I remember the day I decided to go out without my wig for the first time after I lost my hair in chemo, a dear friend had just gotten her head shaved down to a military buzz on a bet, and I figured if she could do it, so could I! Up til then I was all piratey scarves and illfitting ugly wigs, losing my hair was one of the most traumatic milestones for me, because I've always had long, thick hair and all of a sudden, *poof*, gone.

That was in 1998, so far, so good, my boobs haven't tried to kill me again :p

Oh, and tapioca is the devil's scrotum cheese, I hate it with every fibre of my being.

Maybe not the right place but I am such a geek. I flashed back to Babylon 5 and thought I was seeing an advertisement for Centuri Prime business.

Slightly more on topic. Any person can look good all it does is to try. Fat, thin, everything can be work with what you have and accept your limitations and enunciate your plusses.

I dunno, a friend just went through this at work, the last thing she needed in her life was more glamor photography.

"Oh, and tapioca is the devil's scrotum cheese"

I laughed so hard at this. I will never view tapioca in the same light again.

> so far, so good, my boobs haven't tried to
> kill me again

But have they been kind to others?

(Talked to my friend about the calendar, and she was all like "Pasadena.")

Book, calendar, wut-evar

If you look good without hair, you don't need to see photos of other good-looking people without hair. If you don't look good--and lots of chemo patients lose their hair in strange patches--you won't be cheered up by this relentless cheeriness. And even if you do look good, you may not want to Get With the Program that says all female cancer patients should be relentlessly cheery and pretend like nothing's wrong. These books are for people who don't have cancer themselves, or who derive some sort of comfort from solidarity with people with whom they have only a disease in common.

Honestly, what helped me more than anything was friends and family keeping things going around me as normally as possible. I didn't want pity, I didn't want long faces, or special treatment. I just wanted to be treated the same as always, for people to talk to me the same as they always did, to laugh at to silly things and cry at the sad things and not feel all self-conscious when they brought up a subject that reminded them of my illness.

I was young when i was diagnosed, only 33, and so my doctors treated my cancer very aggressively. Surgery, chemo and radiation, they beat the piss out of it. And me, but I bounced back.

What this book is trying to do, I think, is show that people with cancer can be beautiful. Ok, cool. What they should be showing is the strength that it takes to survive, and how people deal with the day to day reality that you are looking down the barrel of the gun. How friends and family can be supportive, an how patients can find the strength within themselves to fight.

And even if you do look good, you may not want to Get With the Program that says all female cancer patients should be relentlessly cheery and pretend like nothing's wrong.

Yep. They gave my mom (a woman in her 60s) a stuffed bear at chemo. If I have to go through this, I would prefer to be treated like an adult, not pacified with children's toys and "you go, girl!" rah-rahs.

Plus, it seems like losing your hair is really the least of it. Do they mention the part where what grows back is often quite different? Or all the wonderful things chemo can do to your body and how long it may take to feel at all normal again?

Glad you're okay, Kat, and hope you remain that way.

A friend of mine who's 70 got breast cancer about five years ago. She beat but it last fall it came back and she just finished up her chemo treatments. 70 is a decent amount of time on the planet (I had one friend die of melanoma in his mid-40s and another die of uterine cancer, also in her mid-40s) but it's still too early to go, and I sure hope she stays with us.