The Girl With Nine Wigs (15 page)

We stroll back alongside the shop windows. The grumpy faces of the bored saleswomen stare straight through me.
Boredom—now that's something I haven't felt for a long time.

 

TUESDAY, JULY 5

T
ALKING TO DOCTORS
has its complications. Until six months ago, I had a completely different idea of how hospitals worked. I saw sick people coming in through the entrance and leaving again through the exit, healed. Now I see blood samples getting lost, IV needles missing the vein three times in a row, files going missing, and multiple doctors prescribing something different for the same ailment. And it's as if they're speaking in tongues. Forget French, I need to take lessons in Doctor-Speak 101.

Dr. L tells me, “Your right lung is responding well, and the pleural soft-tissue mass on the right side of the thorax has decreased. There was an issue with the nodular pleural structures, but rib six posterior shows figuration of the bone. Soft-tissue mass two in the lining of the lateral abdomen has also decreased. There is still a right anterobasal horizontal-shaped disfiguration in the lung.” I take a copy of the file with me and plug the information into my computer. My spell-check freaks out.

*   *   *

Today Dad and I have come to a different hospital, outside of Amsterdam, to discuss my chances for radiation. Now that radiation is on the agenda, it has taken over the royal seat of chemo. Suddenly it's the radiation treatment that's going to make the difference, not the chemo. Chemo was just a warm-up, new doctors say. While my father closely inspects the coffee vending machine, I watch every movement of the nurse behind the reception desk.

A door opens and a doctor appears. He's wearing glasses and has hair that falls wildly over his ears. He calls out a name and a geriatric man in front of me gets up. His wife shuffles after him.

Another door opens and a younger doctor appears. I think midthirties.
Will he be my radiologist?
He walks to the reception desk and leaves the file he has in his hands. Then he walks back into his office without calling out any name.

“Van der Stap?”

I turn around. I get up and offer the third candidate my hand. He looks at me very briefly as if to underline that I'm just another patient. So this is my radiologist: Dr. O.

He sketches my lungs and draws two big arrows where the radiation will be aimed. He weighs me and examines my glands. The scale shows fifty-five kilos. That's one less kilo than last month.

His thoughts on my case are inconclusive, and therefore not very encouraging. “A number of things are still unclear to me. It won't be straightforward, that we know for certain. I'll be in touch with my colleagues in Rotterdam and Utrecht before I come to a conclusion. I want to hear what they think of your condition. Dr. N in Rotterdam is renowned.”

I leave the office, feeling anything but reassured.
Why can't they stand to be a bit more cheerful?
On our way home I tell Dad that I feel glad being under Dr. L's care. That he's actually a very nice man.

*   *   *

Dear Jan pops by to say hello just as I am coming back from the hospital. He brought along the sweetest chocolates. “Have some. We can't have you too healthy. That's dangerous.”

I give him a kiss and a hug. “I want to go out. Do you feel like trying on some wigs?”

“Wigs? Yes, baby, let's go. I can use one too. But first serve this old man some tea and chocolates.”

I spin in circles in a now-familiar chair. Jan happily wanders up and down the aisles and comes back wearing the most hideous wigs, making a complete fool out of himself, but he eventually brings back a sophisticated blonde as well.

“Jan, hand it over. I'm sure she looks better on me.”

“I wouldn't be so sure of that.”

Well, she does. So much for modesty. Meet Pam. Pam, the girl next door. Pam, Jennifer Aniston's younger sister. Look-how-my-hair-blows-naturally-in-the-wind Pam. And the best part: She doesn't even look like a wig. Pam is the hair I always wished for: pretty without looking pretentious. I take another look in the mirror. I'm beginning to recognize the face that I see there. It makes me wonder if maybe I could actually be like Pam.

We stroll back together and it's nice,
really
nice, strolling with these beautiful blond streaks that blow in the soft wind and with my dear friend over the quiet, sunny canals. We talk, we laugh, we say nothing. This is the part of cancer that leaves me clueless: I never felt as happy in my life as I have at certain moments in the last couple of months, strolling with Jan through town, getting together around the kitchen table with my family, gluing myself into my sister's arms.

