Dog Lived (and So Will I)

by Rhyne, Teresa J.

  But with only a week left until chemotherapy started, I still had not bought a wig. I was quite simply flummoxed by the whole idea of it. Once again, I could not get from here to there (or, forgive me, hair to…not hair). I felt foolish. I’d been able to handle everything else relatively easily. I’d maintained whatever control I could wherever I could, but the thought of buying a wig drew me up short.

  How? Where? When? What? I had nothing.

  Online I finally found a cancer center that offered free wigs and fittings for cancer patients. I didn’t need a free wig; in fact, that struck me as odd and wrong. I wondered if I’d have to qualify as financially needy. I recalled my Irish grandfather’s insistence on getting his share of the free government cheese handed out in the Reagan era, even though he didn’t need it. I didn’t need a free wig, but the fitting would be helpful. I had not the slightest idea how one selected, wore, or cared for a wig.

  When I called the center to find out more, the woman who booked my appointment and explained the simple process to me was named Hope. This, I thought, was like Destiny calling to see if I was ready to adopt Seamus. I wondered if there was Faith and Charity in my future somewhere.

  Once Chris and I knew all the appointments we’d be having and how many days we’d need to leave Seamus, we put out the APB for help. Anyone who offered assistance received a “how do you feel about dogs?” response. Luckily for us, and for our neighbors, many people love dogs and Seamus in particular.

  My cranium prosthesis appointment was on the same day as our chemo boot camp appointment. The folks at the Mary S. Roberts Pet Adoption Center, Seamus’s old home, offered to watch him for me for that day, which we all suspected might be a long one. Chris and I kissed Seamus good-bye, dropped him at the offices of the adoption center (with clear and comical instructions he was not to be adopted out, as though anyone else would be so nuts), and headed to the cancer center.

  Throughout our UCLA experience, I continued to marvel at the youth of the professionals. But marvel as in “wow, what a young genius” and “wow, you got through Columbia, Harvard, and fellowships at Johns Hopkins and UCLA, and you’re only, like, twenty-five?” That kind of marveling. On this day, we marveled at how young the girls we dealt with were in the “yesterday she was babysitting” and “I realize the bell just rang to let you out of class, but you are working, right?” way.

  We were greeted at the Cancer Care Center by a teenage girl at the reception desk. I explained why I was there, and she stared blankly at me. Finally she said, “Today?”

  “Yes. I made an appointment.” I must have looked as abandoned as I felt, since another woman hurried out from behind her desk and offered to sit at the front desk so the teenager could attend to me.

  Wig-teen is the “cosmetologist” I’d been told would work with me and find the “perfect wig”? I looked to Chris for his response, and he seemed as startled as me. Well, at least it was fake hair she’d be dealing with.

  Wig-teen led us to what she referred to as a “wig room.” “Wig closet” would have been more accurate.

  “Usually when people come in for wigs they have less hair. So that’s why I was confused,” she said and pointed to a chair in front of a mirror.

  Yes, well, hair can be confusing at a cancer center. I sat and explained that my chemo starts this week so of course I still have my hair.

  She looked at me in the mirror. “Yeah, but now I can’t get the wigs on your head. I don’t know how to fit them.”

  I was worried she was going to want to shave my head then and there just to make her job easier. But she had an idea. She opened a drawer and pulled out what looked to be a wide knee-high nylon. She stretched the nylon over my head, tucking all my hair up into it. Very pretty.

  “Do you want to be blond? I mean stay blond?” she said.

  “Yes. That seems safest. Let’s stick with blond.”

  Wig-teen pulled out a bin of brown wigs. Short, curly, roadkill-looking wigs in styles last seen on The Golden Girls.

  “Those are brunette,” I said.

  Wig-teen gazed into her box of roadkill and without looking up said, “No, these are blond. These are our blond ones.”

  “Those aren’t blond. Those are brown.”

