Saturday, January 12, 2013

On the Lighter Side

First night after of chemo was fairly uneventful. The only side effect so far has been some general fatigue which is to be expected, especially since I got a flu shot an hour before I started chemo, and a bit of a fever scare last night. I was having trouble sleeping and sweating in bed even though I ditched all the covers. I was getting a little nervous (fevers while on chemo are trouble) but it turned out the heat was just left turned up when we went to bed. False alarm.

Hey, I said "lighter side"...what gives?

Ok so the lighter side...an amusing anecdote from my Conoco on-boarding process. Post offer acceptance, there were a number of forms and procedures that needed to be completed and verified prior to becoming an official employee of Conoco Phillips. One of these checklist items was the drug-screening. No problem, pretty standard for any new job. Almost.

I showed up at the testing facility just before they closed because they're only open until 5 on weeknights, I was still working, and I only had to pee in a cup and be on my way, right?  WRONG! Turns out I was slated for the hair test which heretofore I had suspected was only an urban legend. Not so, my friend! As anyone who has seen me since I graduated from college knows, I keep my hair fairly short but for this particular test, they needed to get a 90-day history which requires hairs at least an inch long or a large volume shorter hairs.  The options I was given were to shave: most(?) of my head, one leg, or both armpits. I could only assume the tester was joking because what guy has hair that long these days?  Not many, surely there must be another solution here. Nope. So I had to go back into the testing room and this poor woman had to shave my armpits with electric clippers onto a sheet of paper from the printer and then "collect it" and jam it into foil collection packets. Those things are kid of spring/wiry and they ended up everywhere. Absurd! She kept apologizing (I'd find out why not too much later) but I felt like I was the one who should be apologizing. It seemed like she sure got the short end of the stick on that gig. 

Then I got home and for the next several days "enjoyed" that prickly, itching sensation as your hair oh-so-slowly grows back in and the extreme irritation that you experience when that is occurring in a high chafing zone. I gained a new respect for the effort that women who shave must maintain to avoid that uncomfortableness. You can't stop once you start...it stings!

1 comment:

  1. I've heard about the shaving of the armpits. One of my classmates had to do that...they just shaved one and he said it was rather uncomfortable, at least she evened you out!

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