What a Difference a Wig Can Make

I’ve been working diligently lately to help promote Hair for Hope for Michael Rose Hair Designs. That, combined with writing a couple of articles recently for Breast Cancer Awareness month, has put me in touch with several women who have battled cancer- and not just breast cancer.

Something that I found fascinating was how much having a wig meant to women battling cancer. Because of that and the fact that Michael Rose still seeks people to donate their hair during Hair for Hope on Nov. 5, I wanted to share some insight from two cancer survivors I’ve spoken to recently.

Elisabeth Burns, the beautiful woman pictured in this post, had just turned 23 and had been married for six months when she was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in 2005.

She had long hair at the time and about two weeks earlier had gotten it newly highlighted.

“Oddly enough, I remember very few things from that first oncologist meeting,” Lis recalled when speaking to me recently.

But learning that she would need chemotherapy and would lose her hair- “that finally was the thing that finally broke me,” she said. The notion of hair loss made her cry.

“I think you don’t realize how much it means to you until that moment,” Lis said. “We look at other women without hair going through cancer treatment and there’s no way we think they aren’t beautiful.”

But Lis suddenly felt like she wouldn’t be herself without her hair. Knowing the loss was inevitable, she cut her hair to chin level after her first treatment. She remembers thinking it was cute.

One night she shaved all of her hair off. It was just too painful to watch it fall out in clumps and know it would just keep falling out.

That night her husband, Jason, said to her “You’re still you.”

“I was still talking like me, still laughing like me. I just had no hair,” she said.

She bought a wig. It was cheap; not pretty. But it got her through. It helped.

After treatment, she got a really good wig.

“It kind of gave me a little piece of myself back, in that I was hoping to go out in it and not feel like the ‘cancer girl,’” she said.

She didn’t want to be the girl who was defined by cancer. She says everyone battling cancer wants people to look at them and not think, “Aww, that poor girl, she’s sick.”

Her wig became a powerful tool because it gave her a sense of being normal.

Frances Stebbins knows how Lis feels. She has battled multiple types of cancer and wore a wig after losing her hair. The wig helped handle losing her hair.

“I don’t think people realized I was wearing a wig,” she said. “Emotionally, it made me feel like I wasn’t different by losing my hair.”

Fran continued to get up every morning, put on makeup and put on her wig.

“I think you have to feel good inside about yourself and the wig helped me do that,” she said. “I was never brave enough not to wear a wig. Call it vanity if you want.”

Fran and Lis admire anyone who is willing to cut their hair and donate it to charity so wigs can be given to women battling cancer.

“To me, they’re giving of their heart,” Fran said. “Women value their hair so much, so to give that up, how wonderful is that?”

If you would like to donate your hair during the Hair for Hope event to help women who have been is Lis’s and Fran’s shoes and are battling cancer, please visit Michael Rose’s Web site for more information: www.michaelrosehairdesigns.com.

Photo by Tina Sargeant