  She turned the box and looked at the label made from masking tape. It said “Blond,” and clearly she was not capable of winning an argument with masking tape. “Yeah, these are blond,” she said, holding up a small beaver pelt.

  “Okay, how about some longer ones? At least to my shoulder, but preferably longer.”

  “We don’t have any longer ones. Just these.” She held up a guinea pig corpse.

  This would have been useful information to have before the half-hour drive, before the nylon was stretched over my head, and before I strangled her. I said, “Okay, well, what’s the longest you have because I’ve never had short hair.”

  She selected a hoary marmot and squeezed it onto my head. Suddenly, I was Bea Arthur. Only older. And a lot crazier. Chris and I both laughed. I began chanting, “NO NO NO NO NO!!” and he began singing, “Thank you for being a friend…”

  We tried three more rodent-wigs, each more ridiculous than the last. The wigs were stored in their plastic wrappers, flattened out, un-styled, and packed together in a bin on a closet shelf. Like craft supplies. When they were plunked onto my head, they were flat, and the wire-like hairs went in every which direction. There was no way to know what, exactly, or even remotely, the style was supposed to be. And clearly Wig-teen didn’t know so she just randomly moved the wire brush around lightly on top of the wig, hoping something would eventually make sense. Because Golden Girls was off the air before she was born, so really, she had nothing to go on.

  Chris broke the spell of despair. “I can’t believe you don’t have any long-haired wigs.”

  “Everyone always likes the shorter ones. They look more natural.”

  He guffawed. There really wasn’t any other response. “I disagree,” he said, pointing to the thick perfectly straight crease with hair sprouting upward across my forehead.

  She said, “No, everyone thinks so.”

  I wondered to what they were comparing these wigs. If you are only being offered short-haired squirrel pelts from a box of craft supplies, then what do they look more natural than? The Styrofoam head staring down at us from the upper shelf?

  Chris asked the logical question, “Well, what’s the age range of your customers?” This is what I had been wondering but couldn’t find a way to ask, having been stunned into silence by my gerbil head. Even when we had pulled into the parking lot, with one look at the building, I had said, “Why do I feel like I’m going into a nursing home?”

  Wig-teen assured us they had many young customers. We didn’t believe her. She didn’t care.

  In the next thirty seconds, Wig-teen gave up on us and we gave up on her and her rodent collection. I’d rather be bald than wear one of those, free or not. She removed the knee-high from my head, leaving my real hair smashed down, messed up, and falling into my eyes. Naturally, she had no brush or anything available to help with that, because, as she’d already explained, her customers don’t normally have hair. However, she did suggest we go next door to the boutique so I could see about “turbans” as an alternative.

  The boutique was twice the size of the wig-fitting room, but alas they had only three turbans for adults. One. Two. Three. Not three models. Three of the same kind—one pink, one red, and one white all in size medium/large. If instead I were a child looking for a turban, I would have had a vast selection to choose from (vast being six). We spent about eight and one-half seconds in the “store”—long enough to get the explanation that they were low on inventory and I should come back in about a week. Right. That reminder did not make its way into my Blackberry.

  We barely got out before Chris burst out laughi
ng—because the closet of a store had two “shoplifters will be prosecuted” signs. He still wants to ask exactly how many times the store had been hit by renegade shoplifters desperate for pink turbans before they had to install the signs (which, of course, would scare the hair off any shoplifter).

  I had no wig, and only fifteen minutes had passed.

  We drove to the lab to get my pre-chemo blood work done. I was taken into the back, and after a short wait a nice, older woman who was about four feet tall came and quickly drew my blood samples. She put the square of gauze and the bandage on and sent me on my way. I was only ten steps down the hall when I felt a little squirt and then warm liquid running down my arm.

  Back inside the lab we went. Only now both nurses were occupied with a screaming child and neither could see or hear me over the squirming, terrorized child and her two parents. I put pressure on my blood-soaked bandage, held my arm up, and waited. I hoped I wouldn’t pass out or lose another jacket, and only then did I remember Dr. Karam telling me I bleed a lot. A third nurse finally came by and took me into another room, cleaned me up, stopped the bleeding, and bandaged me.

