People get bent out of shape with me.

Yes, some people get bent out of shape and act all righteously indignant and offended when I mention that cancer is an industry.  (Their reactions are rather amusing, actually.  Either that, or I'm a completely evil bitch who gets a kick out of shattering people's misconceptions about all things cancer related.)

Yes, that's what it is, though.  An industry.

Let's play with numbers here and then you can just ponder that I might actually be correct.

You see, back when I was doing chemo, a year of legal abuse and torture, I accidentally found out about how much money a particular component of chemo I was doing actually cost.

$60,000.00 USD

That's right.  Sixty grand.

I'm ONE person.  Sure, I get that there are costs related to this, such as paying business expenses to manufacture said chemo, such as paying employees (who probably need and deserve hazardous pay because chemo is poison), their insurance, utilities costs such as water and electricity, etc. and then there's the cost for the doctor who is overseeing the legalized poison, the people who are giving it need to be paid, operating expenses, etc.

Get comfy for a few minutes.  We're going to do some basic math here.

Me, HorseDoovers,  $60,000.00 USD.

Now when I found this out, there was also two other women who were on the same path to legalized torture that I was, both of which were not as far down that path that I was, but who were undergoing very similar, if not the same, chemo poisonings, and as sick as I got from multiple kinds of chemos, chemo is poison, poison is chemo.  Just saying this from my perspective.

Me, HorseDoovers, $60,000.00 USD, plus two other women who were likely the same amount of money, $60,000.00 each, which would make them "worth" $120,000.00 USD together.  Now you add that up.

Me:    $60,000.00  +  Them:   $120,000.00   =   $180,000.00

Now people, that is in one small "clinic" in the middle of BFE Deep South.

Let's keep going with this.

Say there are three other patients in ten clinics scattered state wide who are given the same chemo worth $60,000.00 per patient.

Let's do this the easy way.  

$180,000.00 for three patients X  ten clinics in any given state  =  $1,800,000.00

Yes, you read that correctly.  One million, eight hundred thousand dollars.

Let's keep going, since there are fifty states.

$1,800,000.00 X  fifty states  =  $90,000,000.00

That's right.  Ninety million dollars on any given day.  Shall we continue?

90 million  X five days a week = 450 million dollars.

450 million dollars  X  fifty-two weeks    =   $23,400,000,000.00

(450,000,000.00      X  fifty-two weeks    =   $23,400,000,000.00)

Count the zeros.  That makes it twenty-three billion, four hundred million dollars a year.

"But HorseDoovers, you have to make adjustments for population, blah, blah, blah, etc." This is probably what you're thinking.

Well, no, not really on the adjustment thing.  Because if there was just one patient in the middle of BFE Small Town in a Generic MidWest State, how many others are there who are in Highly Populated Large Amount of People States that balance that out?  Factor in multiple locations who are "treatment centers" and then ponder this further.  See what I'm getting at here?  That does, indeed, balance out.

This is a fucking INDUSTRY, people.   Numbers don't lie, so is it any wonder that the big pharma industry doesn't want people to be better?  Healthy people don't line their pockets.  Sick ones do.  Don't fix the cause, treat the symptoms.

Don't believe me?  Have a read.  Go run a search on "cost of chemo for cancer" and see what comes up.  At least some people are finally figuring this out.

(Lest some of you think I'm a completely evil bitch who hates all doctors, no, there's a few out there who genuinely want to help people, but they seem to be few and far between.)

So, where's all that money going?  It's sure as fuck not funding a cure.

Milestones. Even I have them.

I'm now up to well over 500 followers on Pinterest, and over 300 on A Valid Option, which is awesome.  

My Cancer Bitches group is at just under 20 people, which is awesome.

I have recipes that will be included in the One Mother to Another Recipes anthology to be released on the 25th of this month.

I'm up to 30 Likes on my fakebook site.

