Rhiannon Ally: Sometimes one of the hardest things, a women with cancer has to face, is looking in the mirror. The loss of hair, eyebrows and eyelashes can make it hard to put your best face forward. But there is a program out there, looking to help women look good feel better through their fight with cancer.
Female Speaker: Michele will never forget last valentines day, when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer.
Michele Von Gerichten: In one second after, he told me the most terrifying, sickening, scariest thing I would ever felt. I just literally felt the bottom drop out.
Female Speaker: But as time went on, her fear started shifting from simply her health to her appearance as well, especially when it came to loosing her hair.
Michele Von Gerichten: The stylist wasn't super sympathetic, it's just hair it'll grow back. But to me it was my identity. I was crying, my husband was there, he was crying. The stylist kept trying to make it very cute and I just told her, no. I want the ugliest cut you can do, because it's going to fall out in two weeks.
Female Speaker: The expert say, it's a common fear for women suffering from cancer.
Louanne Roark: A lot of women say that it's the change in appearance, that's really the moment and time when they say, Oh! My goodness I really have cancer. And when they start to loss their hair and their skins starts to change and the colorations change and they look at themselves in the mirror, they don't recognized the women looking back at them.
Female Speaker1: These are the steps that we are going to go through.
Rhiannon Ally: But the Look Good....Feel Better program, hopes to combat that, by offering free group sessions for cancer patients to learn how to properly apply makeup and wear wigs or headscarves.
Louanne Roark: What we do is we give them the tools and the knowledge and the skills and the confidence really, to create the appearance that, they are use to. To look in the mirror and say, there I am again, to find themselves and to be able to go about daily life.
Female Speaker1: And I am going to show you how to put a wig on. Sort of like diving into to a swimming pool.
Louanne Roark: There focus is really on what happens to a women during treatment. There's a lot of skin changes, very extreme dryness sometimes, discoloration and of course, the loss of hair which is always very significant for women. It is not just loss on your head, but eyebrows and eyelashes as well.
Female Speaker1: Just little tiny tiny strokes overlapping.
Michele Von Gerichten: You are seeing all these beauty products on the table. We were all like, Ooh! Can we open these bags yet? I wonder what they are going to do. So it was exciting, very uplifting.
Female Speaker: It also gives women a chance to bond with others in the same situation, and many life-long friendships have developed over the programs 20 years.
Louanne Roark: They comradery that develops in a Look Good....Feel Better workshop is one of the significant factors that women will tell you made a difference for them.
Female Speaker1: And there you are ready to go.
Female Speaker: Today, Michele has completed all her major treatments and says, her prognosis is good, and thanks to the Look Good....Feel Better program. She now feels more confident facing the world and she encourages other women to do the same.
Michele Von Gerichten: There's nothing that makes you feel so much better, to lift your spirits, lift your whole thought process and you are self esteem is seeing the face that you end up with, that you started with, you have got it back and that's really, really powerful.
Rhiannon Ally: The Look Good....Feel Better program is held at over 2500 locations, all around the country with over 9000 workshops a year. To find a program near, you can go to our website bettertv.com.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services