Cabo Hair, Part II

I made a scary decision this week.

OK, that’s being a little trivial. I’ve made far scarier decisions in the past 22 months, you know, like treatment plans and surgery decisions and writing out my will and my wishes for what I’d want if the worst happened. So yeah, nothing on that scale, by far. But for me, it was a really scary decision.

I’ve decided to let my hair grow naturally.

“Really, Laura?!” I know that’s what you’re saying right now. “You call THAT scary?”

It is for me though! I’ve highlighted or dyed my hair blonde since I was 14, the summer after I graduated from my Catholic middle school and was finally able to do so because they had rules about these sorts of things. At the time, I thought it was lame, but now that I have a 14 year old, I’ve reconsidered my stance. But, I’ve been a bottle blonde for a long, long time. Oh sure, I’ve strayed a couple of times, dyeing my hair back to a brunette that was still lighter than my God-given, almost black shade. But I always went back to blonde. I’ve been everything from platinum to dark blonde to even a rather unfortunate orange-y tone. Thankfully, that didn’t last long.

When I started on Cabo back in September 2016, my hair didn’t change right away. After my surgery, I didn’t color my roots for a long time because, well, I was kind of busy. So when it was about time for me to go back to work, I knew I needed to get my hair done because I looked a bit, ahem, tragic. My roots were dark, dark, dark at the time. A couple of months later when I went back, they were still dark. And then, it changed, drastically. At first, I thought, “Wow, I haven’t seen my roots in a while.” Then I realized it was because my roots had gone white on the Cabo, which is a very typical targeted therapy (TKI) side effect.

It was pretty traumatic at first. I’m not going to lie, it’s still a bit traumatic to think about. But, compared to losing my hair like chemo patients do, I’d take the white hair.

Over the last few months though, while my body hair has stayed blissfully white (when it’s even there – I barely have to shave my legs anymore), my eyebrows have turned this grayish color, and my hair is now a dirty blonde. I polled my friends earlier this week – what would you call this root color? And they all agreed, looked dirty blonde to them too.

I’m not even kidding – this is the photo I sent around at 7 am this week.

So I thought, why keep dyeing my hair to essentially the same color I am now getting for free? I asked my husband, who shrugged and said he couldn’t tell the difference, so since he didn’t seem disturbed by my Monumental Decision of the Week, I decided it’s time to come clean. I’m not going to dye my hair anymore. If it changes again or I hate how it grows out, I’ll go back to my colorist, but for now, I’m just going to roll with it.

Oh Cabo. You know what? As long as you keep working, I’m not gonna complain, especially when you save me a trip to the salon!