During chemo, I didn't just lose hair on my head but on other parts of the body as well. It was a very welcomed occurrence on the legs and underarms so I don't have to shave anymore. But on other parts, like the face, it was a disaster!
I am vain. I want to look good and not look sick or dying. So inspite of the weight gain and moon face, I tried my best to "fix" it. I never really wore makeup on a regular basis. My makeup kit consisted of sunblock, face powder and tinted Blistex lip tone. When I wanted to feel more made up, I'd use a curlash and put on some mascara. That was it!
A month after my first chemo session, my eyebrows started withering. It was bearable at first, but after awhile, it badly needed intervention. So I got an old eyeliner I had and started experimenting. O M G ! I looked like I had a fat leech on my face! hahaha! So I decided to go to youtube for help. There I found a lot of very helpful videos on how to do my eyebrows. That's when my small makeup kit grew to this:
I also went to a MAC store at SM Aura to ask for help on what shade and stuff I should get. First of all, NEVER get black! Test the liners on your face to get full effect of the colors. For some reason, the brunette crayon and redhead brow liner from MAC have the same color when applied to my brows. Shades I used were often the lightest ones I can get or the tone next to that: redhead, brunette, blonde. My favorite was the brunette eyebrow crayon from MAC because I didn't need to sharpen it anymore, was very slim and handy. After another month, my needs grew as my eyebrows were close to nonexistent. A liner just didn't do the trick and I had not much eyebrows to apply the Color my brows from Etude anymore, so I got the Elf eyebrow kit.
The 30 minutes I used to spend fixing my long hair now went to making the perfect (or so I tried) brow whenever I'd go out. My brow had good days and bad days. Some days they were slim, some days fat, arched, rounded, long, short, dark, and some days phat! ;)
But wait, there's more! I also lost my eyelashes! As I look at the mirror, I could see how my face has changed. The weight and puffiness made my cheeks bigger that my eyes became smaller. The loss of eyelashes made me look weird and my eyes puffy too. By this time, I felt so fugly that I just wanted to give up. I even deleted my Facebook account last April coz I was getting so depressed with how I looked…I felt so fugly! I didn't want to go out anymore. I didn't want to see and be seen by people. I just wanted to sleep until all this is over, then wake up looking wonderful! I was so pissed, frustrated and tired of fighting it. I even stopped dancing coz even if I danced everyday for at least 30 minutes, I was still getting bigger! Mark would always reassure me that it was the steroids, my body's reaction to chemo, etc. that it will go away, but I refused to listen.
This time around I was dealing with the way I looked, I was having a hard time accepting it. It also doesn't help the comments INSENSITIVE PRICKS make. I don't care when they say, it's just Filipino culture to say those things. Being insensitive and inconsiderate morons are just that, they're just plain STUPID! Instead of saying "how're you?" or "glad to see you're ok", they'd say, "you got fat" and "omg, you really gained weight" W T F right?!!!! It takes a LOT to be the bigger (pun intended) person at that time because I was already dealing with a lot of emotional and physical difficulty, much more have patience with the likes of those people. Give me an effin break!
After a while, I got to accept how I looked like and slowly started crawling out of my shell again. I got a lot of help from fellow survivor April too :) What stuck to my head was something she said when facing these kind of people, "I just went through chemo, what's your excuse?" HAHAHA!
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