“Be honest, Kambri,” Donna said dripping with accusation in a morphed New York, London, Virgin Islands accent. “Whattuv yew bin doin’?”

“What are you asking? Have I been lifting weights? Noooooo, of course not.”

“Kambri….whattuv yew bin doin’?”

“I live on the 4th floor of a walk up and the subway is two blocks away. What do you think I was doing?”

OF COURSE I was active. Even the Asian lady and Jose the short order cook at my corner deli asked where I was when they saw Christian with our dog for my morning coffee run. I needed to be with my people. The whole no walking two blocks thing was meant for the old folks they usually deal with anyway, right?

Wrong. My stitches were removed and, as I discovered, the whole not walking two blocks thing was real and that extra third week tacked on for my healing was much needed.

Okay, so the cancer was POW! ERADICATED! but there’s still the gaping hole in my head that needs some tending to. And the hole, while on the mend, is still a fleshy divot that looks like a giant ingrown hair.  Think Godzilla size if Godzilla had a hair follicle that grew in. In fact, I have to make an appointment to go back to the doctor simply to remove the ingrown hairs they’re expecting. I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really wish I could be the one to free them. But the doctor said NO! with a kind of gross shock and awe guffaw reply, “You won’t be able to reach them!” But why the shock and awe? YOU GET TO DO IT. Not fair. That is some satisfying shit like popping a zit or freeing a baby from a well.

Christian has been a fabulous nursemaid but the road beckons. He is headlining at the DC Improv this weekend and today is his birthday. Some celebration taking his wife to get stitches taken out and examining my new hair follicles in way too bright of light. I’m sure he’s fantasizing about my stubbly gash right now.

In his absence, banished to my 4th floor apartment, I ordered prepped meals from Fresh Direct arriving some time between 4 & 6 tomorrow, and my buddy Jose swung by with some necessities to tide me over till then. You know: V-8, toilet paper and beer.

Neither place, however, delivers Bacitracin or nurse services and trying to swab  a gaping wound in the reversed mirror image of your own head is a weird / hard / painful / gross / fucked up / sad / laughable trial and error with heavy weight on the error part. Basically Bacitracin is serving as a deep conditioning treatment for the new hair growth which is surprisingly thick and dark. Very dark. So dark, I might go brown when I finally get to get a shave and a haircut since I will never go in the sun again ever. EVER. You hear that, Texas?

Ummm. What else? Oh, yes, so it’s Christian’s worst birthday ever, and I snuck a thank you / birthday card in his suitcase. There really are no words to express how thankful I am to my friends for stepping forward with some chocolate, US Weekly, morbid humor, normalcy and general occupation with stupid emails. But Christian? This Bud’s for you (if you drank Bud) and I tried to say so in a note that made him cry…

On the toilet.

ON THE TOILET.

He read my heartfelt thank you for taking care of my stubbly gash when I thought I was burying myself and willing my dog and things to friends and writing the final chapter of my book…nay, my life…ON THE TOILET WHILE TAKING A DUMP AND STARTED CRYING.

What can I say, it was moving. Hey-O!

—Kambri
Gash.  Heh.

Now that I’ve gotten the all clear from my doctor, I feel like I can unload what’s been occupying my every thought, every hour, every minute, every second of every day: I had some cancer scooped out of my scalp.

Basically, I had a half dollar-sized birthmark on my scalp that went haywire and required a chemosurgery called Mohs Technique. Sometimes it’s not a good thing, the Internet, because I spent the week preparing for surgery doing Google image searches of Mohs and generally freaking myself out. Even though the survival rate of Mohs is quite high (upper 90s percentile a/k/a seriously-ridiculous-to-worry level), I had planned a very elaborate funeral and Scott & Brian called dibs on my dog Paquita.

After the surgery, I sent Mom and a few close friends a wrap-up which I’ll share part of here:

Subject: De Pain, Boss! De Pain!

So that sucked, but thank God it’s done. Despite some minor downsides, I think it’s all good.

It went from “Do you have Tylenol at home?” to “Have you ever taken Tylenol with Codeine?” to “Are you allergic to Percocet and Oxycontin and Tramadol?”

I was awake for the whole thing and, um, yeah, it’s surreal to hear your scalp getting cut away with scissors and to know it’s not going well. Close your eyes and imagine the sound of chewing a mouthful of Cap’n Crunch except the crunching, tearing sound isn’t cereal, it’s your head. Still hungry? Neither was I.

To put  my Humpty Dumpty scalp back together they called in Oliver, a Spanish fellow who thinks Lil Rounds is going to win this season American Idol*, to push and pull and grunt and hold my scalp in place while they clamped it shut. WTF? How far we’ve come with medicine but it takes some hairy man arms to pull me back together. He did everything except use his feet to leverage more strength. Barbaric / Awesome.

The major downside is that due to the extra scooping and cutting they had to do, an extra week was tacked on before the stitches can come out. I am only allowed to walk two blocks at a time but, since I’m on the 4th floor of a walk up they said that’s definitely out. So, thank heavens for DVRs, DVDs and the Internet. But Facebook + Wordscraper + Percocet + Tramadol + Oxycontin = zero writing on my book.

Late Thursday, I learned that I’m all clear. No further surgery, chemo or radiation required. So now, I just have to get the stitches out and grow my hair back. For the non-squeamish, here’s a link to a photo of the scar in the making. It’s not a small area as you can see and two and half weeks after the surgery, my hair is only 1/8 of an inch long. I haven’t gotten a haircut in months and my hair is scraggly and patchy and awful.  I’ll be glad to see my hairstylist Daniel again and have him whip up some magic around the gash.

Christian’s DVD tour will be starting soon and I was looking forward to traveling with him to Texas to see old friends — some for the first time in 20 years. And while I would rather not sport a short ‘do, it’s better than being bald or, you know, dead. So, instead, I’ll see y’all soon wearing a snappy new spring beret and pretending I’m your French cousin.

—Kambri
*Clearly Oliver is there for his braun not brain. Lil Rounds has as much of a chance of winning American Idol as I do starring in a shampoo commercial. Ain’t happening.

**No sooner did I praise him before he got on the radio and said my wound looked like a second vagina. Bloody gash, indeed!