Hair can get you thinkin'...

I have only donated blood once in my life. Since I'm O+, now I feel I should've donated more along the way. O+ donors are needed more frequently than any other donor because O+ is the most common Blood type (39% of the population) and is needed more often by people requiring blood in hospitals.

Now that I have this blood disorder, even though it's curable, I asked my mother and nurses if I can ever donate blood again ~ to replenish that stash that I have taken from, given by divine, selfless people walking the face of this earth. But my mother and the others just give me The Sheepish Look and say, "Maybe. But probably not." I will ask my doctor in two weeks. But in the end, to be safe, I probably won't donate. But I will give something back, somehow. A friend of mine who just happens to be gay told me, ruefully, jokingly, "I'd have donated, but they don't take blood from my kind." I said, "What kind...blonde?"

To that friend reading, I love you. You have donated more than blood to me already. You have donated your heart and so many laughs, it'll take me forever to pay you back.

I've been thinking what I can do to give something back. For most of my life, I've had longish, curly, dark-brown hair. I usually just keep it up in a ponytail or a "bunnytail" is what I call it ~ a ponytail doubled, to almost a bun. When I was in the hospital, the ATGam drug I took intravenously was considered chemotherapy. Wide-eyed, "Will my hair fall out?" jumped out of my mouth to the chemo nurse, hanging the bag on my drip-pole (which I'd nicknamed Mark Watowski, of Polish descent), screwing the dripline into my arm. "No," she assured me. But then, it made me think, "Why was that the first thing I could think of?" I felt shallow. But then again, I started thinking.

When you lose your hair with cancer treatments, especially for women, you lose *something normal*, and it lables you immediately as "sick" or "victim", I've imagined. Sometimes when you're sick, you don't really want anyone to know you're sick, or you don't want anyone to think you have something contagious or wrong with you. Cancer isn't contagious. But it's overwhelming and way too personal. You want to get away from your body, but you're constantly reminded that you are sick.

Of the time I spent in the hospital, seven days in all I think, when the pain and the burn and the true discomfort of the drugs hit me hardest, my mom would say, "I tell everyone, 'You have to feel bad to feel good again.' This will make you well."

She should know: For years, she worked in the same hematology clinic that I go to now for my aplastic anemia. For years, she has taken care of sick and dying people. Her father and mother died of cancer. She ushered them out. My father died of leukemia, and watching him fly away as she sung to him and stroked his hair and held his hand all the way through, I can say now with a strength I never thought I'd have, I can say that was a gift of seeing Heaven on Earth, to be in that kind of strength and love. And now, she has me to heal and deal with ~ how lucky we all are to have her and her knowledge of hematology and oncology ~ and undying strength.

...and her biting sarcasm which keeps you two steps ahead, on your toes, but that is another story altogether.

But when I thought about "feeling bad to feel good", and how bad this treatment felt, I knew it was nothing compared to cancer treatments, like hardcore treatments I hope to never experience, which knocks every hair off of a body. So as they say around these parts, "It got to me to thinkin'..."

Yesterday, the chief meteorologist at WLBT named Barbie Bassett reported live from the Valentine's Day Blood Drive. Along the way, they mentioned she was growing her hair out to donate to Locks of Love. That is an amazing contribution for her or anyone to make, and an amazing program I keep forgetting about. So I've been joking at itp wtf? about how cyclosporine makes hair grow, and boy, it does. Don't you think the least I could do to give something back to someone is grow out at least 10 inches of hair and donate it? Now I'm not talkin' about donating my Herve Villachez pushbroom moustache ~ I'm talking ponytail. Right now, I do have about 10 inches, but really, it needs a good trimming to even up the ends and thicken out some layering. To me, my hair looks a little moth-eaten around the ends. Well. Neglect and aplastic anemia will do that to you. I've been *kinda busy* the last few months. But it's nothing like cancer. And you know, a longish, curly, dark-brown bunnytail may be just beautiful to, and on, someone else.

I'll research how long that might take me, and I'll keep you posted on that. Now, if only I could donate the handlebar moustache, we'd be in business.