Regrowth by Judith Cooper

As an exercise in mind over matter and decoupling fear from fervor, I shaved my head right after I finished another four months of grotesque chemo as an attempt to even the playing field. Did you know that there’s something about a newly shaved head that compels you to run your hand back and forth along it? This stems, maybe, from the abrupt change in texture, or the giddy change in status when you’re used to the status quo, or perhaps most likely, the allure of the Fibonacci sequence suddenly apparent on the crown of your head.

The Fibonacci sequence—the series where each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers—has an almost mystical reputation, and who can fault anyone for thinking that the fact that it’s suddenly emerging on your head is a good omen? Suddenly you share an intimate something or other with snail shells and the cochlea of the inner ear, the spiraling pattern of sunflowers, pinecones, and cauliflower, the internal pattern of hurricanes, and the spiral galaxies like the Milky Way. Your inconsequential self is mirrored in the gargantuan inner sanctum of the universe. The universe, or a spiritual being, or a godlike omnipotent she-creature, or an old white guy with a flowing grey beard—whatever you choose to believe—has playfully encapsulated the beauty of the world on the crown of your head, and all because you trusted your instincts and rid yourself of the scraggly, hairy remnants of your treatment. 

Meditate on the Fibonacci sequence long enough and you will summon up universal interconnectedness and harmony, something in short supply during cancer treatment, especially the barbarism of chemo. As a mathematical pattern that is often interpreted to signify the beauty of repetition and perfection in nature, the Fibonacci sequence implies that everything is related, that there is in fact meaning in both animate and inanimate beauty, and that even if our own tiny life ceases, the enormity of the world around us will carry on in a consequential way. 

Cancer is seemingly an example of the natural order run amok. Instead of order, there is chaos. Instead of meaning, there is mystery. Instead of harmony, there is discord. People ask, Why me? Is it genetic, environmental? We search for meaning where there may be none. Some people prefer the lack of structure over the more controlled conditions that we see around us at first glance. And yet, the latest theories hold that what seems at first glance to be wildly disconnected, may, in fact, be connected on a molecular level, at least in my case for an extremely rare, one or two people per million per year, variety of cancer.

It turns out that the Fibonacci sequence may be caused by rapid growth and expansion. In the case of human hair, imagine the rapidly expanding brain of a fetus. By 22 weeks, all the hair follicles are in place, even in the eyebrows, whether or not the fetus is eventually born with hair. In the following weeks, the fetal brain starts learning more bodily functions as growth gathers steam. The brain can hear! It can sleep! It can taste! It can breathe! That rapid growth and expansion inside the human womb creates the only animal with the Fibonacci sequence in its hair. But to see your own version of this Darwinian feature, it’s best to overcome your sartorial fears and get a buzz cut on your lovely handsome head.

And now that my scalp is repopulated, somewhat, my hair has become a memory of illness, a zero-sum game. In my brief and unexpected chemo and immunotherapy intermission after 30 straight months of treatment and a Venn diagram of unappetizing side effects, I’m at first willing to let sleeping dogs lie, but it turns out, I’m a bit alienated from the healthy-ish hair I once so craved. And it’s a trope that we humans always want what we cannot have, from the delicious but messy chocolate treats when we’re toddlers, to the bad boy in a leather jacket in high school, to the really smart handsome guy when we’re just out of college who appreciates our sense of humor and only later confesses to being married. In the chronicles of all humanity, I appear to be most easily duped, but it turns out the one thing I do know a lot about is the geography of cancer.

Like a North Star to perfect health, cancer treatment is like the resurrection: all promise and no substance. I won’t tell a lie, in the beginning the shock of the diagnosis, the girding of the loins, the determination to beat the unfathomable, the mandate from family to stay healthy for their sake, the impending apocalypse—it all gets confusing. It can be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. Then there’s the bare all/mind your own business dichotomy, because some days I want to share small triumphs, but other days I want to keep all the grief and fear to myself.

If I have learned anything in my sadly to-be-curtailed life, it’s that the quotidian details of our existence, the boring day-to-day that once we couldn’t wait to hurry through, are the things we will miss the most when we lay on our deathbeds. Reading a book to a child for the seventieth time. Playing the board game with a partner that we will inevitably lose, again. Taking the dog for a walk. Shopping for groceries—the color! the variety! while our stomachs are repelled by the heightened aroma of food. I realize that in the next few years there will come a time when I will strike a pose on my sofa or bed, supported by pillows, and gently order someone to do this or do that, not because I am regal and beloved by all, but because I am, finally, too weak to do anything for myself. I see glimpses of it even now, in my treatment intermission, when I am ostensibly the healthiest I have been in a few years, but the side effects have gradually worn me down like waves that refine the sharp edges of a broken piece of glass. 

That simple, natural process, that wearing down, that joining of the manmade glass with the rush of the water, results in the beautiful artifact of smooth sea glass. Therein lies the nature/nurture origin story, the small moments of beauty that we rely on to carry us through life. Those ugly shards of glass get zhuzhed up by the endless breakers till they become something collectible. My sadness at needing to shave my head because of cancer was quickly negated by the discovery of the Fibonacci sequence on my own head and my immediate delight at feeling at peace with the world around me. 

I am giddy with the phenomenon of survivorship, no matter how temporary. As if there were an Oprah in some divine game show: No more suffering for you, and you, and you! Failure and hope are inextricably part of our DNA. If we don’t succeed, the luckiest among us normalize resilience. All we can hope for with the pokes and prods, the poisons and slices that we have survived, is that somehow we have learned, we have adapted, we have improved, we have overcome.

Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories, and Best American Fantasy, Judith Cooper’s stories and essays have recently appeared in Colorado Review, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by Carraig-na-gCat, Hambidge, Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Ragdale, The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, and VCCA. She lives in Chicago.

22 January 2026