Glenna Stearman Park, Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Glenna with Hair

My cardiologist and my son the doctor entered my room at Rhode Island Hospital together.  The cardiologist said, “Your heart X-ray is fine, your lungs are clear, but you have a problem.” My son, JT, a hospitalist, stepped up and calmly said, “Mom, you have cancer.  You have a small tumor picked up in the X-rays.” Both doctors seemed calm enough, so, I asked, “What’s next?” They explained the tests I needed, first diagnostically.  I agreed and went for a mammogram, which I had not had for almost 20 years. 

A quick flight home to Maryland, where my internist set up appointments with the Johns Hopkins Breast Cancer Group, was easy.  The surgeon removed the tumor and 15 lymph nodes because they were also involved.  My husband was working for the Navy, but had a hearing problem, so my son Daniel took over the management of my cancer treatment.  The oncologist scheduled six episodes of chemo-therapy, and radiation followed the chemo.  The spring and summer of chemo was nasty and involved lots of hospitalizations. 

I started losing my hair immediately.  Everyday great clumps tangled in my brush and fell on my shoulders.  Daniel wanted to shave my head, so I agreed when my sister flew down from Boston to cheer us on.  Dan tried at first to give me a Mohawk, but my hair had no body and refused to stand for anything entertaining.  He continued cutting and then shaving.  Soon, Dan gave me a hand mirror, and suddenly my father was smiling back at me! Always, I had thought I looked like my mother, but she was nowhere in the mirror.  Daddy had forced his way into the mirror.  We all agreed that I looked like Dad and laughed a lot! 

Right away, I refused to consider having a wig, various hat, or cleverly tied scarves and head bands.  They all made me feel like I was was getting a headache.  Besides, I thought it was ironic because I had always taken extra care of my hair. In my 60s and 70s people had always complimented me on my wavy silver hair that was turning white.  Responding to rumors I heard about women getting post-chemo hair of curls and various colors, I hoped for red curly hair!  Instead, I got scrawny patches of dull white, straight hair that grew to about two inches.  It is limp and indifferent to style.  Since I sleep with a C-pap machine, the head straps give me an  over-night Woody Woodpecker twist or a wild look as if I had been licking light sockets.  Generally, it looks as if I comb my hair with an old fashioned  egg beater.  I took daily selfies to share with my grandchildren.

The short, limp hair, I can live with.  However, chemo knocks off all hair. Adjusting to having no eyelashes or eyebrows is hard.  Eyelashes keep the dirt out of your eyes.  You have to use eye cleaning fluids or sterile water to clean the dirt out of your eyes almost daily.  Eyebrows re-direct rain or perspiration.  Doing without those two bits of hair reminds me of  a drive in a South Texas rainstorm with broken windshield wipers.  That was awful, and missing eye hair was too!

One granddaughter suggested that I pay the $200 and get the beauty shop to sew eyelashes into the scrawny crop growing in slowly. Another said I could glue eyelashes on just like the women on TV.  First of all, I would rather spend $200 on some Baileys and other drinks.  As for gluing on eyelashes, I have shaking hands so I dare not draw eyebrows, glue lashes, or use lipstick.  I love to paint, but on canvas or paper. 

After having 15 lymph nodes removed from my right arm during the breast tumor removal, I needed physical therapy to move lymph fluid from my fingers, up my arm and over my shoulders to other collecting points in my chest or back.  After six months of this, my insurance company bought me a pump that I had to wear for 70 minutes a day.  The motorized outfit, called a lymphedema suit, pumped my arm fluids to keep my arm from swelling up.  I have learned to use that time to watch news, movies, or TV veterinarians like Dr Pol. From all that time with the vets, I think I could deliver a calf; that seemed like most of what they did!

I have continued the daily costume event for about three years, but took breaks to get knee replacements.  Major medical issues hit me like cascading events.  Heart attacks and blood clots happened during this same five-year period,  It was an amazing blast of old age, one major problem after another.   I asked three of my doctors for assisted suicide.  When they assured me that was not part of their practices, I decided that I would just charge on ahead. 

I enrolled in a concierge medical service from my primary care doctor, which meant she would make house calls,  and my son Daniel took over my medical management.  He had to learn how to open the surgical site and replace meds, as they needed to slow down the closing of wounds because of my diabetes.  Early pain meds did not mix well with my heart drugs so I had some freaky hallucinations.  I discovered that arthritis pain was worse than my cancer or cardiac events.

Above, my son Daniel and my dog Picasso.  My nephew Micah Garen, I, and Micah’s wife Marie Helen Carlton visiting before the knee surgeries.  We are in front of a large painting that I showed in the Brooks Museum in Memphis.

In order to sleep before the knee surgeries I had to pack my knees all the way to my feet in ice.  After one of the surgeries, I got an ice circulating machine that kept the knee cold for 20 minutes at a time.  Of course, following the knee surgeries, I lived in re-hab hospitals for a few weeks.  That experience deserves a chapter of its own or maybe a cartoon series.  At least Daniel got a break, and Joel came in every evening on his way home to have dinner with me.

The best part of this is that I have been-there, done-that.  I am done.  With COVID, I have just continued to stay home and read good books and paint.  Daniel became our chef since he had worked with a health food specialist in Texas.  She told him what I should eat, and he does our grocery shopping and meal planning.  Sometimes I have the energy to make some kind of food, but Daniel often finishes what I start. 

Although slow, but I am getting more and more involved with general living.  I have found that I miss teaching, and Joel and Dan both say I lecture about art in my sleep.  Sometimes I even wake myself up in the middle of an impassioned discussion of aesthetics.  I also find that I solve some of my art ideas in my sleep.  I used to write small theater pieces from ideas during sleep.  It amuses me to deal with art and ideas even when I sleep. 

I am presenting this Cubist painting as my current self portrait.  The artist, Picasso, took apart an idea of a  female figure, studied her and put her back together in the painting.  I feel like I have been pulled apart and put back together again with two titanium knees, and dental implants bolted into my cadaver-enhanced jaw.  This painting is a perfect psychological portrait of me!  I am 80 and I am ready for my next 20 years!