Cancer Beard

I've mentioned the cancer beard before, so perhaps a brief explanation.

Last year I decided to see if it was possible for me to grow a beard.  I'd never been able to get past the itchy phase.  With a great deal of perseverance, I was able to get the Beard of 2013 through to St. Patrick's day.  But frankly it looked terrible.  I'd had to shave it down to an Abraham Lincoln beard + lopsided mustache.  Seeing that it was going nowhere, I shaved off the mustache, died the beard red, and went full-on Leprechaun for St. Patrick's day.

2013, St. Patrick's Day

When I woke up the next morning and shaved it off, I felt terrible.  As crappy as that beard was, I missed it.

I was planning to do the same thing this year - basically let the beard grow from Christmas to St. Patrick's day, dye it red, shave it off.  Only the Cancer arrived.   As you know, Elizabeth's grandmother died a couple of days after I found out about the diagnosis.  It would have been disrespectful to go to her funeral with the crappy stubble that was on my face, so I shaved in mid-January.  But since then, the Cancer Beard has been growing, as has my hair.

Something about this is "life affirming."  I can't completely explain it, but it's sort of like giving the finger to the cancer & chemo.  Despite the fact that I'm looking like a shaggy idiot, I have this overwhelming urge to keep going.  The 3 week lag to restart the beard after the mid-January shaving means that the Leprechaun beard won't be ready by St. Patrick's Day.  So if there's no SPD shaving, then I wonder what the next shave occasion is.  This could get ugly.  LITERALLY.