Well, we have our first cancer-related casualty: my poor
little beard.
It was such a helpless little thing, like a baby possum
clinging to my face. Regardez:
My radiation oncologist warned me that my beard would
probably go thin on one side, given that they’d be pumping all kinds of protons
and neutrons and gamma radiation into my left tonsil. “Probably,:” he said,”
you should shave your beard off now. It’ll look irregular after a little while.”
Pooh, I though.
Then, last week, I was stroking my beard while watching TV,
and I looked down, and found that I’d yanked five or six white hairs right out
of my chin without even trying.
Dearie me!
Beard loss speeded up after that. I could pull out a few
dozen hairs at a time by the weekend. The beard looked okay on the right-hand
side of my chin, but on the left, it was sort of a hair archipelago, like a map
of Polynesia.
Finally, on Tuesday morning, I looked in the mirror and
covered the right side of my chin with my hand. “No beard,” I said. Then I
covered the left-hand side. “Beard,” I said. I continued this (idiotically) for
about ten seconds, swapping sides. “Beard. No beard. Beard. No beard. Beard . .
. “
No Beard won the contest. I attacked my chin with a regular
razor and finished up with my rotary. And now I look something like this:
Am I not striking?
Only three-and-a-half weeks of radiation therapy to go.
And, frankly, if that’s the worst of it, I’m a lucky lucky
boy.
