Less than a year before, my father and I had nursed my mother through liver failure. It is ugly, painful, humiliating, frightening, sad. At one point during this six-month period I became convinced that life is a sadistic joke being played by a monstrous cruel deity. The major drug I take is interferon. It is a natural substance, but people with hepatitis, AIDS, or blood cancers have to take it in nearly toxic amounts.
Most folks have some trouble tolerating it in high dosages.
But I am also taking an antidepressant, which hides all the bad feelings under a rock inside my head. As a result of the treatment, my hair started falling out. For women and men, rapid loss of hair from head, eyelids, legs, arms, and pubis possesses far more impact than the bald fact of its absence. As you watch your body beginning to ditch its hairy cargo, you know you are in big, scary trouble. But at an even deeper gut level, like Samson, you are losing your human power.