That being said, for the chemotherapy I am on, Taxotere and cyclophosphamide (TC), hair loss is a side effect. After understanding that I need chemotherapy, I was told about paxman, a cold cap that you wear during chemo that prevents you from losing all of your hair (hopefully). I have a tik tok showing the system if you want to see. This was expensive to receive the treatment ($200 per treatment for 4 treatments) and my insurance covered the actual equipment. Studies with Paxman across different therapies show that you have a 50% of keeping 50% of your hair or more. It usually works better with TC so they told me it was closer to 60% chance of keeping more than half. I was told by people who have been through chemo it wouldn't be worth it but ultimately chose to do it because I want to get married next year and would like to look more like myself when I get married.

Now that I'm almost done with chemo I have regrets. If I had to go back and do it again, I probably wouldn't have done the cold cap because it is uncomfortable and the constant shedding is a pain. I have been able to keep a lot of my hair, but weigh whether or not to shave it every day because it is a pain to try to keep it. I posted a little picture montage showing the progression of hair loss. The first image is pre-cancer, then during chemo, then 2 weeks post first chemo (my hair thinned out a lot.), then the next photos are a few weeks apart. The last two are from just this second!

I cut my hair to my shoulders to try to manage the amount of hair everywhere. My fiancee has a long haired cat and I feel like my hair shedding was worse than hers! I'm still going to (for now) keep trying to save some hair and luckily the paxman is supposed to help your hair regrowth as well.