Fore!

Embracing the baldness!

Or four … as in four more rounds. That’s right, we’re stuck at four. We get a Mulligan tomorrow after bad numbers last week. My ANC was way, way low and my kidney function was not great.

What. A. Bummer.

Just when I felt like the end was in sight, the goal post was moved.

Last week, the night before chemo, I posted a D. H. Lawrence poem on Instagram.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

Ugh why was I so cocky? Man, was I feeling sorry for myself now.

In the sea of crappy news that has been my 2025, this was another hit. Drawing a “lose a turn” card when you’re already in last place. It was hard to find a silver lining in that moment, sitting in the infusion chair, port accessed, mentally ready to take on the poison, ready to mark another round off the fridge countdown.

But there was nothing I could do but pack my bags and leave.

I couldn’t go home — I didn’t have the energy or mental space to work and I couldn’t face the kids in all their youthful excitement for a school-free summer day.

So we ran errands, drove around.

The pain in my chest sat with me for the day. Until we went to Trader Joe’s.

Look this is not an ad for Trader Joe’s. Yes, they do have wonderful products — hello most delicious chocolate peanut butter cups E-V-E-R — too many impulse-worthy items, and the staff is always a delight, but that’s not what turned this day around.

As we were loading bags into the trunk, a woman, around my age, came up to me with sparkling blue eyes and said “thank you for going bald!” As I turned from the trunk she removed her hat to reveal her own bald head. I immediately lit up.

We laughed and chatted for a few minutes about our diagnoses and life with cancer. She has an incredibly rare cancer — one I couldn’t spell even if I could remember what it was! — for which she drives to Duke to receive treatment once a week. That’s easily a three-hour drive, one way.

And she was beaming.

Driving home I felt more relaxed and perhaps a little melancholy — a subtle happiness fighting to take over the weight of the morning.

I thought about Katrina — I learned her name when I ran back into Trader Joe’s to find her and give her my number and tell her she made my day — and how brave she is.

I thought about how cancer can feel so isolating, but the fighters are out there and they more than anyone relate, empathize, understand.

I thought about how much has changed since I took my first steps down this path in January, feeling so very far away from the end. About the week after my first round with the Red Devil and the dread of the remaining rounds to come — fearful of the impacts it would have on me and unsure how I’d be able to endure the side effects.

Now I’ve gotten used to the fatigue, I know what foods I can and can’t eat to feel OK, I boost my water with electrolytes, I’ve got my chemo day routine down and I know when I need to take meds to help me sleep, relax and keep my tummy happy. I don’t shake from nerves walking into Infusion.

My outlook has shifted.

In January, June felt like a million years away. But now here we are, wearing shorts and sundresses while sweaters and outerwear have been relegated back to the attic. I’m amazed at how much I’ve done and how quickly the time has passed.

I’ve started thinking about my last round of chemo. What I’ll wear. How I’ll thank the nurses. What I’ll say when I ring the bell. It finally feels real, reachable.

At the beginning I’d avert my gaze, looking away to avoid putting eyes on the bell as I walked past. I can’t quite put my finger on what that feeling was, but I just couldn’t look at it. Maybe because it felt so far out of reach? I really don’t know. But now I stare that golden bell down, holding back from running my fingers over the short, braided white rope dangling from it. I long to get familiar with the feel.

Including tomorrow, I’ll only have to walk past the bell three more times.

Four more insane doses of Benadryl. Four more miserable hours in ice gloves and socks.

Four more times to pack my things and rise from an infusion chair before I get to walk to — not past — the bell and ring it myself. To know what that rope feels like gripped firmly in my hand. To hear the bell ring at such close proximity. To view the infusion bay from that viewpoint. Standing at the exit looking back at the nurses’ station, the individual infusion bays, the scale I've weighed in at every week, knowing that — God willing — I’ll never, ever see any of it again.

Four more times to tee up. So long as I can sink the shot tomorrow.