When your hair starts to grow back it is actually quite exciting and if you’re not careful you can get a bit obsessed with checking its progress (especially in lockdown) which is pretty futile as it grows very slowly. Ironically, I’m sure every female, who is desperate for a haircut right now, disagrees with me but according to the internet it is only half an inch a month – yes, I checked before it even fell out!

I have moved through several different hair stages already. I started off as ‘Voldemort’ (thanks Max) and moved from there into a ‘Prince William’ stage, hair at the sides but very little on top. I am currently in the ‘concentration camp’ stage, very short with some patches thinner than others. I am hoping my next stage will be ‘Sinead O’Connor’ plus 20 years (there are plenty of grey hairs coming through too and I don’t remember her having any of those on the video of ‘Nothing Compares’). It is almost starting to look normal, but it did dawn on me the other day, as we were out for a family walk, that people may look at me now and instead of thinking ‘she must have cancer’ they are probably thinking ‘that’s a very severe lockdown haircut’.

Some of the new hair is still quite fluffy (which I find myself stroking whilst watching TV) because it’s brand new hair but as that gets longer I will have it cut so it comes through stronger. It doesn’t appear to be coming back curly or a different colour (except greyer) but I have heard that it can change as it grows so I’ll just have to wait and see.

Obviously, it is also growing in other places too, some of which I’m delighted about and others not so much. I am over the moon to have my nostril hairs back because this means my nose has finally stopped dripping – this was one of the most annoying side effects of hair loss. I’m not so delighted to have them back on my legs and arm pits which will obviously need shaving again. From an aesthetic point of view the most important hair growth for me was my eyebrows and eyelashes. It’s very difficult to look feminine without them and even though you can use make up in the day, you still look very bald at night when it all comes off.

Losing my hair as a result of cancer treatment has not been too traumatic for me but I can understand why it is for so many people. No matter how self-confident you are, or how little importance you attribute to appearance, there is no denying that as your hair falls away, so does your femininity. I got used to my new look pretty quickly but as time went on and my eyebrows and lashes all disappeared I got bored of looking like Voldemort, so it’s been lovely to feel my femininity reappearing with each new lash, brow or strand. There is still some way to go but the process has started and that feels good.

So that’s the positive.

The negative comes with the Tamoxifen, although it’s not all negative.

Tamoxifen is my insurance policy against cancer coming back. It basically blocks the estrogen receptors on breast cancer cells. It stops estrogen from connecting to the cancer calls and telling them to grow and divide, so it’s a pretty good drug from that point of view. Unfortunately, as all drugs do, it comes with side effects. As I’ve come to learn over the last 9 months, reading the lists of side effects for any drug makes for pretty depressing reading, so I’ve adopted the policy of ‘take the drug, remain positive and hope for the best’.

This morning I’ve just finished my first month of Tamoxifen. On the plus side I haven’t felt starving all the time (imagine how difficult that would be) and I haven’t got aching joints. I haven’t got headaches or nausea and as yet my weight hasn’t increased (although I do work pretty bloody hard against this). I don’t think I’m having any mood swings either (although probably best to ask someone in the family their opinion on that). I do occasionally feel a little irritable, or like my tolerance level may be reduced but to be honest given that I’m being treated for cancer, in the middle of a global pandemic and home schooling I’m not going to attribute that to the Tamoxifen.

However, I do get hot flushes and the biggest problem it is causing me is sleep disturbance. Since I’ve been taking it I don’t think I’ve had a full night’s sleep. I feel like the quality of sleep I am getting now is akin to having a new born baby but without the benefit of the lovely cuddles! Dave has referred to it as my thermostat being broken and he’s absolutely right. One minute my body is hot and clammy and the next it’s really cold. I tend to fall asleep easily but always wake about 2 hours afterwards and then the rest of my sleep is sporadic until I get up.

At the moment it is not affecting the way I feel during the day which is a Godsend, but I don’t know how long this will last. I am going to investigate some ways of trying to get myself into a deeper sleep to start with through either sleep meditation, hypnotherapy or acupuncture. Basically, I’ll keep trying different things in the hope that something will improve the current situation – any tips from any of you will be gratefully received.

To end on another positive note, I start my radiotherapy tomorrow. This is obstacle 11 out of 11, the final hurdle. I can’t wait to get started so that I can tick off every one of the 20 sessions I need knowing that when they are over my active treatment will be finished. All being well my last radiotherapy session will be July 14^th which will be exactly one week short of a year since I found the lump in Cornwall on July 21^st, 2019.

As I am writing this the rain is hammering on the window and it reminds me of a fitting quote I recently read:

 ‘Be strong now, because things will get better. It might be stormy now, but it can’t rain forever’.