Hairdresser works to bring beauty to cancer patients’ lives

TAMARA WELLS GAVE Sandy Patterson a gift Sandy never imagined wanting or needing: the ability to smile at her reflection.

“I haven’t totally lost my hair. It’s just thin and fine,” Sandy says. She’s undergoing treatment for her second bout with colon cancer. “Tamara colors it with non-chemo altering color. It makes me less depressed when I take off my wig at night.”

Disguising cancer is one of Tamara’s specialties. She operates a salon named after her in Hayden. Her newest camouflage is a wig that clings to the scalp with body heat rather than glue or tape, potentially preventing irritation on scalps sensitive from treatment.

Tamara cuts, styles, frosts or perms anyone who walks through her door. But as the years pass, more and more of her clients are women who are losing or have lost their hair due to medical treatments. Most have cancer.

“I’m going to wear these until there’s a cure,” Tamara says resolutely as she slips a tiny gold bell onto a gold safety pin. “Ring a bell for a cure. I want everyone to wear them.”

Sandy recommends Tamara whenever she has the chance. Sandy is at the North Idaho Cancer Center often for treatment and meets plenty of women with little or no hair. The cancer center keeps a collection of wigs donated by manufacturers and gives them to patients who want them.

“We give out roughly 10 a week,” says Maggi McElfresh, a clinical social worker at the center. “Some women are taking two wigs so they have one to wear while one is at the stylist.”

But the center doesn’t specialize in wigs. It makes available all the wigs donated and women – there are none for men now – peruse them hoping for a style, color and fit that works. When Sandy was first diagnosed in 2001, she wasn’t certain what would happen with her hair. She asked at a few salons about hair treatments for cancer patients and several people steered her to Tamara. When Sandy’s hair began to thin from her chemotherapy treatments, she made an appointment with Tamara.

“She’s such an artist,” Sandy says. “I sat in her chair and said, ‘I’m going to have some fun.’ She convinced me to be a redhead.”

Tamara was aware of medical baldness before she started her career nearly four decades ago. Kidney problems stole her hair during her teen years.

“I cried. They told me it would never grow back,” she says. “I wore wigs, but in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, they looked like helmets.”

Tamara’s hair did grow back and with it came an unwavering compassion for other people with hair loss. She constantly hunted for better wigs and hats and shampoos and conditioners that didn’t irritate treatment-sensitive scalps.

Word traveled and Tamara found in her appointment book more cancer patients, burn victims and people with hair loss from illnesses. Medications often leave scalps tender and finding workable wigs, then fitting them, is tricky.

The North Idaho Cancer Center and American Cancer Society offer free Look Good, Feel Better workshops that teach cancer patients how to care for their skin, find cosmetics that don’t irritate and disguise their chemo-damaged hair with hats, scarves and wigs. The idea is that a diagnosis and treatment are depressing enough and patients shouldn’t have to also endure a drastic change in their appearance, that is, baldness, loss of eyebrows and more.

“We don’t have a wide selection of different wig styles,” Maggi says. “But we know who keeps wigs in stock or can order them and we refer patients to them.”

One of those hairdressers is Tamara. Her constant lookout for better hair products to offer cancer patients led her to Dermafix, a new synthetic-hair, hypo-allergenic wig for bald women. The wig is light and requires no glue or tape.

Body heat holds the wig in place like a magnet. Tests showed people can wear them in strong winds without worry.

“You can even leave it on while you wash it,” Tamara says. “You can take it off, but you have to tug. You can do anything in it as long as your body temperature doesn’t cool.”

The wig loosens when body temperature drops. Manufacturers boast that it lasts seven years.

Maggi hasn’t heard of Dermafix and can’t advise patients on its use. Tamara plans to make the rounds with the new wig to the cancer center, American Cancer Society, doctors and dermatologists in the next few weeks.

“I try to handle only the best,” Tamara says. “Things have come so far since I wore a wig.”

Sandy has too much of her own hair for a Dermafix wig, but she’s already told another chemotherapy patient about it.

“She’s lost all her hair and it’s getting her down,” Sandy says.

She doesn’t know if the woman will call Tamara or if her insurance will cover the cost of a wig – they start at $165. Most medical insurance doesn’t cover wigs, Maggi says.

Sandy’s wigs have looked so natural that people have complimented her on her beautiful hair, she says giggling.

“It’s worth the expense,” she says. “It has been fun, lifted my spirits, gotten me talking to a lot of people.”