eye lashes

Just a short note today. i was thrilled (as thrilled as one can be about a side-effect of cancer treatment) that although the chemo made me bald, it also got rid of the hair on my legs, underarms and kablasis (probably the wrong word, i picked it up from a Chelsea Handler book and it should mean vagina and the area that surrounds it that usually has hair unless you pay a lot for a painful brazilian wax, or get the right kind of chemo.) But now i noticed that my eyelashes are falling out. Not good. Eyebrows, i don't pay much attention to, they have always been light and mainly I just used them to point out that I must be a real blonde. So I guess they are falling out, too, but i don't care. Eyelashes, now that is a problem. When i started to go around bald, i made sure i had good make-up and earring on, so as not to be confused for a man or a lesbian biker chick. Not that I have anything against lesbian biker chicks,but if people start thinking that i am a lesbian, I have even less of a chance of getting laid (by a man,anyway, which is unfortunately what I'm wired for.) Wait until i write my chapter on having sex with one boob and you will see what I mean. It is a very short chapter.

So, i signed up for a class that gives free make-up and beauty tips to cancer patients. I signed up at the hospital i go to for treatment in Boston, rather than a local place, because I figured they would bet better makeup. In my conversation with the women who run the"cancer boutique" where it will be held- I always stop in to talk to them. I am so glad that there are some people who realize what is really important in the scheme of things when you have cancer. Getting better? Being healthy? Yeah, i suppose that is fairly important, but LOOKING PRETTY definitely more so. These people do the whole wig, scarf, and make-up thing. They will enter heaven before those boring researchers sitting in front of microscopes finding boring cures for boring things. So anyway, while talking to these angels of mercy make-up artists, I asked about false eye lashes. I had heard from other vain friends who don't even have cancer that these accessories had come a long way since the 1980's which was probably the last time i had considered false eyelashes. You know, they are always putting them on people having makeovers on what not to wear- a show my children petitioned endlessly for me to get on but to no avail I guess because I am secretly fashionable, but that, too, is another story- so you'd think they are pretty main stream.

AHA! NO! My cancer beauty experts said they do not do false eye lashes in the class because of the possibility of infections! Infections? In people undergoing chemotherapy? What a strange idea. Well, i take this very painful shot after chemo to boost my blood counts so I do not get infections. Does this matter to the false eyelash nazis? Apparently not. i did wear one down who said maybe for a special occasion, i could do the false eyelash thing. I am not going to tell her that my "special occasion" is my constant state of extreme vanity. They claim that they will show me how to apply eye liner so that it looks like i have eyelashes. I have been learning to put on eye liner, or trying to, anyway, for decades. I am only at the point where i can apply it to my lower lids. My 20 year old daughter, on the other hand, was born knowing how to apply liquid eye liner in a moving car, hopefully not while driving.

I think it is geographical racism. I will bet you anything that cancer patients in new jersey get to use false eye lashes in their beauty classes. And i am sure they get much bigger wigs, which i am not going to complain about because i do not need big hair. But i guess they expect people in Boston to need infection-free eyes to read books and write their doctoral dissertations rather than have a nice base on which to apply mascara. Hey, i am not about to start a doctoral degree in anything else at this point.

Obviously, I need to start an underground network of make-up artists who will disobey the silly infection-related rules about eye lashes and start importing people from the Jersey Shore. Hey wait a minute. When whatever her name was in Sex in the City had cancer and chemo, she was not eye lash challenged. Another alley to explore. Oh, wait a minute, that might not have been real.