Bald is Beautiful
09/24/2006
As many of you can tell from looking at Jaymun's
photos, he's definitely growing from week to week. It really is true that
babies grow up fast and I'm thankful I've taken plenty of photos to document
his developments.
I'm sure most of you have noticed that little Jaymun started out with a fairly good crop of hair on his
head when he was first born and now at ten weeks old, that hair is
pretty much no more. It's a sad side effect of his chemotherapy and a pretty
noticeable one at that.
I know many people are thinking, "Hey, that kid
doesn't know the difference. He's just a baby." I agree-except for
the fact that our baby was clearly meant to have hair. When I was
pregnant, I remember discussing with our other children what Jaymun might look like. We all thought he'd probably
have some amount of hair on his head since none of them had been bald as
babies. And we were right-he came into the world looking like he had a pretty
good head start (no pun intended) on the whole hair thing.
When we were told he had leukemia, the first images that
popped into my mind were the children I'd seen in photos of cancer patients or advertisments promoting research funding on
television, terminally ill kids with bald heads--and I realized my baby
was soon going to join their ranks. And so he has.
As I walk around this cancer unit, I can't help but notice
the children who are sporting hairless heads-they're everywhere. I think the
saddest sight is the sweet little girls wearing their pretty princess
nightgowns. I imagine what they looked like before their battle with
cancer, with curly blonde ringlets or long, flowing hair down their back. I
sympathize with their mothers who probably brushed their beautiful hair
everyday into bouncy ponytails or braided their hair before school, carefully
tying on colorful ribbons at the ends.
Our Jaymun has no idea what hair
is. As long as he's got a clean diaper and a full belly, he could care less
about what's on top of his head. It just occurred to me that I'm
really the only one who's bothered about it-and honestly, considering
everything else I'm worried about, it's not really at the top of my list
either. His hair is pretty much gone and his eyebrows and eyelashes have
disappeared too. In between chemo treatments, his hair started to make a small
comeback-but this next round of chemo will take care of that. Hair today, gone tomorrow.
I just thought I'd address the fact to let people know that
not only is our little guy bald, he's downright beautiful.
