letting my world know

Posted a message on facebook today saying: "Gillian is waiting for her hair to fall out. Any day now, cos of the chemo. Otherwise fine. Please don't phone." Below that I added this blog address.
Three days ago I addressed a meeting at work - which is a rather formal way of saying I spoke for a few minutes to a meeting of the colleagues I sit around. I kinda barged into the meeting and asked if I could speak briefly, told them I had cancer, was going to lose my hair, had a cap in my bag in case this happened while at work, and this not did mean they were suddenly to stop being horrible to me! "Great!" replied the office joker.
"You're so brave, " said one of my colleagues today after the Facebook posting (she was also at the meeting). Look, I felt far less anxious about going to work with a hat on after I had spoken at the meeting (although it's not the whole office - we seldom have 'whole office' meetings), but hell, I am making these disclosures to make it easier for me. It is going to be hard, I think, to walk around obviously without hair and wearing some kinda headgear to cover it, and generally one then looks a bit half dead, without people around me making it worse - for eg had visions of people at work lifting up my hat and making some kinda facetious comment without realising the purpose of my new style.
Breast cancer is not a disease one can hide. Not if u have chemo and lose your hair. If I had a disease I could endure without the suffering being public, not sure I would tell everyone. Don't know. But this one is going to be public - although sometimes I feel so low energy at night that I wonder how much I will be gallivanting around town. For now, however, still planning on attending at least some of the Dance Umbrella which starts in about two weeks.
Either way, it's going to be obvious that I am "part of the C family" which is more or less how someone put it today after reading my facebook posting. So why pretend it's not happening?
For the rest, I don't have a mouth ulcer as I imagined the other night - think it was a piece of popcorn kernel in my mouth - although my mouth does feel different (someone suggested it was all the mouthwash I am using, as instructed, to avoid the ulcers......) and, thank goodness, still have all my hair. But tomorrow is day 10 since my first chemo treatment and that's the day two people have said is when it happens. The doctor said between week two and week three after the first treatment. So guess this close crop is not for long..... pity.
And generally feeling ok, apart from what was literally about two minutes in the late afternoon of dizziness and nausea. Let's hope this lasts.
Ja, don't think I am being brave - gosh, Sunday is a month since I was diagnosed with cancer so it took three days short of a month for me to declare it to my little world.