I'm sending off my wig to a new friend tomorrow. It's all wrapped and boxed and packaged and ready to travel from Gainesville, Florida to the east coast of the sunshine state where it will land in the hands of a young women newly diagnosed with breast cancer.This new friend found me here -- on The Cancer Blog -- and we have been corresponding back and forth via e-mail about all sorts of cancer topics -- like surgery and pathology and chemotherapy and most recently, wigs. She asked me just the other day what type of wig I wore after I lost my hair to chemotherapy. I told her I didn't like full wigs, that they felt too unnatural, that I feared my little boys would rip them off my head in the middle of the grocery store. I told her I opted for underhair -- a hairfall of sorts made of plain, white, soft cotton on the top with hair hanging only from the sides and back. It is worn with hats, to cover the cotton part, and it feels quite secure -- although it did sail off my head at the beach one day, compliments of a strong breeze.
I told my new friend that I was completely happy with my choice. I told her the underhair is made of human hair and that customers get to choose the color, texture, length, and size. The wig can be washed, dried, curled, styled, and cut. It looks so real that some people didn't even know chemotherapy took my hair. It was the perfect disguise for me.
I led my new friend in the direction of this wig -- www.hiphat.com -- where she could order her very own handmade underhair. I told her to ask her doctor for a prescription for a cranial prothesis and to see if her insurance company would reimburse her some of the cost of this fairly expensive wig option. And then I realized it would be silly for her to do all this work and spend so much money when my wig is tucked away in my closet, sitting pretty on a nice styrofoam head, doing nothing more than collecting dust.
I don't need my wig anymore. But my new friend does. So tomorrow, it begins traveling her way. And she can keep it for as long as she needs it, for as long as I don't need it. Which I hope is forever.
My son shaved my head 16 months ago. My hair was falling out in clumps from chemotherapy, and I thought the trauma of losing my hair all at once would be somehow less painful than watching it fall from my scalp one batch at a time. It was still traumatic -- and I cried -- but Joey told me, "It's only a haircut, mommy. You are not going to die." Joey was four. I was 34. And he was right -- I did not die. And my hair is growing back. 
