The woman looked to be in her 30s - about my age. I saw her across the store browsing through the gourmet foods. She was shopping with friends. She was laughing. She was almost completely bald. I was pretty sure it was neither a fashion risk nor a political statement.

There was something completely familiar about the downy hair that covered her scalp. I've seen it in my own mirror.

Less than two years ago, I was in her place. I remember what it was like to have a scalp sprouting brand new hair. I remember how it felt to have just enough hair to leave the house without a hat or scarf. I remember seeing, out the corner of my eye, people in restaurants and shops watching me out of the corners of their eyes.

Oh, how I remember.

It wasn't the first time in the past couple years that I've wished I had something to say to a fellow survivor. Every time I have seen a young woman with wispy hair or a scarf tied over her bare head or eyebrows and lashes drawn in with pencil, I have searched my feeble brain for just the right word. If only there were a secret handshake or signal that one cancer survivor could give to another - some way to say, "It stinks, doesn't it?"

Before I had my very own, personalized chemotherapy plan, I thought chemo was a one-size-fits-all drug that makes a person puke and lose her hair. Or was that radiation? If you had asked me back then, I might not have been able to tell you.

It didn't take me long to learn the differences between the two and the subtleties of chemo. Yes, the hair goes.

And yes, you might puke. Or you might not. It all depends on your illness, your drug, your body and your reaction.

Me? I managed to gain 20 pounds and eat like never before. Two years later, it's getting hard to keep blaming the steroids for my newfound doughnut cravings.

I've known women who worked straight through their treatments, never skipping a beat. They took their steroids and nausea pills and went water skiing on the weekends.

I've known women who couldn't do much more than walk to the mailbox without needing a nap. It's nearly impossible to explain chemo to someone who hasn't experienced it.

You feel like you spent the whole weekend binge drinking antifreeze, and you're still soaking in it. Imagine your very worst hangover ever, then multiply it. Give it teeth and legs. Rip off the roof and add another two stories. Then multiply that, too.

It's not the nausea that lays you flat. There are great drugs to control that side effect. What really gets you is the "fatigue," a word I put in quotes, because it is far too feeble to properly describe the urgent sensation of total WRONGNESS that every nerve in your body sends your brain. It isn't a lazy fatigue that causes you to stretch and yawn and apologize to the company for turning in early.

It's a primal fatigue, a fight-or-flight fatigue, a fatigue of survival. It's every cell in your body screaming, "Holy cannoli - what's happening? Quick, lie down on the ground and maybe it will go away. Do it!"

And on top of all that, you lose your hair, your eyebrows, your lashes and every other strand on your body.

You become more naked than the day you were born, and you do not recognize the person in the mirror. We go through all that, and we don't even get a secret handshake? How about a pinky ring - something? I remember, after my hair started to grow back, the first time I went to church without anything on my head. My hair was less than 1/4-inch long, and soft as a puppy's coat.

I must have looked very much like the woman I saw in the store the other day. I compensated for my self consciousness by acting as healthy as possible. I felt people watching me just as I had been watching the woman shopping with her friends.

One of our priests - a man who was a cancer survivor himself - approached me after the service with a big smile. If he had been searching, like I always do, for the perfect words from one survivor to another, he didn't show it. He opened his arms to hug me, and with his eyes on my patchy hair, he grinned wide and said, "Thank you."

Elizabeth Trever Buchinger is a freelance writer whose hair grew back curly. She can be reached at VillageWordsmith@hughes.net.