People say without our health we have nothing. I don't have my health, but I have Jan and Rob and Annabel and my family. If I had to choose, the choice would be easy.

I can't wait to see Rob's face. Today is the seventh time I can surprise him with a new look.

*   *   *

The day I found out I had cancer, I no longer had to play by the rules. I can do, say, and think whatever I like. Everyone pities me, everyone wants to lend a helping hand. I sometimes worry that this will make me forget what life is really like. I can get away with anything; the truth is that cancer just makes me more loved. Every time I turn up in a new wig, I hear, “Oh, wow, this one looks great as well. It's just amazing the way you're handling this.” Apparently cancer impresses people. People think they admire me for how well I handle it, but they don't get that I'm not “handling” anything, I'm just going through it.

My wigs help me hide what I want to hide and to emphasize what I want to show off. The wig I choose to put on my head creates the space I need for the mood I'm in. The cancer is always there. When I fall asleep, wake up, do the grocery shopping. But when I put on a wig, I am there as well. It's as if I'm taking its part on stage. Wearing my illness on the outside makes the situation easier for others and for me. It can be hard to understand other people's problems, and that's where my wigs come in: I can't think of a better way to show my vulnerability, and myself, than by wearing a different wig every day.

Now my wigs make it easy to switch worlds. As Uma, my taste in men draws me to crumpled T-shirts pulled out from the bottom of the laundry basket and worn with a five-o'clock shadow. But I also love neatly ironed Armani suits and matching loafers, accessorized with a dazzling white smile—that's Platina's style. As Blondie, I love a rough-and-tumble Marlboro Man; smooth-talking jet-setters are perfect for Stella. Sue is all about the philosopher exhaling his big ideas with the smoke from his joint. And the jock with a heart of gold but no ideas at all? A perfect match for Daisy. My wigs are becoming more and more of a solution, rather than a problem.

 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 6

T
HE URGE TO PUT DOWN
my words on paper keeps on chasing me. It wakes me up at night, it pulls me away from underneath the warm blankets early in the morning, and it makes me a very bad listener: I'm constantly drifting away in new words waiting to be seized on paper. It helps me understand the incomprehensible, but that's not why the words won't stop. Truthfully, I'm scared shitless to cease to exist. To leave life behind and everybody in it.

We sit at a corner table in Rob's favorite Italian restaurant. On my way to the restroom I walk by the kitchen, where delicious food smells fill me with warmth as I pass. In the restroom, I touch up my fake eyebrows in the mirror and comb Platina. When I walk back, Rob is talking to the owner, Salvatore. They hug tightly. On the table there are two yellow Livestrong bracelets.

“For you,” Salvatore says. “Rob told me about your illness. I'm sure you're going to make it. Our son, Marco, didn't. He passed away last year. Leukemia.”

I swallow a big lump that has suddenly found its way to my throat. Salvatore looks me intensely in the eyes. He is wearing the bracelet himself. For a brief moment, his pain is my pain and my pain is his pain as we sit drinking wine together. When he's gone, Rob and I slip on the bracelets. I want to be connected to him via a bond that's impossible to break.

A few hours later, I surf my new friend Lance's Web site and buy one hundred yellow bracelets. Indirectly, I owe him a lot, too much to count. One hundred yellow dollars, to make the lives of all those other baldies a little better. It might be a bit much, but ten bracelets look so silly beside the recommended one hundred and optional thousand. I click
CONFIRM
, happy to contribute to my own destiny.

I go to bed and snuggle up close to Rob. I'm feeling scared but keep it to myself. I don't know what to say, anyway. And it always ends in a simple “Everything is going to be fine.”

How many times did Marco have to listen to that crap?

 

THURSDAY, JULY 21

B
EFORE THE RADIATION STARTS,
it's vacation time. Fourteen days of sunshine, good food, French wine, bikinis, sandals, and not a white coat to be seen. Two weeks of pure bliss in the South of France with Annabel!

