Finally Making the Cut

Over a year ago, my 19 year old cousin Zach was diagnosed with Lymphoma.   Immediately, his sister Mackenzie decided to donate her gorgeous hair in his honor, to be made into a wig for cancer patients via the Pantene Beautiful Lengths program.

wish I'd gotten the same hair genes as her

My sister decided to volunteer our hair to do the same, donating hers last fall.  I, however, have been growing out my hair for over a year.  My hair is super thick and always has layers cut into it to make it more manageable.  The longest layer has been ready for a while, its the rest not wanting to cooperate.

Working out as much as I do requires lots of showering.  Sometimes more than once a day.  This doesn't lend itself to the 30 minute blow-out/straight iron process my hair needed to look cute.  Most often,  I'd throw it into a pony tail, or else scrunch it curly and forget about it. 

sadly, it doesn't look like that much hair just laying there

A couple of weeks ago, I'd had enough.  I told my stylist to do whatever she had to do in order to get 8" worth of ponytails in my hair.  Super short hair doesn't scare me, but thankfully it didn't come to that.  We sectioned it into several pieces and she hacked away.

The day following my cut, Jay's grandfather died and we hurried to join his family in West Virginia.  Then my Great Aunt passed away and we spent some extra time with my grandparents.  Then my dad went to the ER for chest pains (it wasn't his heart - PTL!).  Soooooooooo...I've had this bag of hair laying on my desk at work for a couple weeks now.

Until today.

I got it I got it prepped, then had my dad drop it off at the post office before pick my mom & I up for our weekly Friday lunch.  I'm officially done with the process, never to try it again.  I certainly don't regret the donation, but it took a lot of time an effort.  But mostly I'll never do it again because they won't accept hair that is colored or more than 5% gray.  At the rate Kelly is yanking out my grays, I don't have time to grow another 8" before I hit their designated percentage.

I joined Team Zach in walking the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Light the Night event last year as he was undergoing treatment and battling the disease.  Its my privilege to walk it with him again this year, but this time he'll be rocking his SURVIVOR tee.  Donations in his honor are appreciated.