By: Bethany Kandel
With chemotherapy often comes hair loss and many unknowns. Here’s what one woman learned about finding beauty as your body changes.
I’m sitting here running my fingers through my curly mop of hair. Lately I’ve been complaining that it’s way too curly; it’s growing up and out in a poufy afro, not down, like it once did. Instead of celebrating the fact that I have a beautiful, thick head of hair (albeit greyer than I’m used to...), I’m complaining because I’m having a bad hair day. I remind myself to be thankful; at least I have hair!
Two years ago I was completely bald, having lost pretty much every hair on my body after my first session of chemotherapy following a breast cancer diagnosis. I never really appreciated my hair or realized how much it defined me—and even how it kept me warm—until I lost it. It’s the one side effect both men and women say they fear the most after being diagnosed with cancer.
But thankfully, for me and most people, the hair loss is temporary. Chemotherapy ends and slowly, back comes your hair. It may not look and feel like it used to at first, though many people welcome the change from straight to curly, or vice versa. Eventually the effect of the chemotherapy on the hair follicles wears off and your hair goes back to what you once had. During the loss and growth period, I had lots of questions about what was happening and the timeline for getting it all back.
To get the answers, I did some research and spoke to Ann Marie Wisniewski, MSN, RN, AOCN®, a nurse educator at the John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey; and beauty expert and author, Lori Ovitz.
You can also learn how to deal with hair and skin changes at free Look Good Feel Better workshops, held at hospitals nationwide. Or learn beauty secrets, like how to pencil in natural-looking eyebrows, from the step-by-step guide, Facing the Mirror With Cancer, by Ovitz. The bottom line, Ovitz says, “It is a difficult time, but you can get through this and still look beautiful. There are people out there to help you.”
