Cancer is NOT who I am...

So then why does it feel like my identity is so completely wrapped up in this f&#@ing disease? I mean seriously - - just when I forget about it for a moment and think, "Wow!  How cool that my colleague obviously missed me so much over the summer!" because someone has made a concerted effort to cross a room and speak just to ME, I realize, Shit.  When she just asked, "How ARE you?" it wasn't because she thinks I'm such a cool person, it's because I have cancer.

*SIGH*

All people who haven't seen me all summer inevitably get the look and ask the same thing.  People who don't know me that well hear me talking to other people and sure enough - their look is also transformed.  Thoughts and prayers are offered, for which I am infinitely grateful.  But damn it, I sure wish they could spend their time praying for people who really need it - people who are suffering from everyday challenges for which they get no additional support - people who have longterm illnesses that can't be treated with only six cycles of mildly annoying chemo therapy - people whose numbness is not only in their fingertips but throughout their whole bodies - people who are actually dying...

So yeah, I admit it's definitely not all bad.  I'm surviving quite well, after all.  And I mean, who doesn't like getting attention from people who barely noticed you before?  People I'm pretty sure disliked me b.c. (before cancer) are apparently able to get past their distaste a.d. (after diagnosis).  I totally get it -- it's much easier to like someone who is humbled by enduring disfiguring treatments for a possibly fatal disease.  But I seriously have to admit that cancer has actually increased my narcissism significantly...  I spend almost twice as much time getting ready in the morning now - check my makeup constantly - reapply actual lip COLOR every five minutes...  I even try to wear false eyelashes to supplement the pathetic six or seven hairs left on each eye.  (By "try" I mean I spend about twenty minutes wrestling with glue that is either too wet or too sticky, getting it on my contacts, adhering the strip a sixteenth of an inch above my lash line or so far down into the lash line that the falsies stick straight up and make me look terrified. Then after a couple hours I realize that the glue on the edges has come loose and the lashes are creeping up my eyelids, making me look less cat-eyed and more "sloppy drag queen."  So I peel them off and try to smear what's left of my eyeliner into a consistent smudge instead of a dotted line, interrupted by wads of remaining glue.  I'm seriously tempted to start drawing lashes on my lids, a la Minnie Mouse.)

So I also spend about three hours forcing my wigs (my wig collection is totally kick ass!!) in the direction I desire (probably the exact opposite direction it was designed to go) with about half a bottle of wig hairspray.  I'm guilty of directioning, spraying, pushing, pulling, and shaping, then brushing it all out and starting all over again -- a routine that takes forever the first time since wig hairspray refuses to dry anytime in this century, and if I use a blowdryer to help it along, I'll melt the synthetic fibers directly to my skull.  Anywho - once I have some semblance of a style pseudo "in place" then I'm constantly checking my "hair" because man, those things don't behave "naturally" in wind or in response to sweating, moving, or even breathing it seems. But I do get the significant bonus of looking totally different every day of the week for two and a half work weeks if I really want to.  And according to an extremely attractive male colleague, my "halo under a scarf" look is rather hot (I was actually mistaken for a student one day while sporting that look.  YESSSSSS!!), while a couple other men I know are particular to my sassy hats. (I get a pass on wearing hats to school. WOO HOO!!!)  My favorite men in the world, however, are the ones who seem to think I look totally hot bald.  (I hope to goodness they don't ask their wives to act out a "bald Barb" fantasy.)

Other benefits of my cancer "look" are as follows:  1) I can hide from people I want to avoid (like today when I put my head down and hid beneath my long blonde locks and jaunty hat while I pretended to be engrossed in the lid on my water bottle so as to avoid a former stalker-type who used to lurk outside my classroom).  2) I can mess with my boss, apparently, since one of the new APs at school told me today that he is totally thrown off when I appear in a different "cranial prosthesis" everyday since he thinks he's seeing another person he hasn't identified at school yet.  3) I can even be intriguing to young children (though I think I totally freak out some of them when I bare my bald).  And to grown women? 4) I'm awesomely positive!  Inspiring!  AMAZING!! 
All because of cancer. 

UGH.

Still, I am prayed for by devoted Christians who barely know more than my name -- and my diagnosis.  I am close with women who were either mere acquaintances or even unknown to me prior to cancer.  I have deep, meaningful conversations with people all the time!!!!  (This is truly the BEST benefit, as I love nothing more than poignant, "getting to know the real, raw you" convos.)  And they're not always about cancer!!!  (Though they always seem to be about something that has arisen as a result of cancer -- strength, perspective, motivation, goals...)  And I get to make ridiculously funny, pee-your-pants-laughing kind of jokes, such as when a colleague was fretting over her hair one day and I said simply, "I find it entertaining when people complain about their hair," or when I get to compare my nether regions to that of a ten-year-old girl.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Cancer benefits far outweigh its drawbacks.  Definitely.  But there are still days when I wish like hell I could just be Barb for a while - - bad hair and all. 

A girlfriend told me - right before I began chemo - that I would be forever transformed by this experience of having chemicals pumped into my body repeatedly.  Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, she said.  I do love that image.... but jeez, does it have to take so freaking long for the darned bird to burn up?? 

I'm dying slowly.  At least parts of me are, and I pray that they are the imperfect, in-need-of-major-improvement parts - not just the cancer. 

But I'm also being reborn - slowly - surely - wholly reformed into a person that can't take life for granted and never forgets to laugh, long and loud and probably rather obnoxiously.  And since all great things take time, I suppose I can endure this cancer identity for a while longer... just as long as the woman who emerges on the other end never forgets how to set herself on fire!