So I guess it looks like I've been published or featured in multiple places.  It's just not the kind of publishing I was aiming for.  Once upon a time, that would have been fiction because that's what I did--I wrote fiction.  Now, I guess that's not anything I'll work on attempting again, so fiction I've written will just collect dust on my hard drive and I guess that's okay.   There's other things I can do to entertain myself.

"Cancer doesn't define me as a person." or, let's define this.

"Cancer doesn't define me as a person.  I can't/won't/don't let it."  *insert potentially condescending/smarmy tone here which get directed at me on occasion because of my stupidly realistic commentary/perspective/bitchitude about cancer*

(I'm such a bitch, I laugh myself silly whenever I read that shit.)

Of course it doesn't define you as a person.  Of course you can't/won't/don't let it.

And to that, I say horse shit; piles and piles and piles of it.

Once you've had it, that's it.  It's part of your fucking medical history.  It's part of your life because once you've had it, you're not home free, woo fucking hoo, life goes back to normal.  If you've had it and then had related surgery, it can be disfiguring, in some cases, like in mine.

Once you've had it, it's like an axe is literally waiting to drop on your neck afterward, Idgaf what kind you've had or when.  There are lasting effects that are just waiting to attack in some manner or another because of chemo and/or radiation, neither are a walk in the fucking park, people.  (Fortunately, I was a stubborn bitch who kept refusing radiation.  At my last chemo, the oncologist "agreed" with me that I didn't need radiation after all.  I have shitty heart genes on both sides of my family.  The chemo I had was super cardio-toxic.  I wasn't willing to roll the dice and "hope for the best" by just accepting the radiation road.  Fuck that.)

You can't just go back to normal, there is no get the fuck over it and move on.  There are still tons of doctor's appointments, scans, appointments for scans, have to be monitored to make sure the cancer doesn't come back, and for those who don't get their chemo port pulled, appointments to have that flushed ever so often.  (For me, I have ugly ass scars staring me in the face.)

I got my port pulled as soon as it could be arranged once I found out the current oncologist who said it was up to me regarding getting it pulled.  He said he'd seen some women get theirs pulled the day after their last chemo, and other women who kept their ports for years.  For me, it was about taking a little piece of my life back.  Mentally, I didn't need to feel like control of my life had still been and continued to be ripped away from me by having to keep going back to get the damn thing flushed every eight weeks, supposedly to keep it from clotting or getting infected.  Having to do that meant, in my brain, an aspect of cancer was still in control of my life and I really felt like I didn't need that.  Is it a pain in the ass getting stuck for something medical related now?  Yeah, it is, since my veins are small, and they roll, and chemo fucked them up, not to mention the whole lymphedema issue.  But at least I don't have that horrible port staring me in the face.  I just have the ugly ass scars now.

"Cancer doesn't "define" me as a person."  Some of you are still sitting out there saying it and your mentality toward me about my bitchitude is pissy, but you don't want to admit that.

Of course not it's not defining you since in spite of the fact that you're wearing a shit ton of "awareness" bracelets/jewelry, etc., your wardrobe consists of a shit ton of various pink ribbon and/or awareness shirts and you're prancing around with a fucking pink ribbon inked on you.  No, that doesn't define you at all.  To me, it just...well, defines you because you're advertising it, for lack of a better way to put it.  If that shit works for you, then that's great.  But don't fucking say that cancer doesn't "define you" and try to tell me that like you've got your shit together about it you when it really does define you and you've proven it does by your choice of ink, jewelry, and clothing.  Go take a look.  No, really.  Please do go look.  I'm the one walking around in black tee shirts and shirts with other assorted logo related things on them that are NOT cancer related.  In other words, the only advertising I'm doing about cancer is by going flat, and not wearing pinkwashing stuff.

If I could go get ink right now (and I'm not able to because of the stupid blood thinner stuff I'm on), it wouldn't be someone else's pink ribbon.  That was for SGK.  I'm me and because I love horses, I'd get something horse related.  JS.