  “Remember to tell nurses drawing your blood that you bleed a lot. They need to bandage you more tightly,” she said.

  So I’ve heard.

  When I rejoined Chris, I mentioned this to him. “Since I’m busy concentrating on not passing out while they draw blood, maybe you can be the one to remember to tell them I bleed a lot.”

  “Good to know. I’ll add it to my list,” he said.

  • • •

  Our next stop was Dr. B’s office for chemo boot camp.

  Chris was seated on a stool next to the hospital bed where I was seated in a small room adjacent to what we had surmised was the chemotherapy infusion room.

  “Do you think they give us a tour? Have you sample the chemo?” he said.

  “I don’t know. I assumed this would be a group thing. I thought several patients would be getting chemo training together. Though as I think about that, there are all sorts of privacy issues that would create.”

  “I don’t know what I pictured, but I know it didn’t involve a hospital bed. Though I’m getting quite accustomed to these wheelie-stools as my regular seat.”

  Chris was much too large of a man to be resigned to these tiny stools, but he was. It’s what he’d been given as a seat in every exam room we’d been in.

  The door opened, and we were joined by a petite young woman with pale skin and long, stringy, mousy-brown hair (her real hair, I should note, lest the rodent reference throw you off). She shyly introduced herself, opened a large, overstuffed file, and started to read things to me. Slowly. Very. Slowly. And. Quietly. And she. Kept. Getting. Confused. No, lost. Wait. Confused. She was confused. No. Lost. She was. Lost.

  Luckily, Chris and I had already read the same brochures, and we could redirect her.

  “Okay, so I’m supposed to drink a lot of fluids during chemo. My dad gave me these antioxidants and immune boosters—mega greens and mega reds—they’re powder form and you mix in water or fruit juice. Is there any reason I shouldn’t be taking that?” I said.

  She looked at me with a blank expression, highly reminiscent of Wig-teen.

  “It’s got vitamins and things also. Like a holistic health, natural thing,” I said.

  “You mean like Crystal Light?”

  “No, not at all like Crystal Light.”

  Nothing.

  “Are there vitamins, herbs, anything like that that she shouldn’t be taking?” Chris tried.

  “It depends on what it is.”

  “Well, do you have a list of the things I should avoid?”

  “We’d have to see the ingredient list. You’d have to bring it in.”

  I flipped through the materials she’d handed me—including two booklets from the American Cancer Society. I came across a page that lists the foods to avoid. To wit:

  greasy, fatty, or fried foods

  raw vegetables and unpeeled fruits

  high-fiber vegetables

  very hot or very cold foods

  foods and drinks that contain caffeine, such as coffee

  beer, wine, and alcohol

  be careful with dairy products

  Ummmm….what the hell can I eat?? If I’m supposed to give up even one of the four to five cups of coffee a day I drink, it would have been nice to know that ahead of time to ease on out of the withdrawal symptoms. And what happened to the doctors telling me that if I felt like having a glass of wine, I could?

  The nurse slowly backtracked away from most of what was in the booklet (and later that night at home I noticed the book was written in 1997—and they’ve learned a lot about chemotherapy treatment since then).

  Eventually we gave up asking questions because, as we discussed later, we could have said, “What about grass? Am I allowed to go near grass? Is air a problem? Should I avoid air?” and she would have smiled slowly and said, “What? I’ll have to check. Ummm, it’s different with everyone.”

  She, like her soul mate Wig-teen, gave up on us. She left to go get the billing person to discuss the “financial arrangements” with me. And that’s when I noticed the song playing over the speakers was Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You.” I pointed to the speaker and looked at Chris. We both burst out laughing. He had already noticed they had also played “You Had a Bad Day” and James Ingram’s “Just Once.” All we needed was “Seasons in the Sun” and we had ourselves a chemo mix tape for all time. Chris even went into the chemo room to find out if we could expect this sort of serenade when I was hooked up in the chair. Thankfully, the sound system did not play in that room.

