Oh my Hat...or scarf, turban, beanie or bandanna!

I was diagnosed August last year with Stage 3 Her 2 bc. Was told I'd have the delights of 12 weeks of AC chemo, followed by 12 weeks of Paclitaxel and Herceptin. Then the hedge trimmer would come out, and snip snip..toodle doo to both my boobs. Oh...then another 9 months or Herceptin followed, by, you guessed it, Estrogen blockers. Fun Fun Fun!!!. I'd had long hair since my early teens (I'm 58 now). When I got married, (37 years ago), I had hair down to my bottom. When I had my kids (32 and 35 years ago), my long hair landed in more than one nappy. It's been shut in car doors too. People used to ask me if my husband liked my hair long...I said he did...it tickled his fancy (and sometimes more than his fancy, but I digress). I used to joke that people knew me as Dave's wife, Kate and Jesse's mother, or The Lady With The Long Hair. I said that if I divorced my husband, killed my kids, or cut my hair, nobody would know who I was. The rather long point being, my hair was a huge part of my life and my identity. It was my history. The only cells in your body which are more than seven years old, are your hair and your nails, (if you're one of those weirdos with long curled up snail nails). Within my plait was my marriage, my babies, toddlers and children. My firstborn, lost to forced adoption 40 years ago, my late brother's death, my old life in South Africa, and my arrival in my new home of Australia. My very active skydiving years...(yeee haaa!!!), and my subsequent more sedate years. From the top to the bottom, all these memories were woven in with my hair. So when I was told that the hair would go, I decided that I would take my hair, not the cancer. I would take it and keep it, the cancer could have the stubble. I couldn't bear to have long hair on my pillow, tangled in my brush or clogging the drains. A slow but inevitable loss of an intrinsic part of my whole adult life. It became a family event. My daughter and daughter in law brushed and plaited my hair one last time. My husband cut it off as close to my scalp as he could get it, my son shaved me to a Number 1 Marine Cut, whilst my grandson cheered us on from his highchair. I felt so empowered. I was now in Warrior Mode. Bring it on!!! Bring the whole lot on. I was ready...my past life was just that, past. The present was now here...and I was fighting. The future? Well who knows the future???