Health & Fitness
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Cancer patients get day of pampering
Journal photo by Jennifer Rotenizer
Barbara Brown, a cancer patient looks through a mirror, as her daughter Carol Curran, a cancer patient, gets her hair cut at the WFUBMC Cancer Center on Tuesday July 14, 2009. The mother daughter duo accompany each other to appointments at ocassionally take part in a day of pampering provided by volunteers. Berni Gaither(not pictured)volunteers her time to cut hair during these events.
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Published: July 14, 2009
Updated: 07/14/2009 04:43 pm
Sometimes medical treatment doesn't come in a pill or through an IV.
Sometimes, it can be a haircut when you need one or a lesson in makeup that brightens your face or some soul-stirring music that lifts your spirits.
Cancer patients, their families and caregivers were treated yesterday to "Just 4 You Day," a day of pampering, entertainment and food, at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. The quarterly event, which is staffed by volunteers, provides free food and pampering services to about 200 people.
Carol Curran, 53, is fighting aplastic anemia, a blood disorder. She brought her mother, Barbara Brown, to the event. To Curran's surprise, she found out that she could get a haircut while she was there. Brown, whose 78th birthday was yesterday, is battling lung cancer. Curran, her only child, takes care of her.
Curran sat across from a bejeweled mirror, donated by a patient, with the words "Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who's the Baldest of Them All" circling it. When Berni Gaither, a hair designer from Studio 309, finished cutting her hair, Curran smiled with pleasure.
"It feels better," she said. "It's like it's cured."
Then Brown joined in with a joke.
"She's going to do mine now," she said, raising her yellow turban to show her head, devoid of hair after multiple chemo treatments. Brown wore her turban with panache, adding a glittering rhinestone pin.
"I've got to add a little bling to it," she said.
Nearby, Jessica Slate, a makeup artist who works with Bobbi Brown products at Belk in Hanes Mall, slowly made up Polly Applefield's face. Slate explained each step and stopped frequently so that Applefield could admire the results.
Applefield received a diagnosis of stage 4 breast cancer in February 2006. She has been undergoing chemotherapy ever since, and the drugs have taken their toll, leaving her with sparse eyebrows and eyelashes. Slate showed Applefield how to emphasize her thin eyebrows with tinted powder and to line her eyes to give them definition.
Applefield, 59, exclaimed when she saw her face in a hand mirror.
"That looks really good," she said. "It uses what I have."
After her makeover, Applefield underwent a session of reiki, a form of spiritual healing. The session left her feeling relaxed and calm, she said in an upbeat voice, and the pampering days perk her up. Forsyth Medical Center's Cancer Center offers similar pampering sessions, "Feel Good Fridays," every month.
Applefield said that she considers a positive attitude an important tool for fighting cancer, a tool as important as chemotherapy.
On pampering days, she said, "The whole floor fills up with positive energy."
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