(Original title – The Keeper of Keys)

Hey cancer, fuck you. You’re ruining my awesome life. But at the moment, it’s not so bad.

The hiccup with that minor anaphylactic reaction aside, I’m actually doing kind of okay at the moment. I’m sleeping really well, my back pain is finally easing up (seriously, don’t slip a disc in your back and have cancer, it makes your life so much harder), Minou is finally settling in to the new house and not just sleeping in my bed under the covers all day, and I can still eat food and taste it.

My hair however, is starting to fall out, and quite rapidly. Thankfully, my oncologist warned me it would happen within a fortnight, and happen quite quickly too. I’m taking a pre-emptive strike and shaving it off. The upside to this is that my body hair is falling out too, sooner than I had expected. Underarm hair is going, leg hair is slowly thinning out, but at least I still have eyebrows and eyelashes at the moment. I’m not pulling out chunks of hair from my head, but it’s thinning out too.

Next dose of chemo is next Tuesday. I’ve had my three blood tests to check if I’m a good candidate for speeding up my chemo from three weekly to fortnightly, and I’ll find that out on Monday at the oncologist.

So, at the moment not a whole lot is happening. I have my immunologist appointment on Thursday, I’m still unpacking some stuff and sorting out what to sell and what to donate, and just resting. My life is pretty boring.

This is what combing my fingers through my hair does.

Things nobody tells you about cancer #93: your hair falling out fucking hurts (both physically and emotionally). My scalp is killing me and I’m scared about looking like a cancer patient in a few days and waking up to hair all over my pillow.

I’ll get some pretty headscarves and stuff, but it won’t be the same as having hair to comb my fingers through when I’m nervous.