But just because I'm not going along with shit like keeping the fucking port, prancing around with pink ribbon shit, or letting my entire wardrobe revolve around the pink ribbon and "awareness" shit, doesn't mean I'm letting it "define" me.  It just means that I'm me and I refuse to go along with what everyone else is doing because I'm an unconventional non-conformist.  So because I don't, people say I let cancer define me, although I'm obviously not doing so at all.

But...to those of you who say that sort of thing to me, you might want to think again before saying it because...well, just saying.  Do us both a favor and rethink it.

Three years ago, my breasts were amputated;

And right along with them, everything else on the entire upper third of my chest.  Nothing but skin over bone was left.  That's it.  I have nothing on my upper chest except skin over ribs.  You can fit your fingers between them--yes, that's my fucking ribs, people.

No, I'm not exactly able-bodied, nor am I disabled.  I fall somewhere in between, like maybe a fucked up body and a fucked up mind.  (No, I'm not a threat to anyone else or myself.)

I refused to be reconstructed because I wasn't interested in up to two years of multiple surgeries to have two unfeeling lumps of whatever trendy goo there is for such things eventually stuffed under my skin with the hope it wouldn't reject.  Yes, implants can and do reject, just like any foreign, or not foreign part of the body moved to do reconstruction, such as a DIEP flap or TRAM flap.  Of course nobody but the patients who have had recon issues admit there can be problems.  (There's also the factor of nothing but skin, which wouldn't hold anything anyway, be it my own transplanted flesh or implants, so it's pointless.)  Besides, do I need two lumps of faux goop to give me shape not matching where they are placed or sitting correctly under my skin or screaming "BOOB JOB" when it's obvious they're fake and don't match the rest of my body?  (So many times these implants wind up being placed badly, or they shift and don't stay where they're supposed to and there's no way to guess if they'll cooperate or not and then it's ridiculous finding a doctor who will admit it's messed up or that said implants should be re-positioned to fix them, or removed and then if the implants don't reject, they have to be replaced every ten years, it changes the game for monitoring after a breast cancer diagnosis.  Yet more surgeries.  No fucking way.)  (In some countries, women who don't want recon are given fucking psych evals.  That's so fucking ridiculous.  It's our bodies, we should have the final say, not a fucking doctor because recon isn't done to save someone's life.)

Don't believe me about the hell that is reconstruction?  Go look into reconstruction procedures and then the failures for the different kinds of recon.  Epic failures.  Let's put it this way.  I've encountered more women who are flat from failed reconstruction than who have had successful reconstruction/replacement of one or both breasts.   If I could get recon done, would I?  Fuck, no.  I'm so not interested in the tons of surgeries for it and all the potential problems that go along with it.

I still fucking hate cancer.  I still hate what it's done to me mentally, emotionally, and physically.  It is a mind fuck, I don't give a fuck who you are, trying to process it is a mind fuck.  Anyone who says they aren't concerned about it or have issues about it upon being diagnosed and at any point is, I think and believe, fucking lying. 

Am I bitter about what was done to me?  You bet.  I think it's perfectly normal for me to have issues with it and someone who claims they don't have issues at some point or another about what is or has been done to them is full of shit, to my way of thinking.  Just the whole thing of trying to figure it out, wrap the brain around how horrible "treatment" is, being horribly sick, and then realizing that it's not cancer that actually kills most people diagnosed, it's what's fucking done to them, the chemo and/or radiation, well, yeah, it's a bunch of shit to try to process.  Things never go back to "normal" once someone is diagnosed.  I cannot imagine how horrible it is to be a child trying to figure any of that shit out.

Three years out from surgery and I still refuse to allow my husband to see me without a shirt.  This is not how I want him to think of me, with two huge vertical gashes of scarring on my now concave upper chest.

