Husband's Log - February 11th, 2026

Yesterday started off like all other days this week with the morning Filgrastim shot, breakfast, gym time, and puzzling.  However, what made it special from the other days is most of the patients in the clinic, including Angela, agreed to shave their heads on the rooftop patio together at 5:00pm.  They felt it would be fun to support each other through shaving their heads together.  As anyone remotely familiar with chemotherapy knows, the chemotherapy process involves the complete loss of hair from one's head.  For HSCT, that happens to occur soon after the fourth round of chemotherapy.  The idea behind the patients shaving it off ahead of time is to avoid the trauma of watching their hair fall off in sizeable chunks after that fourth round.

The ceremonial shaving of the heads began with one of the caretakers bringing up a corded hair trimmer and setting up a haircut station along the wall of the rooftop patio near the one outlet available.  Mary, one of the American patients, volunteered to go first, and her husband volunteered to shave her head.  While others watched as their chemo comrade pioneered the journey of forced hair loss, I went back to our apartment to grab my own beard/hair trimmer to shave my wife's head.  There were a few reasons I elected to use my own trimmer to shave Angela's head.  The first being that we could double the size of this impromptu barber shop because my trimmer is battery-operated.  The second reason being I have great familiarity with my own trimmer as I use it weekly to keep my beard from triggering "randomly selected" searches at airport security.  

Once I returned to the rooftop patio with my trusty trimmer in hand, I set up my barber station and began to shave my first customer's head.  It was neat to be on the opposite end of this experience as it is usually Ang who shaves my head back home.  Having absolutely no idea what I was doing, I set the trimmer to the 3mm length, the same setting I use for my beard, then trailed the trimmer gently & slowly across the back of Angela's scalp.  The last thing I needed to do was nick my wife as she'd have a prime opportunity for payback when she next cuts my hair.  To my surprise, the trimmer sliced through her thick hair with ease like a Japanese chef knife through butter.  I decided to experiment a little bit as this is the one time Angela's ever going to let me cut her hair.  My first creation was the punk rock pixie cut.  It was short lived.

 After significantly more trimming, Ang's new doo was complete.  We call it the 3mm special.

 

Soon after I was finished relieving Ang of her bountiful mop of hair, one of the American patients asked if I could shave her head as well because I was so gentle with Angela's head compared to the other guys shaving heads.  Since she buttered up my ego with that compliment, I agreed to give her my signature 3mm buzz cut as well.  Once her buzz cut was complete, Lucas, the German patient, asked if I could do the same for him too.  Unfortunately at that point my trimmer was getting tired and needed to plug in for a power break, so I could not add a third client to my cosmetology portfolio.  We soon noticed another outlet towards the back of the rooftop patio, but instead of giving him my 3mm buzz cut special, Ang and I offered him her haircutting services instead of my own because she had shaved my male head numerous times and has quite the knack for it.  Upon seeing Angela's handsome masterpiece on the German patient's head, one of the Mexican male patients approached her for a buzz cut masterpiece of his own.  We then offered her haircutting services to Yolanda, the Swiss patient, as Angela felt she could make it a little cleaner.  Had I known my wife's haircutting skills would be in such high demand, I'd have set up a tip jar and hair magazines beside her station.

During the ceremonial shaving of the heads, Angela and I were individually approached by numerous other patients and caregivers asking when I was going to get my head shaved.  It turns out for the 11 days we have been here, several people thought I was the MS patient and she was my caregiver!  I know I'm not the healthiest guy on earth but damn did that take me by surprise.  It's like they were watching Ang kill her hip flexor routines in the gym this week and figured her husband trying to keep up was the patient.  Maybe they compared her beautiful thick hairline to my few remaining follicles hanging on for dear life and assumed I was a sickly boy.  They wouldn't be wrong as I get colds way more often than Ang, but damn I didn't know I emitted MS sufferer energy.  On the bright side, it'd make for a great insensitive low-effort Halloween costume this year.  Instead of showing up in our iconic lobster & butter combo costume, Ang adorns the lobster and I go as the sickly MS patient with her walking poles as my prop.  There's no way in Hell Ang would let me do that though, so that idea will stay unexecuted forever.  Another bright side to those observations is everyone thinks Angela looks very healthy aside from the MS 🙂.

Once the ceremonial shaving of the heads had concluded and a brave new squad of soft butch queens was born (Ang has been watching Queer Eye on Netflix so we're well-versed in gay visual descriptive terminology now), we had the 2nd Filgrastim shot of the day and went down to the restaurant for supper. While waiting for supper I could not stop touching Angela's head as it was intriguingly soft yet prickly, like a new soft bristle toothbrush from the dentist's drawer of goodies.  I also saw her ears for the first time as they're no longer hidden by thick neck-length hair.  I knew they were there as she's always been able to conveniently hear me say stupid things in the past, but to actually witness them in person is another thing entirely.  She pulls off the new doo surprisingly well, like the white version of one of those Wakandan women warriors in the Black Panther movie.  After supper we returned to our apartment for bed as we were both tired after a long evening of kickstarting our new career as buzz cut hairstylists.