Treating the Woman Inside

October 2006 Special Advertising Section

Four days before Kathy Lewis was scheduled to start chemotherapy for breast cancer, a friend told her about a new product that could keep her hair from falling out as a side effect of the treatment. She called the inventor of Penguin Cold Caps in his London office and had him ship her several caps. “This was the one thing I had control of because I had no control over anything else,” says Lewis, a fifty-nine-year-old retired tennis director who lives in Edina.

The caps, which Lewis rented for $40 each and would wear before, during, and after each chemotherapy session, had to be kept frozen and changed every thirty minutes. By temporarily reducing scalp skin circulation,  it is thought the frozen caps reduce the amount of chemo drugs that reach hair follicles, thereby allowing Lewis to keep her platinum, chin-length hair. “I lost my eyebrows and my eyelashes. I just wanted to keep some dignity,” she says.

Lewis is only one of a handful of women in the United States who have used Penguin Cold Caps—they can’t be marketed in this country because they aren’t approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But Lewis is not alone in seeking professional assistance to try to combat chemo-induced hair loss. “When women find out they’re going to lose their hair, it’s devastating,” says Twila Donley, owner of Fantasia Salon and Hair Replacement in Crystal. “It’s a big self-esteem issue.”

Many of these women visit Donley’s salon for eyebrow and eyelash prosthesis that attach with adhesive and stay on for a week at a time. Others come in for wigs or for scarves trimmed with prosthetic hair that simulate bangs. She also has wigs that allow women to sleep and swim in them. “[Hair replacement] allows them to live their lives without having anyone know they have cancer,” Donley says.

Margie Shaul of JUUT Salonspa in Edina understands the experience firsthand because she underwent chemo for breast cancer nearly four years ago. Before she finished treatment, Shaul got a call from a client, Valerie Lower, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer and wanted to get her wig trimmed. By the time Lower left the salon, she didn’t even want to wear her wig. As Shaul recalls, “[Lower] said, ‘You guys have given me the confidence I need to feel beautiful without it.’”

Lower helped JUUT start a program that provides free  manicures, pedicures, massages, facials, makeup applications, wig trimmings, and head shavings to women who have undergone chemo. Some women even come in before they start treatment, like the woman who wanted to shave her hair off rather than have it fall out. “She was taking charge of a situation she had lost control of,” Shaul says. “That’s all you can do.”