Have you ever had one of those car driving nightmares? The one where you’re confidently cruising down a packed freeway until suddenly your brakes go out AND your car suddenly begins picking up speed. You watch the speedometer needle hit 85, 90… ! You can’t stop it, can’t even slow it down. The best you can do is to grab that wheel with both hands and hope that you steer yourself through to safety.
Cancer Thrives On Social Media
Cancer sure has become social since my mom’s breast cancer diagnosis, mastectomy and treatment almost 30 years ago. Mom never uttered the words “breast” or “cancer,” at least not around her children. For mom’s generation, breast cancer was a very personal and private matter, one she discussed only with her doctors and my father. Today, women are broadcasting their breast cancer experiences to the entire world, both finding and investing their time and (I imagine) limited energy in sharing the minute-to-minute details of their cancer experiences.
Bald On Top But Not Inside
We women are taught to crave beauty from a very early age. I still have my childhood doll - a perfect china-faced beauty with rich blond curly hair, long lovely lashes, luscious red lips, manicured nails, and a flawless body. I grew up in the Marilyn Monroe era. Then, as now, actresses were icons of style, elegance and beauty and would never allow themselves to be seen in public in anything but pure glamor.
Turn Your Hair Loss Anxiety Into Self-Empowerment
They call it our “crowning glory.” Our hair is the crowning element of our identity - from our femininity, to age, confidence, and style, we communicate a great deal about ourselves by how we wear and style our hair. Without hair, we feel stripped of our identity, and in the context of cancer, it often feels like we are systematically being stripped of ourselves. Hair loss can feel like the last straw. Too many of us feel guilty for caring about our hair when faced with a life-threatening disease like cancer.
Cancer Brings A Gold Lining
“Every cloud has a silver lining” is an idiom I’ve often heard but never really associated with any specific experience in my life. I’ve probably used the expression in an effort to comfort someone else. The expression has been used repeatedly in response to my story of hair loss and my subsequent creation of the beaubeau scarf. Early-on, I found the expression too dismissive and wanted everyone to know that I’d forego the hair loss and my fashion invention in a minute if I had the option.
Come on Doc - My Chemo Clock Is Ticking!
Do you ever contemplate the amount of time you spend doing mundane things in your life? Did you know that the average 69-yr-old American will have spent 120 full days waiting at red lights (8 minutes per day, 6x per week, 52 weeks/yr for 69 years = 41.6 hours per year). Some of us spend an estimated year of our life just looking for misplaced objects, or eight months of our life opening junk mail, or two years trying to return phone calls.
"True Beauty" PSA's - Do They Help?
True beauty is found in your heart, not on your head. That’s the message in Hairloss.com’s new video PSA on chemo hair loss. There are two other videos in the series, one on Trichotillomania and another on male baldness.
Cancer Brings Special Mother's Day Awareness
Mothers Day 2011 has come and gone. Mother’s Day calendars are traditionally filled with breast cancer awareness and advocacy events and has always been a day on which I join my sisters and other women in running for a breast cancer free future. This year I spent my day dining in town with Mom. I learned that Mother’s Day is the busiest day of the year for restaurants with 40% of Americans abandoning their kitchens for restaurant fare.
Tips for Rising Above Chemo Hair Loss
If you’ve ever been there, then you know IT’S NOT JUST HAIR! Hair loss is often one of the most difficult and feared side effects of chemotherapy. The first question a woman often has upon learning she will need to undergo chemotherapy is “Will I lose my hair?”
Going Bald for a Cause
When you’re down-and-out, terrified, feeling helpless and just deeply sad, what helps you get back in the saddle? For some it’s therapy. For others it’s family, travel, spiritual guidance, yoga, half-gallons of ice cream, GOING BALD!???
