Every day I woke up, I had more hair on my pillow.
Whatever I did, he fell. Started a little, then it became a lot.
I knew chemo would have an effect on me. But somehow, seeing it made everything so real - and so deep the pain.
I was told what to expect, not that anyone could prepare you for leukemia treatment, and hair loss was a given.
But looking in the mirror, and seeing a stranger look at you, is something you never erase from your mind.
Every day I became thinner and more pale. A body under attack by itself. My life force is pouring out like smoke from the husk of a burnt building.
After that it was not too late until the shear came. My dad stood beside me in the harsh, fluorescent lights of my hospital room. The soft hum of an electric razor. tufts of hair that gently fell to the floor. And as soon as the last hair comes out of your head, with it comes the feeling that you have crossed some kind of imaginary chasm.
You are no longer 'you'. Not in any real sense. You are now a cancer patient. A number on a busy doctor's spreadsheet. Another body has to be jammed and poked. you are gone. You may never come back.
After my head was shaved, I was robbed of what felt like my last humanity, that I had to get a CT scan.
It was nothing major. Another reminder of the difficulties that have to be overcome. But for this, I had to go to the CT machine from my new home in the hospital ward, which was on two floors below.
I knew where to go. I was there before my chemo started. So I rolled my heavy legs on the bed and got ready to take a slow walk.
That ride, all 10 minutes of it, was the most humiliating of my life.
My head, freshly shaved, was a clear reminder to everyone what I was doing. Cancer patient uniform. And my legs, stripped of their mobility, sat cross-legged on a bed that operated through winding corridors and expansive hospital halls.
People stood beside me as I rolled, sometimes smiling awkwardly, but more often than not, simply dropping their gaze to the floor.
No one wants to see a dying child.
Just remembering that moment is enough to give me goosebumps. No matter how many days I have spent between then and now. Because I felt defeated. I felt less than human. Like I had nothing left to take with anyone.
'Alexander' as I knew him, was gone.
If you want to know what inspires me, that is.
I was never the same after my time in the hospital. I truly believe that 'Alexander' who went in, died.
Not in the literal sense (though I did need to get back from septic shock at one point). But the young, naive and worried child who had walked down that aisle never came back.
And that's what inspires me.
I am not going to waste a single day. I am not going to pass up an adventure. And I won't miss an opportunity to do something that makes me feel alive.
I owe it to myself. All I have to do is think of that scared, freshly shaved kid. And my inspiration blossoms.
Because that 'Alexander' stays in that hospital forever, and it's up to this Alexander to live a life that is full and fun and wonderful - so that the pain he endured doesn't go in vain Ho.
So when I need that little push, it's not the voice inside that propels me.
All I have to do is run my hand through my hair, look two feet down that lead me to wherever I want to go, and remember where I came from.
It may not sound like much, but I will need it.
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