Program eases trauma of chemotherapy side effects
When Michele VonGerichten started chemotherapy to treat her breast cancer, one of her big worries was that her newly bald head would distract attention as she tried to carry on with her marketing job.
“It was just devastating to me, the thought of losing my hair,” said the marketing and public relations executive for a boat manufacturer in Florida.
“I have to meet with customers and dealers. And with my co-workers … I wanted to make sure they were going to be looking at me and focusing on me, and focusing on what I was helping them with … and not staring at my head, or looking at my face and asking ‘Why do you look so different?'”
VonGerichten found help from Look Good … Feel Better, a national public service program that helps women cope with the appearance-related side effects of cancer treatment.
Like 1 million other people around the world who have taken part in the free program over the last 20 years, VonGerichten received a kit of makeup and took part in a two-hour group workshop given by a volunteer beauty professional.
“There were women of all ages … . They were all in various times of their treatment,” she said. “But it just felt like, OK I’m not alone here, there are other women going through this.”
Look Good … Feel Better is a collaboration between the American Cancer Society and the Personal Care Products Council Foundation — the charitable arm of the $250 billion personal care industry’s main trade association.
Executive Director Louanne Roark said the program began after a doctor asked the former president of the Personal Care Products Council to help one of his cancer patients who was so self-conscious about the side effects of her treatment that she would not leave her hospital room.
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