A little color

Well I finally could not stand it any more and decided to try coloring my hair.  I had the no peroxide, no ammonia hair color kit on stand by since before I even started chemo.  I have waited for this day since February!  I was scared horribly though...worried all my hair would fall out!  Help!

I mentioned that I wanted to color my hair to my sister and she immediately said "I will do it"!  So we put a movie on for the kids downstairs and went for it.  I was having her try so hard to not get color on my scalp (the cold cap protocol says to avoid getting it on your scalp) but that was nearly impossible...so it was on my scalp.   It took so long to do the color and be super gentle.  After the color was all on my hair I looked down at the towel that was covering me while we colored and it had quite a bit of hair on it.  More hair than I even thought would come out!  I about died!  I started freaking out. 

My sister was super cool about it.  She said "we knew from combing it, some hair would fall out.  Don't look at it...don't think about it...I will clean it up."  She immediately got out my cone vacuum and sucked it all up.  She said "don't even picture that in your head anymore...just look in the mirror".  She was so good...I was so glad she was here to help.

I was scared to leave the color on too long so I only waited about 10 minutes after we got it all covered before rinsing.  I was bummed to see it didn't completely cover the gray, but it looks a lot better.  I then had her trim an additional 2 inches off the bottom of my hair as it looked super thin at the ends.  That made it look a lot thicker.

Despite the gray not being totally gone, I feel like a new woman.  The color really makes my hair look richer and the trim makes it look thicker.  Even though I continue to shed and worry about my hair getting even thinner, I still have a full head of hair.  To most people I look completely normal and no one would even guess I had breast cancer.

We went to a BBQ this weekend and I was with people that did not know I had breast cancer.  I felt completely normal and had a whole day of not talking about breast cancer.  It was nice to feel like there was no big "pink" elephant in the room that no one wanted to talk about.  I felt like it was a vacation from BC for the day......I need more of these!