When I was five years old, there was one stuffed animal in the mall that I wanted more than anything, and I threw a temper tantrum until I got her. Her name is Minoe, and she's a little plush kitty. Minoe has loyally shared my bed for the past sixteen years, which is much more than I can say for my boyfriends. She's been everywhere I've been, but I think her favorite trip was to the Himalayas.

There she found herself in between the ducks and the yaks, the Chinese and the Tibetans. At first, Minoe wasn't sure what to make of all those green expanses, bright turquoise lakes, icy blue skies, and sparkling mountaintops. It was chilly for a cat that had never left modern, bustling Amsterdam. By now, Minoe is well traveled and experienced in swapping her spot in my bed for a tent in Iran, a sleeping bag in Nepal, a houseboat in Kashmir, or a sheepskin rug in Rajasthan.

And soon we'll be heading out into the big, wide world again. “Five more nights,” she softly purrs in the ears of the nurses. Five more nights before she's back in that world.

 

SATURDAY, JULY 23

I
'VE BEEN RELEASED
from the hospital!
Indefinitely released
. My coveted discharge document is beside me. I look at it as I lie in bed. My last night in the hospital has been slept, my last morning has dawned. The last bag of IV fluid dangles from the arms of my tall guardian. I've spent thirty-five nights here. The first six months—twenty-seven weeks—have passed. I look at my IV with mixed feelings. He's silent.

No more sleepovers on C6, no more hospital smell or chemo pee.
Never again?
I don't dare say it out loud just yet. From now on it's just maintenance chemo as an outpatient and radiation at the hospital in Rotterdam.

Farewell, C6. Rotterdam, here we come.
Will Bas miss me? Does he miss the others who came before me? How many of us does he miss? How many of us have walked these corridors?
I peek through an open door, on the alert for another me hiding under a wig, but all I see are old people picking up the last fragments of their lives.

My father has come to pick me up. He gives me a hand putting my clothes and books in my bag. I had packed most of it yesterday afternoon, eager to get out of here. I'm happy to see him. When my mother is worried it shows immediately on her face, but my father either knows very well how to hide his, or he really has only one credo: carpe diem.

“Good morning, princess, did you enjoy your last week in paradise?” Dad doesn't speak easily about things that matter. My father is the type of man who hangs around the kitchen on the lookout for someone to laugh with. He communicates through his humor. I guess he gets so uncomfortable when it comes to uncomfortable situations that he always has a joke up his sleeve to make things appear less grave. I guess I'm my father's daughter in many ways.

The moment he walks into my room and into my life with his big grin, the hospital feels like just a little bump to deal with. There are more important things in life: the family dinner tonight and laughter, to start with.

Mom doesn't always understand his humor, or mine for that matter since I inherited his. The other day I felt a small lump on my lip that resulted in a joke with Dad about a lip tumor. Dad and I had a huge laugh about it while Mom was looking at us like we belonged to somebody else's family.

The elevator opens in the garage under the hospital. The odor is as bad as on my ward. When my father turns on the motor, a CD starts playing automatically: the Rolling Stones. During the journey home we don't say a word to each other but both shout along with the lyrics, turning the volume up more and more.

 

MONDAY, JULY 25

O
NE MORE HOSPITAL VISIT BEFORE
scooting off—this time in Rotterdam, where Dr. N, my new radiologist, practices. The radiologists are ready and waiting for me, armed with their protractors, tracers, and other measuring equipment. Dr. N is like a gift from the gods compared to the other doctors I've encountered in the past six months. He looks like Professor Calculus from
Tintin
and isn't afraid of an encouraging shoulder pat. I warm to him immediately.

Feeling hesitant, I take a seat opposite him. Dr. O in Amsterdam didn't exactly fill me with hope. I'm happy he passed me on to Dr. N.

“I've looked at your photos, and I have to say, this won't be an easy task.”

“Oh.”

“The tumors are located in an area that is hard to reach, meaning we won't be able to radiate as strongly as we would like.”

“Oh.”

“There's not much I can say at this point, but I don't want to discourage you. I've cured cases of juvenile cancer similar to yours.”