Hair Loss is not the Worst Loss

June 6, 2010

As an appearance-conscious society, we are rather obsessed with our hair. We cut and color and change curly to straight to showcase our crowning glory. While a shaved head can be stylish on men (e.g. Taye Diggs, Chris Daughtry, and Bruce Willis), there is typically one gut-churning explanation for a bald head on a woman or a child, and it has nothing to do with style. On them (as well as on some men), a bald head is like a neon sign broadcasting the presence of a universal phobia: cancer.

As a Stage I breast cancer patient, I was fortunate to have a choice between a more toxic chemo cocktail that would claim my hair and a less potent one that would not. Vanity prevailed; I rolled the dice and kept my hair, reasoning it would be easier for my children if I didn’t lose it. Yet, in my heart, I knew I was protecting myself. It was traumatic enough to lose part of my body; losing my hair would add insult to injury.

Not long thereafter, my daughter had chemotherapy to prepare her body for a bone marrow transplant. Although doctors assured her she would lose her hair, she steadfastly — and mistakenly — believed her course would mirror mine. It broke my heart to clip, then shave, her beautiful hair off. Until her hair grew back, the bald head atop her frail body served as an inescapable reminder of the terrifying battle that raged, outside our control.

So I was taken aback when she said her healthy friend, Alexandra Simmonds Trooien, had decided to shave her head this weekend. Why would a 14-year-old choose to do something which I had avoided and my daughter had dreaded? I learned that for this wise-beyond-her-years St. Paulite, the motivation is to honor the mother she adored by raising awareness for one of her pet causes.

When she was in her early 50s, Alex’s mom, Janice Simmonds, was diagnosed with a rare form of ovarian cancer. She underwent chemotherapy and lost the hip-length hair for which she was known — but never wore a wig. She was not ashamed of her baldness, Alex recalls, because Janice insisted it was “just hair” and did not define her.

At the time, Alex, 11, wanted to cut her own hair in solidarity, but Janice said the time was not right. Last September, Janice died, leaving a daughter resolved “to do something bigger than she is” and to discuss an uncomfortable topic: “that people do get sick and do die.”

With her freshman year behind her, Alex has decided the time is right. She will kick off her summer break by becoming one of more than 145,000 men, women, and children worldwide to partner with California-based St. Baldrick’s Foundation and become “a walking billboard” for pediatric cancer research. St. Baldrick’s participants (“shavees”) have a barber shave their heads to demonstrate solidarity with kids battling cancer.

As with other fundraisers, St. Baldrick’s participants set a goal and solicit funds. Alex is close to meeting her $2,000 goal, although it’s been a challenge to get there.(Donations can be made at www.stbaldricks.org/participants/ mypage/participantid/407082).

Since its inception in 2000, St. Baldrick’s has raised more than $87 million through events in 28 countries and all 50 states. In the past five years, it has awarded more than 200 grants totaling upwards of $41 million to research institutions, including the University of Minnesota, which St. Baldrick’s says is second only to the federal government in the area of childhood cancer research.

Alex chose to make her mark with St. Baldrick’s because it was congruent with her mother’s commitment to help sick children. She also decided to honor two-year-old Evan G. of Lakeville because, like her mother, he suffers from a rare cancer, pleuropulmonary blastoma, which is currently in maintenance.

She will donate her 14 inches of blonde hair to Locks of Love, an organization that makes high-quality hair prostheses for disadvantaged children who experience medical hair loss.

Asked what her mother would have thought about her becoming a shavee, she replied, “I think she would tell me to go for it. I think she would laugh and be proud of me, knowing I was doing it for the right reasons.”

While many teen-agers prefer to fly under the radar, Alex hopes her bald head will generate attention, curiosity, and questions, and will give her a chance to share her passion.In a small way, she says, she is trying to make a difference in a fight that is much bigger than she. Although she is starting on a small scale, she hopes to make a bigger impact later in life.

Her first act has already made an impression. For as I watched my daughter, with her flowing curls, listen to her motherless friend speak of weighty matters of life and death, I was reminded that, while difficult and undesirable, there are more enduring hardships than losing one’s hair.