Thursday, April 03, 2008

Yep, I'm bald

I shaved my head on Sunday to raise money for childhood cancer research. So far I've been sponsored $1,520, which is more than I ever thought that I would raise, and it has been a great experience.

Now we get to the interesting part. It is a very humbling thing to be a bald woman. Strangers stare and question me. I can be pretty bold. I don't mind speaking in front of a room of my colleagues at my day job or yelling to clear a bar at 2am at my night job. Getting this much attention from strangers is different. I've even been wearing a St. Baldrick's button that says "Ask me why I'm bald." But people are too busy staring at my naked head to read it.

My friends know me and know about St. Baldrick's, and they have been wonderful. People in public just look at me like I'm crazy. Okay, people, I'm not sick. I'm not a skin head. I'm not any kind of radical. I'm just raising money for sick kids. Stare, stare, booger bear! (The super-mature part of me wants to say that.)

My nephew was diagnosed with a brain tumor when he was nine, and he was in treatment through his entire tenth year of life. He had brain surgery - which left quite a scar at the base of his neck, he had radiation - which made him lose his hair and left him with sunburn-like blistering on his skin, and he had to do a ridiculous amount of chemo for the case study that he was in - which made him so sick that not only did he end up in a wheelchair but he also had to wear a surgical mask in public to try to avoid viruses. (The flu could have killed him.) He went to the zoo in a wheelchair wearing a surgical mask. I could feel people staring at him when we'd go out running around, and I always felt protective and hoped that he didn't notice them.

Now I'm having this weird experience of being a bald girl, and I vacillate between feeling completely self-conscious and just not caring. I'm hoping that the "just not caring" part gets easier. Because, honestly, this is not a big deal. This is something that I chose to do which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sick kids like Bryan have no choice. But they are brave, and they are full of fight. I can't help but think that they are going to be better grown-ups than I'll ever be.

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