When Can I Color My Hair Again After Chemo
Skin Deep
Mail-Chemo, New Pilus, New Outlook
ONE Friday afternoon early this year, in a limestone boondocks house on the Upper East Side, the topic of chat was "cancer things, like lymphedema," said Sherry Kreek, who is undergoing chemotherapy for chest cancer.
"We were discussing things that were pretty personal," she continued. "Other women were listening. Anybody knows someone."
The conversation wasn't happening in an oncologist's waiting room or at a luncheon, but at Sharon Dorram Color at Sally Hershberger, a homey six-chair salon where Ms. Kreek, 62, is the managing director.
Three women with microshort pilus, strangers earlier they sat down, had all gone to Ms. Dorram, whose clients include Christie Brinkley and Linda Evangelista, to have their hair dyed for the first time since it had grown back afterward cancer treatment. They weren't shy about talking about their new hair and what to do with information technology, whether they liked their wigs, or much else near the affliction they shared.
"This was a more than upbeat, happy identify to talk than a treatment eye," Ms. Kreek said.
A decade ago, the women who came to run into Ms. Dorram, then at John Frieda, subsequently chemo or radiation therapy did so furtively. They removed their wigs in the bathroom or booked early morning time appointments and then they didn't have to be in a room with good for you clients.
"You feel vulnerable," said Ms. Kreek, who met Ms. Dorram at John Frieda, when she returned to blond after her first round of chemotherapy in 2003. "You don't want to come into a room with ladies with tons of hair, going, 'I liked it when you did that last time.' It'south like, 'Shut up.' "
Now, for many women who have lost hair during cancer treatments, dyeing is empowering — and doing it in an open, chatty session makes information technology all the ameliorate. "They're feeling proficient again," said Alexis Antonellis, a colorist at Oscar Blandi who ofttimes sees clients who want hair colored after chemotherapy. "They want to go back to who they were. They're so excited to sit back in the chair and get their life back. It's really nice. You've got to see the smiles."
Even Ms. Kreek, who wears a stunning blond shoulder-length wig because her pilus is not yet long enough to colour, has become less guarded. "I used to make them launder my wig on my head," she said. "Now I just hand it off."
She's planning to have Ms. Dorram dye her hair in the next week or so, in time for a vacation to Palm Beach, Fla. "I haven't been anything but a blonde since I was a child," she said. "A lot of that was not natural, but to have this ash-colored pilus is non me. I am definitely a blonde. I'm not a grey-haired person, no affair what my body says."
Epitome
I might wait cancer patients to exist leery of chemical processes, especially those that accept been explored for possible carcinogenicity, as hair colour has. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the Earth Health Organization and dedicated to identifying cancer causes, said personal pilus dye is "non classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans," based on a lack of evidence from studies in people. On its Web site, the National Cancer Institute writes that while "some studies have indicated that people who began using hair dyes earlier 1980 have an increased risk of developing not-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the testify for increased risks of other cancers from pilus-dye use is limited and conflicting."
"Zip is off the table," Ms. Antonellis said of the dyes she uses. "Merely I'm constantly thinking nigh respecting the integrity of what they have and where they are in handling."
Dr. James Speyer, medical manager at the Cancer Establish at NYU Langone Medical Center, who is also Ms. Kreek's oncologist, said he encouraged women to dye their hair if it made them experience better. "Information technology is my understanding that there is no run a risk," he said. "It is perfectly fine for women to colour their hair. It's patently important to them, and at that place'south no take chances of the normal pilus dye causing additional cancers."
And it's not just a female event. "How people expect is a very important part of their whole approach to the diagnosis of cancer and to the treatment of cancer, and anything nosotros can do to help them work through that period is then of import to their overall sense of well-existence."
Amy Katz, 48, of Westport, Conn., whose breast cancer was diagnosed in June 2008, noticed her hair growing in gray after treatment. "Yous get-go looking like Jamie Lee Curtis," she said. The first person she chosen was her oncologist. "You're eating perfectly and doing everything correct," she said. "Y'all're walking on eggshells, so I asked, 'Exercise y'all think I can colour my pilus?' "
"Blondie," her oncologist told her, "I want yous to color your hair any color yous want."
John Barrett, who has a namesake salon at Bergdorf Goodman, said pilus usually grows back curlier and slightly grayer. "Generally when the hair grows back, it grows dorsum quite differently, only it goes back to its normal texture within a year," he said. "I tend to recommend that people await a niggling while earlier deciding on a color, but then I unremarkably propose that they go lighter and try having a few highlights."
Subsequently her oncologist's O.Thousand., Ms. Katz returned to blond. "People made me experience like I looked like Sharon Rock, whether I did or didn't," she said.
The almost of import thing for her was that she began to look every bit she did before cancer. "You desire to prove that you lot can climb Mountain Kilimanjaro and get over to the other side and get your life back to where it was," she said. "You desire to know that you lot can do it, and having the same pilus colour is function of that."
Some survivors gloat the newest phase of their lives with a radically different manner. Kate Male monarch, an actress in her 40s who also had cancer, had her mail service-chemo hair dyed blonder than it had been. "Before cancer, I looked like the girl side by side door, similar Jennifer Aniston," she said. "Now I experience like I accept Annie Lennox within me. It empowered me to bring out that aspect of my personality.
"Of all of the changes that did occur, my hair has made the biggest difference," said Ms. Male monarch, from the Upper Westward Side. "I was and then agape to lose it and frightened past what I saw in the mirror, and so I realized it was such a gift. The last affair I expected was to get a whole new await out of cancer."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/fashion/postcancer-women-get-a-boost-from-coloring-their-hair.html
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