Getting Hairy

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had more than just a few people at work come up and talk to me about my hair. If that seems a little weird to you, here’s the backstory.

Last spring and summer, I went through six sessions of chemotherapy to fight against the tumors that have sprouted up in various places in my body. This happened because my prostate cancer is progressing, and the presence of tumors has now placed me solidly in the metastatic range, also known as stage 4. I decided on doing the course of chemo hoping it would extend my life. How long my life would be extended depends on who you talk to. My oncologist says 2 years. My urologist says 9 months.

I’m rooting for my oncologist on this one. Sorry, Jon.

Anyhoo, let’s get back to the real subject of this blog, the amazing return of my hair. I started losing my hair about 2 weeks after my first session in the infusion chair. My particular flavor of chemo was the drug Taxotere.  My oncologist said that a lot of people on Taxotere don’t lose their hair and don’t get sick. He was wrong on that for me on both counts. I lost my hair, and I could get sick anytime, anywhere during chemo. Like into a trash can at a gas station.  Or into a kitchen sink at a family reunion.  Or into the bushes in front of my house. Which, now that I think about it, makes me a little less sure about that whole extending my life 2 years prediction he came up with. Oh well.

Over the last month, however, my hair has made a dramatic comeback. It has come back fuller, with more body, and with a kind of salt and pepper mix that makes an older gentleman like me look so damned distinguished and sexy. Don’t believe me? Ok, here’s a few pictures that show the progression from bald to amazing. A quick warning though. A couple of these pics are selfies, and I am pretty horrible at taking selfies. I have a rather large nose, which dominates every selfie I take. Also, being a balding man, every selfie I take looks like I have a couple of acres of forehead. So consider yourself warned.

Ok, this pic was actually taken by my son Jeff, so it’s not a selfie. This was when I was in the middle of all my treatments, and as you can see, I’m completely bald. And, to be honest, I don’t think I look too bad. You never know what you’re going to look like bald. My head has a nice shape, if I do say so myself. The rest of my body, not so much. Let’s move on.

Yikes. So much forehead. So much nose. I took this rather bad selfie back in November, when I went out to Seattle to spend Thanksgiving with my son Travis. I tried to capture Mt. Rainier in the background. You can actually see the collapsed cone of the Rainier volcano, which has been dormant for a long, long time. I know. I’m a total nerd. My hair is coming back, kind of wispy, but there is something happening. (And spellcheck keeps trying to change the word wispy into whiskey. Sometimes spellcheck knows me a little too well.) And now, for the pic that shows how my hair looks today.

I know, I know, I hear you all asking the obvious question. Dan, when did you get a Ferrari? Well, to be truthful, it’s not really my car. It’s owned by the owner of the house I live in that’s right on the ocean in Hawaii. I couldn’t afford that kind of car on the money I make as a private investigator. Or that house, for that matter. But look at that hair! Incredible, eh? Just stunning.

(Ok. I realize that’s a picture of the TV star Tom Selleck, back in the early 80s in his role of Magnum P.I. I put that pic in for my wife Holly. She’s a big fan.) Here’s a real pic.

This pic doesn’t really do my hair justice, because I still have a couple of miles of forehead, which I tried to mitigate by taking the pic from the side. But, considering I was bald just a few short months ago, I think this level of growth is rather impressive. Tom Selleck, eat your heart out. (Although I will say that a side angle like this makes my nose look like the tail fin of a 747. Sorry. I’m a bit vain.)

The real reason I’m talking about my amazing and sexy hair today are the questions that come with people noticing the incredible growth on top of my head. And those questions are these.

“So, you’re pretty much all done with that, right?”

“Are you in remission now?”

(Sigh).

Most of you know the answer to that question, being faithful readers of this wandering blog known as Fishrocks. But for people at work, people that see me everyday and don’t know the whole story, these are legit questions. And because I don’t want to totally obliterate the One Poop Rule, and I want to keep this one light, I’m going to answer those questions in my next blog. Until then.

Thanks for reading.

Peace