Baby's Neck, Mommy's Hair

This was originally written on Thursday, April 16, 2009:

I'm finally participating in my first weekly meme, Friday Frustrations, started by Maria from Conversations With Moms!

We had Logan's appt. with the ENT today. Unfortunately after Logan finished the antibiotics last Saturday, the infection on his neck started to grow again :( Good news is that it has appeared to stop again and so Doc said that we are to keep a close eye on the bump and as long as it doesn't stay the same or get bigger over the next month then everything is going in the right direction. Once it's gone it will be gone forever because this has nothing to do with the brachial cleft fistula or the surgery. Apparently both of those went 100% well and the inside of his neck is healed. This is a skin issue. It takes two months for the sutures on the inside of the skin to completely dissolve, and so since this infection happened pretty much exactly a month after the surgery, it is clear that's what got infected. The ENT looked & felt Logan's neck very thoroughly and said it is definitely not infected anywhere BUT the skin. So that's the main thing.

The bad news is that if the bump does get bigger or doesn't go away by May 18th (we made an appt so that we know we'll be with our ENT and not his PA again like what I wrote about in my post, 11.5 Months Old) then we have to come back and get it drained. This made me cry because he said it is not practical to put Logan under or to even give him pain meds or a novicane shot for this, so he will have to be restrained and fully aware and will feel all of the pain of a needle going into his neck. :( So please pray that this draining doesn't have to happen. Like I said, the bump does look a lot better today than it did on Monday & Tuesday. It's smaller and not as red. Doc said it wasn't necessary to put anything on it because it's closed (we put bacitracin on it last night and I wondered if that was why it looked better today) but if it does start to look bad again then I might do the bacitracin anyway because it's not going to hurt and if for some strange reason it does work I like that option better than Logan having a needle in his neck!!!!

In other news, I'm never having my hair colored again. In a previous post I said that last Friday I had my hair dyed dark brown with blonde high lights so that it would grow out looking natural (because I'd already made the decision that I was done coloring it forever at that time but had red in my hair so it was looking bad as it grew out).

Well 24 hrs later my hair turned gray. It was so awful I wanted to cry. I had thought my red color since December & February was bad but at least I could go out in public. I wore my hair in a pony tail for four straight days which I never do (I don't know why, I just never wear them) and immediately contacted my hair stylist to fix it. She was able to get me in yesterday morning (so I had to beg Joe to go to work late so that he could watch Logan even though he has a ton of stuff to do).

I was disappointed that she acted like there was no problem with it. Even Joe thought my hair looked gray and he usually can care less what color my hair is, or if I don't like it he's like "it's fine." So I knew when he admitted yes, it looked gray that yes, it was gray. Even worse, I remembered this happened before! We actually did this style back in 2006 and I totally forgot because it was brief (I only had "the striped look" for about 2 months), but I had to come back that same week and she'd fixed it. So I thought it would be in my file or something and she would know what to do to fix it this time. Instead, it came out looking even worse! Rather than trying to even out/blend the two colors better, she added more of the white-blonde color which in combination with the very dark brown made my hair even more gray! I decided right then and there that I was never going to her again.

I feel bad because I like her as a person (we've talked about everything under the sun) and I have been going to her for 4.5 years! (For my first 1.5 years after I moved here I actually continued to go to my stylist in Iowa but decided that wasn't practical anymore and so when I got a "free 1st visit" flyer in the mail for this salon, and I had no problems with my first visit, I thought I was set for as long as I lived here.) It's not a dinky place or anything (she's won awards and goes to hair shows and takes classes for certifications, etc.) and it's less than 5 minutes from my house so it's super convenient.

But, I have given her time to know my hair as I've colored it 10 different colors in these 4.5 years! Over half of them have required me to come back and get the color fixed. Even though the second time always worked (until the red), I just don't have time anymore with a baby to spend so much time at the salon. I need my hair to be done right the first time. Until now I'd given her the benefit of the doubt because I thought it was my hair. She swore that other people didn't have the problems I did (when I first went blonde in 2005 it turned bright orange so she didn't even allow me to leave that time because it took three tries in almost 5 hrs to get it right).

But today I went to the most popular salon in Omaha and my stylist there said there is nothing abnormal or strange about my hair. She was actually really mad that this was done to my hair and said there were numerous things wrong. She was determined to try to fix it but it was really hard because it was already colored to the max so she couldn't color it anymore or else my hair would start falling out and would be ruined. Luckily there's, like, a hundred people who work there and so other stylists were coming over and offering their advice and trying to find a way to get it decent. She ended up putting toner on my blonde so as to make it "golder" rather than "whiter" which really helped the top half. But the toner didn't help the bottom half of my hair. It still looked gray which I thought I was going to have to leave with and so I started crying which then made her start crying because she "felt so bad that I was having to go through this, it wasn't necessary." And so another stylist came over and said that if they put bleach on the bottom half of my hair it should take all of the color out and so then at least it wouldn't look gray. But this would mean I was going to have to buy products to use on my hair every day so as to start getting it healthy & in good shape again (I don't usually use anything) -- but if we just give it time my hair will be back to normal soon.

I've never had good hair (which is why I've colored it so many times, it's the only way I ever like it) so the bleach seemed scary (I don't want to think about all of the chemicals that absorbed into my system) but it did work! My hair is totally multi-colored right now (some of the red from before is showing up, along with my natural light brown, the dark brown, the original blonde high lights and then the gold high lights) but it looks a lot better! I am actually happy with it and I liked the stylist, so even though the salon is 20 minutes from my house I'm planning on going there from now on. My new stylist gave me $24 off today, plus 10% off the two products I bought, and coupons for future visits. I was going to go to Stacy (Jaxson's mom) if I ever switched salons but I didn't want her to have the pressure of today's disaster! So thankfully now I won't look like I'm 100 years old for Logan's birthday this Saturday.

P.S. I'm a ding dong and didn't take a picture of my hair disaster so there's no photo to go with this story. :(