On the subject of Lizzie’s baldness… here’s a description I wrote of the time I helped shave her hair off, back in October (i.e. before Lizzie got Covid and I ‘officially’ started writing this journal). It was just after Lizzie’s second chemo, when her hair suddenly started coming out in handfuls. There was nothing gradual about it – it was a real case of ‘now you see it, now you don’t’. But there was nothing the least magical about it, obviously.
Anyway, here’s the description.
I’m shaving Lizzie’s hair off.
All of it!
I’m using the clippers I use to shave my own bald head.
It’s much harder to do when someone’s got long hair. I didn’t realise this. Being bald and without any long hair, myself.
‘Let’s try cutting it with some scissors first,’ I say.
Lizzie agrees, but it’s difficult for her. Lizzie, after all, is a bit of a control freak. She’d rather be doing this herself, without my help.
‘Stop doing that bit… do that bit instead,’ she says. ‘That’s enough, stop there,’ she instructs. ‘Give me the clipper, I want to do this bit,’ she demands. And other control-freaky things.
I know I shouldn’t let it, but Lizzie’s attempt to micromanage this process begins to get on my nerves.
I mean, rationally, I know this is scary for her. And trying to control this traumatic experience is her way of dealing with it.
But still… still… being told exactly what to do by her in one of my few areas of expertise (making people balder – generally myself – by using a hair trimmer) begins to get a teeny weeny bit… irksome.
Gah. I know it shouldn’t. And I hide it well. Reasonably well.
‘It’s fine,’ I snap. ‘Let me do this.’
Lizzie frowns. She’ll do nothing of the sort.
And on it goes.
After we’ve finished, we look at the results.
‘You look like someone who’s got cancer,’ I say to Lizzie, trying to lighten the mood (in perhaps not an entirely well-thought-out way).
It’s true. There are uneven clumps of hair, sprouting out all over Lizzie’s head. Long strands of the stuff are circled around the sink plug hole.
‘It’ll probably all fall out in the shower anyway,’ Lizzie sighs.
I feel guilty about being irked by Lizzie’s micromanagement, moments before. I mean, how bloody awful must this be for her? I remember feeling sick when my hair started falling out in my twenties. And that didn’t all happen in one go. And I’m a bloke. And blokes go bald (sometimes).
‘You know,’ I say to Lizzie. ‘It actually looks kinda cool. When it’s grown back a little, I think it’ll really suit you.’
Lizzie’s face begins to brighten. A little. ‘Like a pixie cut?’
I nod. And what I’m saying is true. I think a pixie cut will suit her.
P. D. Clifton 
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