The Wig Party

"How did the party go?" he texted me.

For a while now, I’ve wondered how this was going to work. I’ll be shaving my head soon and switching to a wig. So it makes you think: do I just show up at work the next morning in a wig? I played it out in my mind and didn’t like it.

I work in an open office area with a couple of departments sharing space. I think we're all pretty close, I mean we see each other every single day. We know when someone's sick, when they got a haircut, when they've lost weight. We talk about families, kids, vacations, issues, ideas—you know, it’s my office family. Plus, they have gone through this whole thing with me, from the time I first got the diagnosis. So they all know about my decision to go the wig route. But the idea of just showing up with “new hair” felt weird. I’d be putting them in a position, you know? Do they say "nice wig" (in which case, I wonder if they're saying it to be nice)? And is "nice wig" even a thing people say? Or, do they say nothing (in which case, I worry they hate it)?

So, on my first day back, we talked about it. I decided to bring the wigs into the office, try them on, and let my coworkers see me—the different me—so we could avoid that awkward moment. We'll have a wig party.

I started with the crazy wig—the hat wig. This is one that I paid nearly nothing for online, really a costume wig. It's very blonde, with long bangs and beachy waves (that's what I'm telling myself anyway), and a little past shoulder length. No one at the office has ever seen me with hair that long, although I had it past shoulder length a long, long time ago. Now, this wig can't really be worn without a hat because the top and the part just really look fake. But with a baseball cap, newsboy hat, or even a sock cap, it looked really cute. They laughed, we talked, it was the ice breaker. It was a given that this was a look that would be more for going out (like to the Notre Dame game in November, if I can make it) than for work.

The next two I showed them were the wigs I got from Cancer Services—real wigs, good quality. Both were hits, although the “safe” one (pixie style, close to my real color) seemed to be the favorite, mostly because they said it looked like “Polly.” (By the way, the girls all promised me that they would tell me if it was "No, just no." Bless their little hearts.)

So there we were. As hard as it was for me to do, it was worth it. The rest of the office might still have that uncomfortable moment, but my closest coworkers won’t.

So I told Bob: the "wig party" went fine.

One night recently, when I was tired, hurting, and tearful, I said to Bob, "I don't want this. I don't want to be bald. I don't want any of this." But today I said out loud to someone (maybe no one), "I guess I'd rather be bald than have the cancer come back."

Next Wednesday, chemo starts.