Hairdresser’s Talent Brings Lift To Cancer Patients
The year Tammy Wells graduated from high school and earned her hairdresser’s license, she went bald.
It was an odd twist of fate for a girl who had chosen hair as her artistic medium. But it didn’t throw her.
She opened three salons in the next three years, catered to the Hollywood crowd and won the championship in the World Olympics of Hair 16 years in a row.
But most of all, she combined her skills with her nightmarish childhood experiences in and out of hospitals to find ways to lift the spirits of young cancer patients.
“When you shampoo their hair and it falls out in your sink and their mother is crying, well, I’ve been there,” says Tammy, whose own hair is thick and blonde despite doctors’ predictions it wouldn’t grow back.
“I have to be strong, say, ‘I know the products. I think I can help.”’ Childhood health problems sentenced Tammy to 57 surgeries, body casts and kidney dialysis. In the hospital, she found styling patients’ hair perked her up as much as it pleased them.
After she earned her hairdresser’s license, Tammy returned to school for six years to learn to beautify people with medical problems.
“I grew up with people fearing me in a body cast. I know how it feels,” she says. The only visible evidence of her health problems is a slight limp that followed her into adulthood.
“I have customers with half a face. I cover their scars. If a client’s too sick, I’ll go to the hospital.”
California’s big earthquake in 1994 leveled Tammy’s three salons and convinced her to move in her mid-40s to Coeur d’Alene. For three years, she traveled as a personal hairdresser with actors and actresses who hired her.
Then, last fall, she took a job with Hayden’s Northern Highlights, attracted to the private room the salon offered her.
“Privacy is so important,” says Candy Swanson, a Coeur d’Alene businesswoman fighting cancer. “Hair loss for women is very traumatic, heartfelt. They need someone who can work with them in a very tender way.”
Children are Tammy’s specialty. She hunts the market constantly for better wigs, shampoos, scalp treatments.
“If I can get them before chemotherapy, I have external things that might help their hair not fall out,” she says.
And when she gets them after chemotherapy, Tammy prides herself in her wig skills. She stays in touch with her young clients, visits them in the hospital, sends them cards and balloons.
“These notes are worth more than money to me,” she says, pointing to the handwritten thank-you notes tacked to her station. In one redinked letter, a 10-year-old girl with leukemia thanks Tammy for the fine wig job that fooled the girl’s friends into thinking she’d gotten her hair cut.
“God has been good to me,” Tammy says. “Being a hairdresser is my way of paying him back.”
I can see clearly now
There’s no reason to waste the prescription eyeglasses that no longer work for your eyes. North Idaho College’s Intercultural Communications class wants those glasses to send to the LensCrafter/Lion’s Club Gift of Sight program.
The program delivered free exams and recycled glasses to 192,000 people in Third World countries last year. NIC’s Mona Klinger will take care of all the details if you have glasses to spare. Call her at 769-7872.
Money and brains
With all the new fees banks are charging, it’s important to know when they do something nice. U.S. Bank donated $98,000 during the past two years to honor top juniors in Idaho’s high schools. The University of Idaho Alumni Association started the program in 1995. Nice going.
What other businesses are quietly boosting North Idaho schools? Name names for Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene 83814; send a fax to 765-7149; call 765-7128; or e-mail to cynthiat@spokesman.com.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo