Why “It’s Just Hair” Is a Lie
Cold Capping could minimize this common cancer side effect
“You look so beautiful today. Did you get a haircut?”
When Roxanne heard those words during her first bout with breast cancer at age 36, she didn’t feel complimented. She felt exposed. She was wearing a wig because chemotherapy had taken her hair, and every compliment was just a reminder that she was hiding something.
She told me, “How can they not tell?”.
For many of us, the hardest part isn’t the treatment days themselves. It’s the “in-between” stage. It’s when you are feeling better physically, maybe even ready to get back to work or life, but the mirror screams “patient” back at you because you have that short, wiry, post-chemo regrowth.
Cancer strips away so much of your identity. Losing your hair feels like the final surrender of your privacy. It announces your diagnosis to the grocery store clerk, the person at the gym, and your colleagues before you’ve even said a word.
But when Roxanne was diagnosed a second time, five years later, she decided she wasn’t going to surrender her identity again. She found a way to keep her hair, and in doing so, she kept her control.
In this week’s episode of Kicking Cancer’s Ass, we are talking about cold capping. Not the rumor of it, but the freezing, logistical, heavy-lifting reality of it.
Roxanne used manual “Penguin” cold caps—literal frozen helmets kept at sub-zero temperatures on dry ice. I used the DigniCap machine system at UCSF. Both of us walked out of chemotherapy with our hair, and more importantly, with our privacy intact.
Here are two things you need to know right now if you are facing chemo:
Vanity is a survival tool. My sister-in-law told me, “Why is it vain to want to look in the mirror and see yourself?”. Keeping your hair isn’t about beauty pageants; it’s about recognizing the person in the reflection so you don’t dissociate from your own life.
You cannot do this alone. Cold capping is a logistical beast. Roxanne built a “Cold Cap Brigade”—a rotation of friends who managed the dry ice and swapped the caps every 25 minutes. It turned a lonely treatment into a team sport.
If you think losing your hair is inevitable, or if you think trying to save it is “silly,” you need to hear this conversation. We break down exactly how the science works, the gear you need, and the team you have to build to pull it off.
Listen to the episode here to learn how to keep your hair and your power.
