Chemo And Why I Still Have Eyebrows
You don’t have to believe in miracles to believe it. You only have to believe in love.
Two months into chemotherapy and nearly all of my body hair has vanished. The wart on the back of my head that has been terrifying hairdressers for years no longer has anywhere to hide. My proudly feminist leg hair has marched to the floor. I’ve inhaled my nose hairs like dust. My eyelashes have fallen like stars. Sometime in the last week I got my first Brazilian wax. Using absolutely no wax. But somehow, my eyebrows are still going strong. Not Frida Kahlo strong. But still strong. Two bushy caterpillars refusing to butterfly off my face.
Right after my diagnosis, my friend gave me a pack of temporary eyebrow tattoos to use when mine fell out. If I hadn’t been curious about their moustache-potential, the package would still be unopened. Each morning I wake up and look in the mirror, expecting the eyebrow fairy to have come in the night. Something you may not know about the chemo hair-losing process is that each hair loosens before it leaves, kind of like a loose tooth, until the hair is holding on so lightly it can be removed with a lint roller. I roll the thing over my scalp, collecting hundreds of hairs with each pass until I get closer and closer to shining like Mr. Clean. But when I roll the lint roller over my eyebrows––nothing. Even when I grab a hair with my fingers and tug, it refuses to let go.
I hadn’t really spoken to anyone about the stubbornness of my eyebrows and my curiosity about their strange refusal to jump ship. Then yesterday, sitting on my porch sipping tea in the autumn sun, my parents called to tell me that my father had woken up with the entirety of his right eyebrow missing. We are in touch daily these days, and I know they were thrilled to have news that would make me roll with laughter. “What?!” I blurted, and gasped when they sent a photo of my father’s suddenly half naked face. I laughed and laughed at the wonder of it. Why on earth would a man wake up with his eyebrow missing? I thought about it for a few seconds and then what I call The Love-Cry began. Countless times in the past months my partner has found me in tears, and before she can ask what’s wrong, I’ll say, “I’m not crying because of sadness. I’m crying because of love.” In such moments I am nothing but a weepy flood of gratitude for each and every way these months have opened and opened and opened my heart.
Two days after the surgery that would diagnose me, loopy on pain meds, I was falling asleep with my head on my mother’s lap when she whispered “I’d do this for you if I could.” Meaning, she’d take the cancer from my body and put it in hers if it were possible. She didn’t have to tell me that. I knew both of my parents would. Which is why I know this: My father’s eyebrow left his face so my eyebrows wouldn’t leave mine. Some people might raise an eyebrow at an idea like that, but you don’t have to believe in miracles to believe it. You only have to believe in love.
Love, Andrea 🖤
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