Thursday, June 25th: Post #7 - The Sky is Falling

Chicken Little once said "the sky is falling"....

This former country boy says "let the hair join it!"

Yep, my progression towards the "hairless chihuahua" look has begun. Since I proactively shaved the melon to 1/8" long, it's not too obvious to those around me - yet. Once the bushy eyebrows completely fall out, then my genetic Irish/French Canadian Caucasianness will complement my hairlessness resulting in my transformation to the twin of this dude in "Powder". Have you seen the movie? It's from the mid 1990's and is possibly one of the worst pieces of film ever created by Hollywood, only to be rivaled by any sequel of a 1980's comedy (Look Who's Talking 6, Police Academy 12, etc.). Who is this famous actor? OH WAIT, he's not famous, because of his wise choice to participate in this film.

We were talking at the office in the "back 40" (cluster of cubes in the back) and someone asked how it felt to start losing your hair - it's kinda like a warm tingly feeling on the scalp - one of the folks accurately described the feeling as when you use "Selsun Blue" or one of the other powerful dandruff shampoos. Fortunately, this will only happen on the scalp. A body-wide tingly sensation would be pretty wierd, perhaps a bit creepy.

The good news is the hair loss means the chemo regimen is doing something by going after all the fast growing cells in the body - including the hair. It's nice to know that despite being 2 weeks past the first bags o' drugs, the residual effects are continuing. Chemo round #2 is next Thursday - believe it or not, I'M PUMPED FOR ROUND TWO. It sounds a bit wierd, and I have some anxiety that each successive round will kick my body's *ss harder and harder. Ironically, the absolute WORST thing, in my opinion, about Cancer and treatment is the waiting. Most of you know I'm an inpatient Type A personality, and this is a tremendous lesson from the Big Guy upstairs in cooling my jets, sitting back, and letting the process work itself out.

PROPS TO MY TEAM

On another note, many of you know we were pretty active in our Methodist congregation in Cincinnati (Hyde Park) and are still members there, and have (at best) attended services on Sundays here in Denver on an irregular basis. I'll use the "we ski a lot" excuse. Actually, that first sentence is 'code' that we've joined the "C & E Crowd" (Christmas & Easter). So, the diagnosis was a bit of a kick in the pants to get going again on Sundays, and we snuck back into Trinity Methodist Church in downtown Denver. For those of you here in town, it's the big mother of a sandstone church at 18th & Broadway across from the Brown Palace Hotel.

This is the part where I give them a big thank you for doing what the Methodist Church is known for - reaching out and helping those in need. On the first Sunday "back" when we went through the line o' handshaking after services, one of the ministers inquired about my crutches, and I told her about the cancer. Before you know it - BAM! This congregation has come out of the woodwork to help us, offering care & support to the both of us, and we're not members. Most of you know I'm not a big 'talk about faith' guy, but I really REALLY want to give Trinity a high five for offering support to the both of us - Thanks to the Rev's Dent, Slejko, and Marshall. So, we've moved up from the C&E Squad to the "Varsity". We haven't signed the local contract, but are at least dressing for Team Trinity on Sundays.

T-minus 7 days to Chemo Round #2. Bring it.

Carpe Diem.

-Bill