Silver Hair Takes a Hit

One of the signs of a sick or distressed body is hair loss. This sounds benign, and in a way it is. In crisis, the body does its own form of triage, turning its attention away from hair production in favour of the more important organs, like the heart and kidneys. Hair, I guess, is dispensable.

But my hair is my glory. People like it. Some envy it. A few have wanted to touch it. I can take no credit for my hair; it's just the way I came into the world. But I'm proud of it, even a little vain. When, on my Vision Quest several years ago, my soul name dropped into my head from the wind--Silver Hair--not only did I approve, I rejoiced. Yes!!! It was a name I could happily grow into. Literally.

In recent weeks I've started losing those silver strands. Not in clumps, but in ones and twos, floating down to my shoulders during the day, and sometimes in tangles between my fingers in the shower. My hairdresser noticed it right away. "We'd better go short for now," he said, "cutting off the wispy parts down to wear it's still thick." Reluctantly, I agreed.

I've been reluctant to accept the entire mess my body's been in ever since painful cramps sent me to hospital back in May. I had a perforated bowel that was turning septic and might have killed me had Jean not given up a hike in the mountains to drive me to a medical clinic. Seven hours later I had a bag for a bum, hanging down from my belly, a colostomy. It may have saved my life, but it was hard on my savoir faire.

Then, in recovery, my heart began to act up, racing wildly, and allowing my body to accumulate fluids it couldn't then clear. For some reason, unrelated to my emergency surgery, my left atrium, the part of the heart that receives oxygenated blood from the lungs, had been thickening. Rogue protein cells, created in my bone marrow, had been attaching themselves to it. I wasn't getting better, I was getting worse, and they readmitted me to hospital, this time for heart failure.

The damage to my heart cannot be undone. So, I wheeze if I climb the stairs too fast, my voice carries the constant strain of compromised vocal cords, I have to walk slowly from the car to my next medical appointment, and I take a dozen pills each day to keep all the functioning parts of my body in play. Next week I will meet with specialists in both cardiology and hematology to try to apply words, and therefore treatments, to whatever is happening to me.

There was a moment when the surgeon who saved my life was talking about a procedure to reverse that surgery, tucking everything back inside and reopening my rear end for business. Not now. First, my heart would have to be able to withstand the anaesthetic, and we don't know yet whether it would. My cardiologist will make a ruling on that in the days to come.

And now, as I say, my hair is thinning. I wonder if the Universe thought of that possibility when it came up with 'Silver Hair.' Does it have a backup soul name? Silver Dome? Bald Eagle? Not the same. Anyway, my heart isn't in the mood for soul names right now. Instead, it's grieving everything that has been taken from me in this Summer of Loss, including hiking in the mountains, taking stairs two at a time, and singing my songs. As for recording a new season of podcasts, that will simply have to wait.

Thanks for sticking with me. If you wait long enough, there may well be a book about this journey. While everything else has fallen away, the writing has not, and I'm trying to keep up with the story as it unfolds. I also have a completed manuscript waiting in the wings, a follow-up to Talking to Trees, titled, Into the Mystic: Living in a World That's Alive. It's looking for a publisher right now. I'll let you know if it finds one.

Also, with this post, I'm releasing my thoughts into the world through Substack. That makes it easier for others to find me and to subscribe, if they wish, so you can tell your friends to look for me there. Because, whether or not my hair survives this fiasco, the reality is, for the time being, I'm still here. And so are you.