's not much I can do about it, so now that I've had my little rant, I'll just shut up about it and pray to all the mascara gods that they help me grow them back! Ah, but wait a minute -- here's a new thought! I should run down to CVS and check out the fake eyelash section. It's got to be easier to get them to stick without real eyelashes getting in the way, right?!

Rowing my boat....

I am truly blessed to have an amazing number of friends. So many people have been unbelievably kind to me and my family over the past few months as I've traveled along my path with cancer, telephoning, emailing, dropping by to say hello and just being there for me. It's been just wonderful. I am quite convinced that the positive energy flowing my way is helping me keep focused on the task at hand -- beating the cancer and getting well.

One thing is funny, though. People who haven't seen me in a while are always slightly taken aback when they see me. "Fenella!! You look amazing!!! How are you feeling?" The first time someone greeted me this way, I was a bit puzzled. Not sure if I agreed with the "you look amazing" part, though it was very flattering, but the reaction certainly called for some serious brow creasing activity.

After tossing the problem back and forth in the old brain, I think I have it figured out. Cancer is a very scary label to stick on someone. Most of us, myself included prior to February of this year when I was diagnosed, tend to think of people with cancer as pale, gaunt, diseased -- your basic unhealthy person. Like someone with the flu, but ten times worse. I mean, if you have a life-threatening disease, which kills umpteen people every year all over the world, you're bound to look awful, right?

WRONG!! Most people with cancer look absolutely fine. You would never in a million years know there was anything wrong with them just by looking at them. Obviously, those who've lost their hair, like yours truly, stand out a bit from the crowd, but not all types of chemo lead to hair loss. AND not all cancers are treated with chemo. AND not all people with no hair have cancer. So chances are you see people in the supermarket, at a restaurant or on the train who have cancer and you would never know it.

What's more, people with cancer don't act particularly sick either. Sure, there are days when we're tired or feel a bit battered so we hide away for a while, but for the most part, life carries us along in its normal merry way.

Exercise is an important part of my life, so when I can, I get myself over to Maritime Rowing Club at the crack of dawn and get out on the river. I'm in the third seat back in the quad pictured up top, with my friends Pam, Susan and Peggy. We had a great row, coached by Olga on her launch. Rowing is a fantastic form of exercise. It uses all the muscles in your body, especially your legs which get really nice and toned! In fact, your whole body is whipped into shape -- and the fact of being out on the water doing repetitive movements sends you into a zen-like place, very similar to meditation. It is so very peaceful out there on the river.

Work! Who doesn't do some sort of work? Energized by my morning workout, I head home to walk the dog (more exercise) and then get down to business. I go to see clients, draw up plans for them, go into the city. Same old, same old. Cancer hasn't really changed much of anything, except that going to the doctor and having the darned chemo takes up time that I'd rather use for other things!

Fun stuff!! Getting into the garden is my therapy. Since my garden is still quite new, I've spent many hours cursing the Connecticut rocks that lie just where I want to plant something. I've dug and pickaxed all spring, planting fruit trees, blueberry bushes and even transplanting huge rose bushes from a friend's house. I've lugged bags of manure back from the store, turned my compost pile several times, built raised vegetable beds with my daughter, and planted all manner of crops. My husband and kids think I'm nuts working like a serf in the fields, but I love getting my hands into the soil -- and no-one has yet complained about all the delicious salad we eat from the garden every day. All of this while doing chemo. Plenty of energy until it runs out and then I head to the sofa.

So I guess what I'm trying to convey is that people with cancer are just like everyone else -- doing the best they can to get on with their lives, making the most of every day, smelling the roses and loving life.