Yes, I'm concave.  No, I don't like it.  I was once told by a medical person that the surgeon did a "great job" and well, let me put it this way.  That is fucking subjective.  That fucker left me with severe nerve damage, ripped everything off my chest except my skin, and he did a "great" job?  Really?  The person who told me that had both of her breasts, so it's all in perspective.  Of course she'd think he did a "great" job.  She was standing there with her breasts still attached to her body.  Mine were chopped off and to this day, I still find that questionable.  I was told after surgery there was "nothing" there, so did that breast really need to be removed, along with the other one as a "preventative" measure?   Is it any wonder I'm not more fucked up in the head over this than what I am?  Imagine fucking living with that.  Knowing you were lied to by a surgeon repeatedly, then being told there was no "sign" of "anything" when the surgery was done.  And no, the person who did it didn't do a "great" job.  He lied to me about quite a few things, to my face and he fucking lied to my husband.  I can only hope that doctor is no longer doing this to other women.  What he did was criminal and so fucking wrong on so many levels.

Being concave does not make wearing foobs conducive to my lifestyle, not even the ones with adhesive, my skin doesn't tolerate adhesive.

Yes, I liked my breasts.  I had no complaints about them and neither did my husband.  They functioned perfectly feeding the monkeys when they were babies.  

Cancer is a fucking curse, I don't care who you are and where you are in dealing with it.  It's a curse, it's shit.  Three years out from a bilateral mastectomy, I'm not a "better" person.  I'm not a hero.  I'm not "normal" any longer and it didn't "fix" me in any manner.  As much as I'm certain someone will get pissy about this, I'll still fucking say it and stand by what I've said for over three years now.  Had I known then upon diagnosis what I know now, I would have walked away from the whole shitload of bullshit that cancer is, either have allowed it to take me or tried unconventional (cannabis oil) treatment that wasn't available where I lived at the time, but I would not do any of this again.  I would not subject my husband and our sons to this shit.  (And the residual financial ass raping?  Nope, that's not discussed before someone does get on this road, either, which is horribly, horribly wrong, also.)

Sure, I'm still married.  Sure, I'm still a mom.  No, I'm not the old, normal me.  That person is long gone and will never return.  It's just too fucking bad some people can't fucking figure that out.

Three years now.  According to the oncologist, I'm NED (no evidence of disease) currently.  Will I make it another year?  Will I make it two years?  Some people call this sort of thing a cancer-versary.  Personally, I dislike that and won't do so.  If that works for them, great.  I don't like it, so I don't use that particular phrase regarding myself.

I guess we'll see how far I get.  But for this afternoon, I think I need some barn time.  The horses are wonderful.  (Oh yeah, so is my husband for being willing to still get into bed with me every night in spite of how bad I look.  No, none of this are his issues with me, they're all my issues with me, so don't go thinking he's a dick, because he's not.  He's been great about this whole mess.  A couple of days ago, he kissed me on the cheek and said he was glad I'm still here, so no, it's not him being a dick.  I'm the one who has issues with me.)

Minimal sleep, a meeting, no barn time, and crocheting.

Last night, I got into baking cookies for this morning because of a meeting the husband and I were attending, but I didn't really sleep last night because I was stressed out and my brain wouldn't shut down in spite of three milligrams of melatonin to sleep.  Sleep just didn't happen for me, so of course I'm draggy today.

It was a meeting with our construction manager.  We're in the middle of our house being built, which is something we've never done before and while we've dealt with our realtor, banker finance guy, and builder rep, we hadn't met the construction manager until today.  He was awesome and said we're still on track for the end of March.  These people have taken a potentially hugely scary experience and made it not so very bad at all, expect me spazzing out about the weather.  Nobody can fix that but me.  We have had one weekend where it spit snow a bit and one or two days where it was drizzly.  The rest of the time, even with it being cold, we've had clear weather which has been great for construction. We now have not just a slab with the necessities for that, but also walls, adorable windows, and a completed roof and our fireplace has been installed!  ZOMFG!

Three years ago, if someone had told me that my husband would lose his job and be unemployed for six months while I finished out the abuse of chemo, we would move halfway across the country, drive over to Colorado to visit Army Monkey and his Adorable Wife for a few days, I'd be volunteering at a nearby barn grooming horses, be included in the Celtic Guide publication multiple times, and we'd have a son in college, one who is part of a team who won the state championship, and that we would be able to repair our credit well enough to be building a house in the same neighborhood we lived in, and find some nice neighbors, the reply I'd have given that person would have been to tell them they were batshit crazy.