  Where the chemo no-training nurse was quiet and soft and confused, the financial person was loud (really, really loud) and quite detailed (down to the penny) and full of information (down to the penny). So I learned that I was $2,114 into my $3,000 deductible and I needed to bring a check for $800 toward my deductible plus the $20 office visit co-pay on Thursday—then $96 the next time, and then $20 each time after. This part they were very, very clear about. Whether I could drink coffee or add mega greens and antioxidants to my fruit juice, which of the possible side effects I should phone in about, and what we should bring with us to the chemo session (food? water? blankets?) they were less sure of.

  For that day’s useless training and the opportunity to have Dr. B whoosh by me in a frost, I handed over the same credit card I’d used when Seamus was in treatment. I’d be getting airline miles for this, too.

  As the receptionist handed me back my card, I thought clearly, “Seamus’s card.” Suddenly I realized why I’d been so baffled by the concept of a wig. Everything else had followed a familiar pattern. With the diagnosis, the search for a doctor, the surgery, the pathology report, the chemotherapy training, and now even the method of payment, I’d had experience and knowledge. I’d had a frame of reference. Because of Seamus.

  But Seamus didn’t lose his hair. Seamus hadn’t needed a wig. I had to figure out hair loss and a wig on my own. There was no beagle-guide for that part of my journey. Suddenly, I missed my diabolically cute guru.

  I turned back to Chris. “Let’s go get Seamus and go home. I’d like to forget about this day.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” he said.

  I slept as we drove home, waking as Chris pulled into the Pet Adoption Center. I hurried in to get Seamus.

  But Seamus wasn’t there.

  “Destiny took him home,” the young woman at the counter told us.

  “Took him home?”

  “Yeah. Wasn’t she supposed to?”

  Chris and I looked at each other, bewildered and hoping the other had an explanation.

  “Uhhhhhh…” I looked around the lobby. “Is Denise here?” Denise was the same Denise who had ru
n Ruff House Pet Resort and helped spoil Seamus with me. She was now the executive director of the adoption center. I had confidence she’d know why Seamus had been sent home with Destiny. Unfortunately, I was right.

  Denise explained to us that he had howled so loud and so often all day that Destiny took him home with her after her shift ended, hoping to soothe his nerves. Seamus must have had a premonition of how badly our day was going.

  “He howled too much for a facility with fifty other dogs?” I said, wincing.

  “That’s our Seamus,” Denise managed to still be smiling. Seamus was lucky his charm was as far reaching as his howls. “He probably just senses the stress in the house. You guys have a lot going on.”

  We drove to Destiny’s home, only a few miles from our own, wondering the whole way how we’d ever get me through all the upcoming medical appointments if Seamus’s howling was even too much for a pet adoption center.

  Destiny handed me Seamus’s leash with him jumping and howling on the other end, while Chris loaded the crate in the back of my car.

  “If you need help,” Destiny said, “I’m happy to watch him for whatever appointments you have. We love Seamus. And he doesn’t howl when he’s here.”

  I looked down at the happy, twirling dervish on a leash. Destiny had interceded again. Seamus was a handful, but he was a lovable handful. His charm worked magic. All he really wanted was to be loved. And never left alone. Well, and fed a lot.

  “That is really nice of you, Destiny. I may have to take you up on that. I have a lot of appointments coming up. A lot.”

  The next day, with a new determination born of necessity, I began a search for a wig shop. I emailed a few breast cancer survivors I knew, and I went online until I found what I needed. One name kept popping up.

  When I telephoned Splendor Wigs, I heard a dog barking in the background. And, though I’m not big on “signs,” I knew then that this was the place to get my wig. Much like understanding my survival statistics through poker-playing dogs, I found comfort in the bark of this dog. I’ll follow a sign from the canine universe.