Those Suffering from Cancer Hair Loss Find Shear Compassion

It was March of 2023 when Michelle Sklar discovered a lump in her breast. "I actually had cancer before when I turned 50. It was thyroid cancer. So I figured I had already given at the office," Sklar said with almost a laugh in her voice. "But we quickly regrouped and came up with a plan to move forward."

Due to the aggressiveness of the tumor, she found out, she would need surgery and chemotherapy. She says the chemo news hit her just as hard if not harder than the news she had cancer. Her fears of the infusions came to fruition after only three chemo treatments. While showering, her hair suddenly and shockingly began coming out in clumps.

Still wet from the shower and in tears, she phoned her hairstylist and friend Staci Linkleter. "Come in immediately," Linkleter told her. As the owner of Globe Salon, she is sadly no stranger to helping her clients through this painful process. She cleared her schedule and fit Sklar in right away.

"She actually turned me away from the mirror," Sklar recalls.

"I didn't want her to see what I was seeing. What she was feeling in the shower was one thing. But what I was seeing was even a little scary for me," Linkleter said.

Sklar described it as heart wrenching but inevitable. Now, as she looks back at the experience, she thinks of it as an intimate and almost joyful turning point in her cancer journey. It enabled her to move forward in her recovery and eventually BEAT cancer.

My journey with esophageal cancer included a very similar experience," said Nancy Byrne. "I thought I would be able to escape the loss of my hair as I finished my sixth and final chemo treatment. Then, just like Michelle Sklar, the reality hit me as I showered one Friday morning only to feel handfuls of hair falling from my scalp. In tears, I too reached for my cell and reached out to Linkleter."

"The moment I heard you and felt you through the phone, I just said I need to get you in here immediately," remembers Linkleter. Pausing to get through her tears, Linkleter continued, "The sooner we can eliminate this, the better the healing process begins."

Linkleter turned me away from the mirror and did her assessment," Byrne remembers. "Fortunately, when she turned me back toward the mirror, she explained my hair was falling out evenly, so she would be able to pull off a very short pixie cut…leaving me with extremely thin hair, but a style none the less. It enabled me to return to my job, which includes a lot of on-camera work, with more confidence."

These hair interventions are not uncommon for Staci Linkleter. According to the National Health Service, nearly two million people a year are diagnosed with some type of cancer. Survival rates are improving constantly, but the treatments can still have devastating effects, leaving patients with harsh reminders on the exterior of their bodies of the battle being fought internally.

At least with the hair loss that comes with chemotherapy, help can be found a phone call away from that person in your life who has always helped you face the world with more confidence. Now, they are just doing it under more challenging circumstances.

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