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Stacie Lewis
posted in Mom Stories
I’m bald.
Wait, let me be more specific.
When I put our Halloween pumpkin out this year, I forgot to wear a hat and I thought, “People are going to think I’m doing this on purpose to scare children.”
Really, I don’t care that my head looks like a hard boiled egg sprouting hairs. (Let’s be blunt: I’m sporting a really bad 60-year old’s comb-over.)
Hey – at least there are hairs growing on my head again! And what does it say to have hair growing so sparsely that it appears to have lost it’s sense of direction somewhere near my ears?
It says I’m alive. My cells are regenerating. I’m received a bone marrow transplant from someone brave enough to endure what most people think involves painful drilling into your spine. (It doesn’t. Here’s how doctors test and collect bone marrow.) Because of that person, doctors no longer call it remission, they call it a cure.
I don’t feel a need to dwell on the “what if it happens again” side of things. Why should I? The likelihood is I will stay in remission. A great team of doctors just put me through hell to make sure I do. Some people dwell, I prefer ice cream.
Here are things I’m certain about: my son doesn’t like me wearing a hat. “Take it off,” he says to me if I wear it in the house. He doesn’t care about my lack of hair. Why should I?
My daughter doesn’t care that I’m bald. Furthermore, she doesn’t care that I feel skinnier than normal when I hug her tight. She just wants those cuddles. Who am I to refuse her?
Sometimes, I still feel sick and worn down and bored. But, I feel less of those things every day. When self-pity creeps into my thoughts (and it does), I remember my two-year old son’s face when he raced down the stairs to greet me coming home from the hospital (see photo below).
Having a family is an amazing thing for all kinds of reasons. But I never thought it would be my children who lifted me from the spell of cancer. Here’s to the unexpected rewards of parenthood!
Be part of the cure! Join the Be A Match bone marrow registry.
You can read more from Stacie at Mama Lewis and the Amazing Adventures of the Half-Brained Baby. You can also follow her on Twitter @MamaLewisBlog. Photo credits: Carrie Parson, Katinka Szegedi
Read more from source:“babycenter-com-baby”