Hairdresser with a heart

Losing her hair to surgery was a given. Her friends didn’t want her self-confidence to go with it

- ROBERTA MESSNER

‘‘ONCE UPON A TIME there were three little girls who went to the police academy….”

And one of them had a fabulous haircut! From the moment I saw Farrah Fawcett on TV in Charlie’s Angels I knew I wanted to look just like her. At least in the hair department. With a long, feathered cut that bounced when I walked and seemed to be forever ruffled by a light breeze.

It took me two days to secure an appointment with my stylist for a Farrah-do. It took several hours to frost my natural light brown locks with blonde highlights, cut multiple layers, blow-dry it and finish it up with a light misting of hair spray.

Now I was going to lose it all. The brain tumor I’d battled a few years back had returned, and I needed yet another surgery to remove it.

“I know what that means,” I told my friend Carole, a fellow nurse I was working with at Cabell Huntington Hospital. “My hair will end up in a paper sack on my bedside table in post-op. Just like before.”

But back then I didn’t have hair this gorgeous! It just seemed so unfair this would happen to me now. God, can’t you find some way for me to keep my hair? I thought, knowing it was impossible.

“Oh, honey,” Carole said. “Maybe it won’t be so bad. Listen, I know the most wonderful hairdresser. I want you to make an appointment with him.”

“Carole, the last thing I need now is a good haircut,” I said.

But Carole insisted. “Maybe Gary can’t do anything for your condition, but he can make you feel good about yourself