L.B.D

On Friday a friend asked me to go with him to his corporate Christmas party on the following Friday at the Brookstreet hotel… yes sir! Pulling a party dress out of my closet last minute was not going to be a problem until I realized “Oh shit the boob tube!”

So I headed to the mall with my mother to find a dress. Mum needed shoes for her party so we alternated stores. I wasn’t having any luck in the dress shops and my big feet were starting to turn green with envy watching my mother’s perfect size 8’s slip into anything she wanted in the shoe shops. After a couple of hours of no luck I thought I wasn't going to find anything and was getting a little run down, as I do. Id wear a nun’s habit if it came in my size and hid my permacath… its holy season!

Then I found it, the perfect little black dress - LBD! And that’s when I started to cry. I actually started to cry, and not just the misty eyes; an all out face crumple snort & sniff kinda cry. I think I was just so emotionally done by then, was subconsciously worried about what’s going on with my hair, and had resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to wear something ho-hum just to cover up my oddities. And maybe a wig too!

I had resolved myself to just being “clothed” that when I was presented with looking my very best it was so beyond my expectations that I started crying. I guess it’s been awhile since I felt I looked and felt fabulous in anything.

So I started crying and then Mum started crying, and then I saw the price and cried a little more, and then Mum started saying “I’m going to buy it for you, you deserve to look & feel great, I'm going to buy it for you” and that’s when the sobbing became an all out scene and the poor sales lady was just so confused.

Friday morning I knew the hair was done and headed for the salon. I thought Id be going out that night in a wig, but my stylist cut it down and it seemed to look thicker. There are some noticeable thin spots on the sides of my head and at the crown where my scalp gleams through, but nothing a little bit of brown eye-shadow on the scalp can’t hide!

For me having cancer is often a daily lesson in humility, but every now and then I need a break from it. I need to pretend that nothings wrong, get dressed up go out and get noticed for my L.B.D and not my C.A.N.C.E.R