Please don’t ever hold my hair

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I am not the kind of girl who needs someone to hold my hand.  Maybe because I’m really independent.  Maybe because I am impatient.  I don’t know.  But I just don’t need anyone to go with me for appointments or sit with me when I’m sick.  I don’t need a lot.  So if you ask me to call if I need something and I don’t, its nothing personal.  I almost never need something.  The whole idea of someone holding my hair when I vomit completely repulses me.  If I’m going to be sick, I don’t want an audience.  Vomiting is disgusting.  The only thing more disgusting than vomiting is seeing someone else do it.  Now please don’t get offended if you are one of those girls who needs someone to hold their hair.  We all need different things.  The first time I encountered one of *those* girls I was completely thunderstruck.  I was on study abroad in India with about a dozen other college kids.  Everyone had stomach trouble of some kind and we all had to hear about it ad nauseum.  Literally.  There was this one flighty, dramatic girl who got on my nerves.  She was complaining to a small group girls about her roommate.  Her complaint was that she was in the bathroom getting sick and she knew her roommate could hear but didn’t bother to come hold her hair.  “What?” I said.  I’m pretty reserved.  She repeated the roommate’s offense.  “You are going to have to grow up and get over it.” I said.  Out loud.  Usually I relegate such comments to my inner-dialogue.  “Nobody wants to see you puke, that’s disgusting.” The whole idea was so foreign to me.  The hair-holder was all tight lipped and sulky.  Luckily we were never roommates.

The only thing that I ever let myself cry about in this whole process of getting “the good cancer” was the fact that I’d have to be away from my kids.  My baby.  Before she even left the womb I fretted about leaving her for surgery.  Then when she was two months I started dreading the RAI.  I got to see them tonight from a distance.  Hannah fussed for a minute for me to hold her and then somehow she realized that I wasn’t going to and she sort of wrote me off.  Gabe was hamming it up like crazy making me laugh so hard but he didn’t understand why I couldn’t hold him and it made me so sad.  His confused little face… I know that they will forget all that.  But it makes me hurt on a whole different level.  Physical pain, nausea, fatigue–all that is nothing.  It really is.  Long, long ago I prized my hair as my “one great beauty”.  I thought if I ever got cancer I would rather die than lose my hair.  What an idiotic, immature thing to think.  LOL.  I am a mother now.  The only way to hurt me is to come between me and my kids.  I’d willingly pull out every hair on my head if it meant more time with my children.  They are the most beautiful things I’ve had the privilege of being a part of.  Every day that goes by I feel this radioactive bullet at work in me.  My thyroid bed is swollen and sore today.  Its working.  My thyroid is dying.  I thank my lucky stars I have a family that rocks!  While I’m here by myself healing, my mother-in-law was taking amazing care of my sweet babies with the help of my niece until this evening.  My mom is hugging and loving them now.  My husband spends every moment he can with them.  That is all I need right now.  I just need someone to take my place at loving my kids.  If they are happy and content I can do anything.  Except maybe paint the trim… I have yet to find the energy to start on that.

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