Head Scar

The craniotomy left a pretty substantial head scar. It has healed on the surface, and pretty much looks the way it’s going to look from now on – large and winding in meandering curves around my cranium, with a decorative extra bald spot on the right hand side just for balance, as though my head were a Japanese painting. There’s a little hair growing back in clumps here and there, but for the most part, it’s a hairless stripe about an inch wide.

Now for the weird part. I’m actually pretty proud of it.

I read a post from someone asking plastic surgeons whether it would be possible to get rid of her craniotomy scar. The surgeons suggested either removing the bald parts and sewing the remaining sections with hair together, or replanting hair from other parts of the head into the scar, as though it were a regular bald spot. Yikes!

I guess on some level the desire to get rid of the big scar makes sense, but I’m not feeling it. I earned this crazy thing. It’s one of the only external indicators that anything happened. I can’t imagine wanting to part with it.

On the other hand, it means if I want to return to work without distracting people who don’t already know about the craniotomy, I need to find a hairstyle that conceals the scars reasonably well. That means I can’t part my hair on the left or in the middle anymore, and bangs are out of the question. The only way to wear it that doesn’t reveal a massive chunk of bald scar tissue is a relatively low part on the right hand side, with the hair at the crown combed back to cover the right-hand spot. Ironing it straight may also be off limits, so I’ll have to experiment with the hot rollers to see if they’ll do anything remotely tidy-looking.

I feel like a secret pirate.