The Merits of the Case

There’s a fall chill in the air here in Chicago already which has laid all my bold bald plans to waste. I planned to spend the day at school yesterday without a head covering, but I ended up staying covered up all day. I knew it was going to be a problem when I left the house in the morning…the thermometer read 54 degrees and despite my hat, it was painfully cold walking through that train station parking lot. I am amazed at how much heat my hair held in and at how chilled I felt all day long without that hair. I think I’ll just have to be bald in pre-arranged…and warm…places for the next couple of months.

I did start out in class with nothing on my head. I sit in the back of the room and I noticed that throughout the first several minutes of the lecture my professor kept looking up at me in the back row. I kept getting the sense that she was intrigued by my bare head…she’s only seen me in a scarf until now. We were discussing a case about optometrists and opticians (Williamson v. Lee Optical for my fellow law students) and at one point she made a statement about the regulation of eye care. However, she looked at me just before she uttered that sentence and it came out as “hair care.” She was a bit more flustered about her mistake than she should have been which confirmed my suspicion that she was definitely paying attention to my look. I couldn’t help laughing about it and I was sure to point out what preceded her mistake to my friend Kristi sitting next to me.

I only made it through about 20 minutes of class, however, before I realized that there was a serious…and cold!..draft in the room. Luckily I had thrown a scarf in my bag in the morning, so I walked down the stairs to the front of the lecture hall in all my bare-headed glory in order to go to the bathroom and put the scarf on. I am pretty sure that the professor must have noticed the number of eyes that drifted from her face to my head during my trek through the room.

Other than being cold all day, it was a rough day for me yesterday. I found myself so exhausted that I had a hard time concentrating on the class discussions and by the time I went to my second class I had a hard time staying awake. I continue to be concerned about my ability to handle school throughout this, but I do notice that I feel much more confident about it the week before my treatment when I’m feeling better than I do during this week after. I am sure that my level of confidence is directly related to how I feel on any given day, so I’m going to continue to soldier through for now and hope that I am able to keep up with everything.

Today I was back at the oncologist’s office for a blood test and as always my white and red blood cell counts are low….surprise, surprise. (Today’s waiting room music selection was The Doobie Brothers crooning China Grove.) I’m looking forward to getting over this hard part and getting on to feeling better as the week progresses.

(Note: I'm in the process of trying to change the look of the blog. Each change is a slow, painful learning process for me, however. If you stop by and see some weird looking colors/fonts/layouts, etc., just ignore them. Hopefully I'll have it figured out in the next several days.)