Bat.  Shit.  Crazy.

But obviously not.

I still don't have any ink to cover the vile scars on my upper chest.  I still have to pack us up so we can move in two months.  (I've learned a local move can be just as stressful as a cross country move.)

I didn't get barn time in today because I needed to give Fuzzy Manatee some medicine earlier today and one of her little teeth sliced my thumb.  It's just one of those things.  She's not mean, she wasn't being mean, she was in self-preservation mode because "ZOMFG!Two-Legger-Is-Shoving-Something-Icky-In-My-Mouth!"  Because I'm on blood thinners, this is a problem.  Because I've had lymph nodes ripped out of my body on the right side, that means my lymph system is damaged and doesn't function normally any longer, so that's yet another potential problem.  Even a paper cut or hang nail being pulled so there's a tiny open nick or cut can result in or trigger a massively serious infection and/or swelling in my arm on that side.  It's fucking ridiculous, actually.  Being stepped on by a horse isn't a problem, but a fucking paper cut can be--go figure.  

Streak has taught me how to crochet, which is awesome because I didn't figure I was smart or coordinated enough to actually learn how to.  She has got to be one of the most amazingly kind people I have ever encountered.  She encouraged me and would explain some things to me without actually seeming like she was explaining whatever about it and she wasn't confusing about it at all.

Because I can tie my shoes, my logic was since I found This Project by Hidden Daisyy that I should be able to actually make that.  And I did, in a dark teal color, so I actually made something.

Three year amputation-versary is this week, so while I'm pleased about the house, I'm also not so great mentally because of the stupid bilateral mastectomy three years ago, but that's another post for another day.

Hopefully, I can get barn time in on Thursday.

Confidence. Do I have it?

BC (before cancer), I was happy with my body.  Sure, I was shaped like a mom, but I had a definitively feminine shape.  I looked girly.  I had D/DD breasts, contingent upon the bra and fit of said bra, but overall, I had no complaints.  Sure, I'd have been happy to lose ten or fifteen pounds, my logic was if the husband had no complaints, then I didn't either.

AD (after diagnosis) and six months of chemo, I went to sleep in a hospital and magically woke up ten to twelve pounds lighter without breasts.  I liked my breasts.  I had no complaints about them.  They had functioned fabulously well with feeding the three monkeys when they were babies.

And yet one of them betrayed me and tried to kill me.  (A breast, not a monkey.)

Cancer fucking shattered me.  There's no other word for it.  Shattered.  Mentally, emotionally, physically.  It's such a mind fuck.  I had to learn there was still a shard of me in here somewhere.

I read of people who are flatties or unis (Uniboobers, you know, single mastectomy people.)  who are wrestling mentally with to wear or not to wear foobs (fake or faux boobs) or physically by actually wearing said foobs and trying to keep them in place.

Do what's comfortable for you.  The first year after my bilateral mastectomy, I felt like a deformed freak.  I fucking hated how I looked.  Fucking.  Hated.  As in, yes, fucking hated.

The next year, I wound up acquiring foobs because an oncologist finally gave a damn and gave me a prescription for mastectomy bras and forms.  Then I had the humiliating experience of going to get fitted for said stuff.  Don't get me wrong, the fitter was absolutely amazing, an incredibly kind woman who was very patient with me while I sat there terrified of her, shaking and afraid to speak because I was so afraid of anything medical related.  She managed to get me outfitted with what I needed, plus some sleeves for lymphedema.

I tried wearing my faux bra and foobs a few times.  They were just not all that comfortable, even though they were fitted properly.  You're probably thinking if they were fitted properly, there shouldn't have been a pain issue.  Well, with the fucked up nerve damage from what was done to me surgically and the vile chemo, and the scar tissue, things just seemed to hit in all the wrong places.  Then there's the whole issue of the fact that I'm concave on my upper chest, both sides.  The foob forms are concave.  In spite of the pockets in the mastectomy bra, there is unfilled space there.  They don't stay in place.  That's all there is to it.

