Les Sourcils

One thing--really, two things--that have not come back all the way since chemo are my eyebrows. They had been thinning out as I'd gotten older, but they grew very very thin and weaselly during chemo and are still not as robust as I'd like. Pre-emptively, I bought an eyebrow stencil from Chemochicks, but I never had to use it because my eyebrows didn't completely disappear. I finally sent the stencil to L the chemo nurse and hope she passed it along to someone who needed it. At the time, I didn't think about how she could gracefully hand it to someone: Uh, I noticed you've lost your eyebrows, and you might want to take this stencil home with you and use it, so that you don't look like a possum....


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I've noticed lately that when I see someone who is nice-looking, that person usually has dark eyebrows. I look at pictures of my younger self and I see I had dark eyebrows. Sometimes I pencil in darker brows. Yesterday and today I laid the pencil on thick. I thought I looked remarkably different--more vibrant, more ethnic, younger.

Of course, no one said a thing.
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I suppose if I were really concerned, I could order eyebrow wigs--made of French lace and human hair. All of which begs: Why French lace? Are the eyebrows made up of spare strands of eyebrow or do they come from hair from people's heads? How do you donate hair for eyebrow wigs and how much does it pay?

There are people who have no hope of ever growing eyebrows of their own, and so these eyebrow wigs must be a godsend. As a society we're so intolerant of any difference or "defect," so that everyone who is missing something must take pains to get one or two of whatever-it-is right away.
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My eyelashes, luckily, never completely went away, and I think they've restored themselves. Which reminds me--my eyes used to tear up easily when I went outside. Now they don't. I assumed that was a side effect of chemo and I think it was.