Going, going.....gone!

I'd be lying if I said the whole losing hair business is not affecting me.  It does affect me.  That's a fact.

To try and alleviate this traumatic phase, I had my head shaved today.  So technically speaking, my hair is now gone.

How do I look?  There is only one word to describe me now...vulnerable.  Not ugly.  Not beautiful.  Just vulnerable.

Amy, in one of her posts, related how losing your hair makes you FEEL you have cancer.  I confirm this.  I now feel I have cancer. 

The trouble with this disease is it is 20% physical and 80% mental (my assessment).  And I am using percentages for a specific reason here.  I take that from my surgeon.  See, he likes to throw figures at me.  According to him (and I trust science in general), I had X% risk of developing breast cancer to start with, there is Y% chance that I will be cancer-free after treatment, Z% probability that it may recur in the other breast, and so on and so forth.

Alhamdulillah, I am not overly concerned by any of these numbers.  I am not trying to beat the maths here.  That's just me.

But to come back to the physical/mental ratio, I place this disease in the grey zone where if it does not kill you physically, it can kill you mentally. 

Cancer consumes you.  It does not allow you to forget.  It clamours for your attention every single day.  There is hardly any respite from it.  Gravity on Planet Cancer is stronger than on earth, my friends.

If your body will deal with the cancer in the way it can (aided or not by medicine), it is mostly in your mind that the cancer will cause most of the damage.

So to survive this onslaught, you draw on every fibre of mental stamina that you possess.  Because at the end of the day, only your inner force can force you to lift your head and look at your body minus certain parts reflected in a mirror, only your soul can absorb the shock of possibilities being written off your future forever, and only your beating heart can accept that you will die.