So, I gave up after a few attempts to wear them.  Then I tried again a few more times.  Overly perky, properly shaped foobs screamed "FAKE!FAKE!FAKE!BOOBS!" and at my age, I don't need something that looks like I have the breasts of a twenty-four year old woman.  Mentally, it made me feel strange to know that those pieces parts of me did NOT match the rest of me.  I gave up, placed the foobs back into their boxes where they live and the bras are in a drawer which I rarely open because I don't need what's in there.

My attitude was I don't give a fuck if someone looks at me or not.  It became an adventure going out and not caring what other people thought.  I went down that road with the bald head--I didn't give a fuck what other people thought or even said.  Well, if I could apply that don't give a fuck attitude with my lack of feminine shape, then I was going to go with that, and so I did.

I started wearing what I wanted when I wanted and I didn't and still don't care what people think and I do so in a confident manner.

People, breastless and unis, OWN IT!  If you feel like you can go out and about without the hassle of foobs or a foob, and you mentally wrap your brain around that you CAN do this, you fucking do it and be proud!  To hell with anyone else who doesn't like it.  This is 2015, not 1915 where someone might be upset if you aren't shaped like everyone else.

(Of course as I'm working on this post, someone in a group got rather pissy about what I said about not giving a fuck about what other people think--or that's how it came across--and she said some people do care how they look.)

My perspective is this.  If that works for you, fine.  I've never been one to go along with what everyone else was doing, so this is my way of saying "Fuck off." to society.

I have owned my flatness and am so confident with it that people don't even notice I'm a flattie.  And that is what my blog post is about.

Owning it.

When you own it, people perceive confidence and breasts, or a lack thereof or one or two, aren't even an issue.  (Were breasts an issue before one or both of them were cut off?  Of course not!  People didn't give a fuck.  They likely noticed you for being you, not your breasts!)

Do I hate how I look?  Sure.  I don't have a feminine shape, so I don't feel as girly, if that makes sense.  I have twenty five pounds of steroid weight from being allergic to the chemo that won't go anywhere and I fucking hate it.  I'm genuinely shaped like a pear.  Seriously.  I don't even know what size I wear on top because I wear tee shirts, and on bottom, I'm a size fourteen, disproportionately shaped now because of having no breasts.  ZOMFG!  There, I said it--now you know what size I am.

You know what?  It doesn't matter.  What matters is I learned I could develop confidence gradually by realizing that nobody noticed.  Nobody noticed when I had breasts.  Nobody notices now, unless the actual subject of breast cancer comes up.

Maybe this will help someone out there reading who has been dealing with the shit cancer hands people.

What helped me find that second shard of me was Firework by Katy Perry because it's such an awesome song.  What helped me find another piece of me was learning the lyrics.  And then singing along a little bit.  And then singing a little bit more.

And a bit more until now, I crank that song and fucking belt it out, never mind the fact that I can't sing.  Unexplicably, that song did help me gain some confidence about myself again, believe it or not.  Maybe it will help you.  And if you're having a particularly shitty day, please give it a listen, it might help you perk up a bit.

But for now, please go listen to it and maybe realize you can feel a little more comfortable without foobs and get a little confidence back like I did.

<3

The hair post, since I've been asked for it.

Because people have asked for it, here's the hair post.

BC (before cancer), my hair grew about an inch a month.  It grew to where I could go donate about eighteen to twenty inches of hair every other year and I'd get it cut off to donate to Pantene Beautiful Lengths, who makes human hair wigs for people who have lost their hair to chemo.  After a cut for that, my hair would still be just barely above my collarbone.  

Because I didn't do anything chemical to my hair, it was always very healthy looking.  I was fortunate, I had decent hair.  

