![\"\"](\"http:\/\/alecclayton.com\/writingetc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Alec-Clayton-before-after-04-09-2023.jpg\" "\\"Alec-Clayton-before-after-04-09-2023\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nShortly after my first surgery to remove the tumor, I told my friend Nikki\u2014who has breast cancer and also lives her life out loud, who has shared on social media photos of her bald head from chemo and pictures of her hair when it grew back again\u2014that it suddenly seemed like all my friends have had cancer. It took the life of my friend Louise. My friend Irene had it. My nephew has had radiation treatment, and I never knew. And I could keep listing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sunday morning my friends Jacob and Brianna stopped by for a visit. It was barely an hour after I had shaved off my facial hair. I explained to them that the doctor said I would lose hair from my mustache, that it would never grow back, and I had to shave my mustache off before starting radiation. I thought a beard without a mustache would look ridiculous on me, so I shaved it all off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brianna said to Jacob, \u201cShow him yours.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He turned his back to me and lifted the longish hair that hid the two big bald spots caused by radiation treatment when he was 16 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brianna said the reason so many people had what a friend of theirs calls the environmental disease is that it\u2019s caused by chemicals in the food we eat. That made sense to me, and I thought maybe it should be the environmental-industrial disease since the things that cause cancer are not only in the food we eat, they\u2019re in things we touch and things we wear and maybe the furniture we sit on and no telling what all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This morning I had another scan of my face, and they built a mask that will go on my face when I start the actual radiation treatment in two weeks, on April 24. Now this is confusing. The nurse showed me a little rubber mask of my nose which was made the last time they scanned my face. Then they put a kind of mesh gauze helmet over my head. It was burning hot, but thankfully it cooled down quickly. She pushed and prodded and taped and made marks on it, and then they did another scan of my face, and then took it off and said we were done. I saw the new mask or whatever it was sitting on a tale. It looked like a medieval war helmet. They\u2019re going to put it over my head and attach it to the exam table I\u2019ll be laying on when they start the radiation, and that will hold my head in exactly the same position each time so they can zap the same places. There will be treatments five days a week for six weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I guess I live my life out loud, meaning I share personal information that many other people would not. Like these jottings about my bout with cancer. Shortly after my first surgery to remove the tumor, I told my friend Nikki\u2014who has breast cancer and also lives her life out loud, who has shared on … <\/p>\n