This is the day your life will surely change.

This is the Day - The The

Tomorrow I will wake up a cancer patient.   Yes, I have been a cancer patient for the past few months but tomorrow it will hit will really hit home for me.   Tomorrow I will start to look more like a cancer patient.    Others may start to identify me as one.

My hair is starting to fall out - in handfuls.   Just as they predicted.  Two weeks following my first treatment.    If I wanted to help things along I could likely comb all my hair out.   A big part of me wants to do just that.  It was like a flick of a switch today and all the hair roots let go.   I hate that for a number of reasons:

1. They predicted it and it's happening right on schedule.   I liked to think I was different and that my body would have been able to delay this side effect or perhaps prove them wrong.    Damn them for getting it right. 
2. I love my hair.  I don't have the long willowy locks, but I treat it well; no chemicals; and love the colour and healthy texture of it.  My hair deserves better.
3. The cancer diagnosis is now much more of a reality.    It's there every time I look in the mirror, see my reflection in a window.   It's there when my kids see me and bring their friends over. 

Until now, I blended in.   I didn't look much different than before.  Still out walking - although less than before, still in doing a bit of grocery shopping; dressed each day,  popping in and out of the hospital, I might be taken as a visitor, not a patient.

I'm not feeling depressed or sad about this - just recognizing that I'm entering a new stage, a new reality.  My life as I see it will change.  As others see me will change.   Like putting on a new skin.  Same me - just a different version.  One day older, one day more experienced, one day changed.