AD (after diagnosis) and one (overdose) of chemo, that all changed.  My hair started falling out by the handfuls.  There was nothing to be done but drag out the clippers.  I shaved my own head.  Strangely enough, I didn't find this as disturbing as I thought I would.  I shaved it and stood there looking at the person who was in the mirror and I realized that was no longer me as a person--that person looking at me had lost twenty pounds in a week from chemo, so she really looked nothing like me and would look even less so like me after a bilateral mastectomy in a few months from that point.

I went bald.  I refused to wear scarves and wigs and didn't give a fuck who I offended by doing so.  You need to realize that at the time, we were living in Lower Alabama, where people thought I was batshit crazy for having gotten my nose pierced almost immediately after diagnosis.  People there would get very bent out of shape when they asked me the required questions about religious beliefs for pre-hospital paperwork and I would answer "Jedi." without batting an eyelash just to fuck with them.  What I believe or don't believe was personal and none of their fucking business.

There were a few compliments about my head, how nice it looked bald, I would usually reply with a thank you and that I was trying to rock the bald since I hadn't been allowed to do anything fun like that back in the day in high school.  (k.d.lang, Dolores O'Riordan, or Sinead O'Connor look, anyone?)

Finishing a year of chemo didn't do much for my hair.  Sure, it had filled in, but it wasn't really growing.  It wasn't doing much of anything except sticking out.  To have gone from decent and straight hair to this bizarre thing my hair was doing was intolerable for me.

My hair was lighter, definitely had more gray in it and I couldn't do a damn thing with it, so I started looking at hair care products with a very angrivated perception.  None would do for my hair what they claimed they would and I wasn't willing to climb onto the batshit crazy expense of trying this, that, or the other hair products and hoping for the best.

So I did what I do best, I started researching.  (I've been on the internet for twenty years now, believe me when I tell you I can do some seriously hard core research on something.)

I discovered there were alternative methods of hair care out there on the internet floating around that actually might do me some good with my hair.  There were even images of before, during, and after, explanations, suggestions, what people were using, and that sort of thing.  I decided to try baking soda with an acidic rinse.  Let me stress here people, that if baking soda is used, it MUST ALWAYS be followed with an acidic rinse to re-balance the pH of the scalp.  It MUST ALWAYS have a minimum of five days in between uses or you risk damaging your hair.

That said, I have to tell you, there are some people with longer hair who go through a time with their hair where it adjusts to being washed less, but it does eventually self-adjust.  Some people go low shampoo, meaning they don't want to use products on their hair which they cannot pronounce, be it for trying to be greener, use less toxins to be healthier, not pad the pockets of some nameless, faceless entity who doesn't gaf if that person does anything but buy the particular product they are marketing, traveling to another country and trying to go with less maintenance on their hair or whatever, some people are doing that.  Some people are no shampoo, meaning they don't use conventional shampoo products at all, and they are water only with their hair care and yes, in spite of being water only, their hair is clean.

I found a group on fakebook that's the low/no shampoo group.  I sat there and lurked for I don't know how long, reading, checking out posts, paying attention, learning, and then I finally jumped in and posted.  I posted about why I was doing this--for me it was an attempt to get my hair to grow back after a year of chemo.  In my brain, if I did mess something up on my hair, well, I'd already recently been bald, I could just shave my head again and start over.  After all, it's only hair and would eventually grow back.

In March 2013, I started actively monkeying around to see what I could do with this alternative hair care thing.  Let me state that, for the record, people who are crunchy still clean their hair, they just aren't doing it the way people these days have been brainwashed into thinking it has to be done.  I'm not a crunchy, though, I'm a crumbly.  Some things I'm more crumbly than crunchy.  Other things I'm more crunchy than crumbly.  That's a post for another day, though.

The water here is hard, which can affect what one can do with the hair, but I figured I'd give it a serious shot.

