First haircut in two years

It takes a long time to grow hair back after you lose it all. It was finally getting long enough to look normal, but was a little bit uneven. I needed a trim.

I read another cancer survivor's account of growing her hair out for over a year, only to have a careless hairdresser cut off all her progress. She was devastated. So to avoid the same thing happening to me, I had to choose my hairdresser carefully, and had to be able to communicate with that person well.

I found one. My hairdresser, a Chinese young man with the English name Steven, listened carefully and is helping me with my plan to grow my hair out. He trimmed it, gave it some layers in appropriate places, and decided a few highlights would make it look better. 

It was nice to save money on haircuts for the last couple of years, but it better to be back among the normal people who have to pay to get haircuts!

And, by the way, I would also choose baldness over cancer and its consequences. Some people make too much of their hair, letting vanity take precedence over fighting cancer with all of one's strength. Having hair again feels nice, but it is not everything.

College friends and health updates

Sorry I haven't been updating the blog lately. I took a hit from chemo, but chemo is over now.

My brother J and I got a visit from some college friends yesterday. Wes S. and Steve P. came to visit for the day. We actually needed some help with some things, and they volunteered to come pitch in and help us out. We loved the fellowship time with them. Not only had we all gone to college together in Brownwood, but after college we all ended up in Fort Worth and attended the same church. I hadn't seen them in about 30 years, but we kind of picked up where we left off.

L to R: Wes, Steve, Elizabeth, J

We took 17 photos, and my brother J made goofy faces in all 17 of them. Someday I'm going to make a collage of his goofy face photos. Every goofy face is different.

In other news:

I defied the odds for months, but as you can guess from the photos, I finally lost all my hair. Well, not ALL my hair. I think I had about 137 strands of hair still intact at its lowest point. It started growing back a day or two ago, so I decided to own up to it. I never shaved my head through the entire ordeal, because I wanted to see what happened if you didn't shave it. Now I know. I'll tell you more about it some other time.

I'm having surgery this Wednesday in Houston. The surgeon will remove all the lymph nodes on the right side of my neck. Please pray for me. I don't know how much I can post during recovery, but when I am able, I"ll try to do a better job about updating this blog. It just feels a little strange to talk about life in Texas on a blog called "Stories of the Middle Kingdom." But I will. Thanks for understanding.

Salon day

I was dull and lifeless. Or maybe it was just my hair that was. Agua fixed all that when he cut my hair last week. It's still a bit long in back, with layers.

I can't remember ever seeing a woman cut hair in China before. It seems to always be trendy young men in this line of work. This hairdresser's name sounds like the Spanish word for water, but it is really the Chinese name "A Guo." He has a nice salon ... check out those mirrors and chandeliers in back! Agua's adorable little two-year old son stuck his hand in my cup of cold coffee while I was getting my haircut. That's always special.