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A Safe Haven Salon for Chemo-Patients
by Angela Santoriello
Imagine having your breasts removed, gaining weight and losing your hair in haystacks in a matter of months.
Not a dream, but a harsh reality for 35-year-old Summer Madriaga, who recalled the nightmare she lived after finding out she had Stage 2 ductal carcinoma. Following the news, feeling female was not a luxury for Madriaga in a world filled with dozens of radiation treatments and rounds of chemotherapy.
“I’d already lost a [breast] and now I was losing my hair,” said Madriaga. “When losing something is not a choice, it’s a little scary.”
Though not personally battling cancer, Gloria Sheik, co-owner and hairstylist at Studio 514, knows the pain Madriaga suffers since she herself has lost loved ones to cancer. Speaking from the 4-year-old salon on South Coast Highway, Sheik told reporter Pam Kragen of the San Diego Union Tribune that “she lost two close girlfriends to cancer in the past two years.”
Hair Loss Haven
Only the second cancer patient to sit in the swirling, shiny black chair for the community outreach program, Madriaga will receive a styling consultation and haircut for free. The program provides the same special service to patients who are suffering all stages of hair loss, whether losing it or growing it back, according to the news report.
In the news report, “Free Chemo Cuts Make Hair Loss Easier to Bear,” Sheik said, “What I like to tell these clients is that instead of focusing on length, they should focus on their goals and enjoy experimenting with styles they never had before.”
Saying that “women are intimidated by short haircuts because they’re not seen as feminine,” Sheik’s advice helped Madriaga, who had waist-length blond hair almost her whole life. After citing the latest celebrity short-cut trends adorned by top stars like Halle Berry and Jennifer Lawrence, “Sheik reshaped Madriaga’s hair so that it better fit her head shape, frames her face and is shorter in the back and around the nape of her neck to give the illusion of length in the front.”
The Unique Perspectives of Hairdressers
Though Studio 514 recently created the new in-house program for cancer patients, hairstylists have been helping make chemotherapy haircuts less stressful for awhile, according to a Huffington Post report. Randi Hutter Epstein, adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, shared her personal experience accompanying a friend who was having a chemotherapy haircut and wig fitting in “How to Survive Chemotherapy Haircut.”
Imagining a sanitary and pink “for femininity” salon and dramatic hairdressers, Hutter Epstein said didn’t find the “saccharine-sweet woman chattering away in cheerleader diction to distract my friend from the whole cancer theme,” or the “overly soothing and sympathetic woman with a yoga teacher voice, trying to let my friend make peace with all the bad stuff going on.” Rather, she explained a simple and intimate setting like that of Studio 514.
Sheik shared she would rather have her full-time clients and chemo cuts in-house together, rather than cutting for charity out in the field.
“I enjoy the chance to get to know who these women are, find out what’s meaningful to them about their hair, listen to their needs and then connect the dots,” she said.
And as for Madriaga, she was thrilled with the results.
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