This is from a post dated September 7, 2013:
Going to jump in here on this one. By washing my hair less and going with the BS/DWV or tea rinse on occasion, my hair is better and grows more and faster. It wasn't doing anything with conventional hair products and I was looking for something to use which wasn't going to cost a fortune, only to have me find it wasn't helping. My hair had all fallen out from chemo. Two years ago, I was completely bald after one dose of chemo. One year ago, my hair was very short and sticking out everywhere, it would not grow. Before I got sick, my hair would grow about a foot per year. Even six months ago, I still had almost no length on it. Chemo wrecked my hair and skin. For someone to have hair that would grow an inch a month or a foot per year, to barely any growth at all was getting on my last freaking nerve.

I was debating on shaving my head and just keeping it shaved, but then people assume one is still in treatment and I didn't feel like dealing with The Looks from other people--I already get those on occasion because I have not reconstructed and will not do so and sometimes people notice I have no breasts. I give zero fucks about it, though. If they have a problem with it, it's their problem, but the lack of hair would be really frustrating for me. I liked my long hair, I missed my long hair. I felt like hair would help with the boobless thing.

Then I tried doing the BS and DWV back in March. The first time, I thought my hair smelled like a wet dog because of the vinegar that I was hyper sensitive to--yet another stupid "gift" of chemo--super nose smelling ability. My husband thought that was hilarious and told me he didn't notice it. It dissipated within a few minutes.

Within a few weeks, I noticed my hair was growing and felt better. My scalp had improved--remember, chemo wrecked my skin, also. No flakes, no itching, so that was a definite improvement. I won't ever go back to conventional hair products at this point. Right now, I'm on like day three or not washing and my hair looks, feels, and acts as if it's been freshly washed. When I started this, saying my hair was two inches long was being generous. Now it's at eight inches long. It still sticks out and I don't know what to do with it since my hair was always straight before this, but it's getting longer and I can now put it in a pony tail.

I feel confidant in saying had I remained with using conventional hair products, I would still have badly growing hair. It's a vicious cycle. Have bad hair? Use XYZ products. Still not good? Try ABC products instead. Still not having good hair? Keep searching and spending and spending and spending.

Not me, not any longer. I will definitely not go back to conventional hair products. I've seen the proof with my own hair and we have hard water and I've still seen a difference.

First, one has to wrap the brain around the concept of realizing our great grandparents and beyond them in the past did not have all the instant ready made hair products available that line shelf after shelf after shelf at the stores these days.  So, what did they use?

Second, it's interesting to grasp of already having stuff available at home to use.  

Third, actually playing around with this stuff.  It's fun. 

For example, today, I used some old basil simmered in four or five cups of water on low for about twenty minutes, let it cool, strained it, and then I put that on my hair as a wash/rinse.  My hair is soft, it smells amazing, and since this is a new "thing" for my hair, I'll see what it does for the next few days.

Probably the best way to start is to get a clarifying shampoo and use it a couple of times.  Stuff does build up on the hair like silicones.  (Personally, I dgaf about a few silicones here and there on occasion as much as I object to paraben/s, so if I use something I haven't made, I don't want it to have paraben/s in it.  There are low shampoo options out there that don't have silicones, sulfates, and parabens in them.)

Things I have put in my hair:  apple cider vinegar, baking soda (just a pinch diluted in two cups of water), basil water, beer, bentonite clay, black tea, cinnamon, chickpeas (pureed and also the liquid drained from them), cocoa (not Dutch processed), coconut milk, coconut water, coffee, honey, lemon juice, lime juice, molasses, potato water, rice flour, rye flour, shampoo bar made of mint and tea tree oil and marshmallow root, (diluted) white vinegar, yogurt, and I'm probably unintentionally omitting something here.

Things I haven't put in my hair that I'd like to try:  aloe, homemade hairspray, henna, jojoba oil, and I'm sure there's a few other odds and ends I'm unintentionally leaving out.

I've learned about henna, cassia, how to make hair masks, what a shampoo bar is, dry shampoo, and all sorts of nifty and interesting things.

There's a ton of information at what I call the Alternative Hair Care Low/No Shampoo group.

And as of today, my hair is waist length, is healthy, shiny, and has no damage.

Skin care is another post for another day.