Missy Diggs

Well, that’s a long post title.

Here’s the deal: I’ve been in the hospital for eight days (that’s another story, but suffice to say: I’m alright and I’m going home tomorrow). When I came to the ER I figured I would be here a couple of days and I packed clean pjs, lots of books to read, sudoku…. but no baking soda, and certainly no apple cider vinegar. They gave me some kind of shampoo/body wash product, which I have been using whenever I get a chance to take a shower, but not as shampoo, since –as you may remember– I quit using shampoo several months ago when I was growing my hair out after chemo.

Well, I have discovered a few things about my hair since then:

1) It’s curly! just a little bit, but it’s been straight as a stick my whole life. I don’t know for sure whether this is “chemo curl” or whether it’s because I’m not killing my natural bounce with shampoo anymore.

2) the no-poo method works better for me in some water than in others…. when I go to the gym every day and wash my hair just in water (well, first sweat, then water) it is bouncy, shiny, curly, and clean-feeling. If I do all my showering at home, I need to add the baking soda rinse once or twice a week and even then things get a bit greasy in-between. (I haven’t tried the vinegar rinse yet, because I don’t have any way to store vinegar–which I buy in huge jugs– in the bathroom). Here at the hospital, greasy seems to be even more fast and furious.

so I’ve been thinking about giving up and going back to using shampoo. I mean, everyone else uses it, right? so if it’s bad for the environment it’s not really like I’m making much difference anyway! I’m just one person! And maybe I could find a shampoo that didn’t have any of the ingredients that I’m afraid might invite my cancer to come back, but that would still work for my hair type… and plastic bottles, I mean, it’s not like I never buy anything in plastic bottles….

basically, I am not feeling too good about going back to shampoo but I am not willing to have nasty hair just to be virtuous. I mean, yuck.

So I got back online to see what other people do if they are having these problems…. and I read some interesting things, including this from the Green Parenting blog:

I was considering giving up, which was a hard choice since I liked my textured hair, and so I did what any desperate person does in this situation: googled “no poo” one last time.

She referred to this article, which I had just read, and said it put her back on track.

so I am going to go home with new resolve and try again.

I also noticed that the Google search “no poo method” brought up many more results this time than it did last time. And that made me think, Hey, wait! Maybe I’m not just one person! maybe, just maybe, enough people will make enough changes that it reall will make a difference… to our health and to our environment. And that’s worth at least one more try.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 4:15 pm and is filed under Day to Day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.