Hair today. Gone tomorrow.

By TEAM ANISSA

December 18^th, 2014

WEEK 22

December 18, 2014

The day after I came home from San Francisco I found myself shopping for wigs along with Anissa, her mother and our good friend and neighbor, Ellen at a store called Wilshire Wigs. When you enter this place you can’t help but get this creepy feeling from being watched by dozens of expressionless faces.

I suppose the entertainment industry keeps places like this in business and cancer patients are probably their second largest client-base. Lucky for Anissa we live in Los Angeles and have cancer.

This was Anissa’s second visit here this week. The first time was to pick up a wig the night of that sports dinner when she selected a short cut to get through the night. This time it was for a more consistent look to use through her hair loss stage.

Anissa wore this new wig to her 2nd round of chemo that same afternoon, out to dinner and to the local holiday open house that same evening. She wore it all through the weekend and again Monday and Tuesday. By Tuesday evening, Anissa’s head was red, severely itchy and she was miserable and uncomfortable. After a quick text exchange with her Doctor she took ClaritinD and decodron which it cleared her right up. Anissa had developed what we determined to be an allergy to the latex glue used on the wig. She’s not the only one – a brief google search showed us the tales of many with a similar issue.

Determined, Anissa give her head a break and didn’t wear anything Wednesday, but tried wearing a different wig on Thursday. We were accompanying Jonathan and his class on a field trip this day. After one hour with the wig – the itchiness retuned. Sadly, it just wasn’t meant to be.