vanity

I don't think I am particularly vain. Honestly -- less vain than average, wouldn't you say? As one simple but telling example: a clandestine bonus of having a solo private practice is that I get to bypass the annoyance of deciding on a new outfit every day, because I only see people once a week. For the most part, I can get away with wearing the same thing for several days in a row. Sure, sure, I'll change the necessities, the undershirt (if I must), etc., but I'll replace it with an identical one the following day. Mostly I am freed from the norm wherein we all agree not to repeat outfits in a certain span of time.

For a dozen years or more, Laura and I were exactly the same size. That was handy. She'd come home from work and rather than throw her outfit into the hamper, would ask if I wanted to wear it to school the next day. Yes! Yes, of course. Problem du outfit du jour solved. We had to make a few accommodations here and there -- my folksy had to meet her preppy halfway -- but it worked. Now hormones and genetics are having their way with us and we are veering apart in the clothing department, though we still have two identical pairs of clogs and boots, and our sneakers are interchangeable. As she approaches a buxom menopause and I leave bras behind forever, we remember the wardrobe-sharing days fondly.

Anyway, I don't think too much about my appearance, or how others might be judging it. Still, along my own continuum of vanity, the chemo-related changes in my appearance are freaking me out a little bit. I wish I were above it all. I had a bad moment yesterday when I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize myself. My forehead is endless, of course, there being no familiar boundary markers to get my bearings on what I was seeing -- my face just went on and on into my scalp. Theoretically, my face goes all the way to the back of my head now. Steroids had made me puffy, and I'm pasty and wan. Though Laura has been her usual turning-toward self, I am unhappy about those moments when she looks over: I'm asleep, my eyes are crusty (terrible dryness issues with chemo, and the eyes try to compensate), my mouth is probably ajar, my forehead is like a sandbar at low tide, and oh, look, my tongue is white, too. Does she think to herself, "There's my breast-less, pasty, bald wife with her eyes stuck shut! Gosh, she's cute"? I think not.

It's just not something you want someone who is supposed to be attracted to you to see. 

I also had a bizarre moment stepping out of the shower recently when a little round band-aid, placed over my port by the nurse, fell off as I toweled down. I thought maybe an earlobe had fallen off -- just for a second, but still! When body parts are getting lopped off, or turning strange colors, and one doesn't recognize one's own face, it is not beyond the imagination to have an earlobe slough off. Here is a photo of the evidence that made my eyes pop for a second. It may not look that much like an earlobe this close up, but it sure did on the bathroom floor. Scared the heck out of me.