*diagnosed with breast cancer in July of 2016 and sharing my story to help spread awareness.
One thing that one thinks of often is the question...
Will I lose my hair?
After meeting with my medical oncologist, they gave me my treatment plan. Since my breast cancer was Estrogen, Progesterone and Her2+ (Triple Positive) I would be getting 4 different chemotherapy drugs. I did 6 rounds of Taxotere, Carboplatin, Perjeta and Herceptin. That was 4 drugs in one sitting, every 3 weeks for 6 cycles. I would for sure be losing my hair.
I went wig shopping and met with a wig specialist in the event that I would need one. I prepared myself for the inevitable. It was the strangest thing to see on myself so much that I needed to do some research. Knowing I had babies, I was most concerned with protecting them from seeing me look so drastically different. I didn't want them to be scared. I started to look up things like .. How to not lose your hair during chemo...
That is when I discovered that there was a possible option. This was call Cold Capping.
Cold capping has recently been expanded to have insurance coverage but at the time it cost me $500 a month but I was bound and determined to give it a go.
Essentially you are wearing a frozen ice cap on your head during chemo that gets switched out every 15 minutes in order to freeze your hair follicles on your head. This would then prevent the chemo from going to the root of your hair on your head.
I will say that I did lose hair but had some leftover that I felt as though I looked "somewhat' normal. I loved being able to go out in public and not have the world know what I was dealing with.
It was not a perfect process and it came with a lot of stress of its own, but I believe it was the right fit for me.
*I will speak more on the process of cold capping in a future post.
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