Salon offers new hope to cancer patients

A colorful assortment of stylish straw and Sunday hats hang from the pale pink walls of the beauty salon. On the floor, wooden baskets holding scarves, crochet and fleece hats and baseball caps clutter the small room. Ceiling-high shelves on one wall display wigs of nearly every color and style.

Someday those wigs could bring smiles to the faces of many women. But for now they rest neatly on the heads of expressionless mannequins housed in a small room on the ground floor of the VCU Massey Cancer Center.

When Lena Shapiro first sat in the Magical Touch Salon’s client chair, she had lost her hair during her breast cancer treatments. So, Brenda Woods, coordinator of the salon, fitted her with a customized wig. When Shapiro first saw the newly coifed hair on her head, she said she felt delight and her family did, too.

In a society that relates femininity with long tresses, Magical Touch serves as a catharsis to women uncomfortable with their hair losses. Since 1999 the salon has provided Virginia’s cancer patients with wigs, hats, jewelry, makeup and hand massages.

Although it also caters to male patients, the salon’s coordinator said she sees more women than men. Woods and Shapiro agreed that women suffer the stigma of baldness more than men do.

“It’s still not widely accepted to be bald,” Shapiro said. “There’s still a gender bias – men can be bald but for women it’s difficult.”

Woods said each month she sees about 20 women and two men, which she attributes to society’s widespread belief that having a full head of hair enhances a woman’s femininity. Furthermore, she said, men perpetuate this ideal more than women.

“Losing their hair has a psychologically damaging effect on women,” Woods said. “They think they are losing a lot of their femininity. Some women don’t even want their husbands to see them bald.”

Wigs, however, aren’t options for all women experiencing hair loss. Some women, Shapiro said, embrace their baldness.

“There are women who just put on wonderful jewelry and makeup and go bald,” she said.

Shapiro no longer wears a wig since her hair has grown back. Now a volunteer in the salon, Shapiro shares her optimism with cancer patients experiencing the side effects of chemotherapy.

“It grows back,” Shapiro said, then smiled.

For Shapiro, the salon gives balance to cancer patients’ lives.

“It instills a feeling of normalcy in an otherwise surreal or difficult experience,” Shapiro said. “If I didn’t know this was a hospital, I would think this was a retail operation. It’s warm. It’s inviting and it’s well-stocked.”

Judy Turberville, former president of The Board for Women’s Health, said its members recognized the needs of a market most salons didn’t know existed. The community organization supports women’s health issues and ranks as one of the salon’s major monetary donors. Magical Touch, Turberville said, creates a comfort zone for its clients that other salons lack.

“It is more comfortable for women to go to this salon in a cancer center because everyone is aware of their needs. Women feel more comfortable in their surroundings,” she said.

Woods said the salon differs from retail ones because it offers cancer patients a wide range of services and satisfies their needs in a way others cannot. For instance, Magical Touch provides free services. For male clients, it supplies free baseball caps plus fleece hats in the winter.

In addition, the Magical Touch treatment involves teaching clients scarf-tying techniques and ensuring they receive what they want. For example, if the salon does not carry a style of wig that suits the client, Woods said she gives the person a list of wig retailers to choose from in the Greater Richmond area.

“A lot of times,” Woods said, “they can get a prescription from their doctor – a cranial prosthesis prescription – and their insurance companies will pay for it or a majority of it.”

Because it operates solely on donations, Magical Touch relies heavily on volunteers and donors, such as the Tuckahoe Women’s Club and the women’s health board.

Samantha Orcutt, an esthetician who has given hand massages to patients, said she began volunteering two years ago to give back to the cancer center that saved her life. Having recovered from a life-threatening traumatic brain injury, Orcutt said she shares her survival story with cancer patients to give them hope.

When the salon first opened two volunteers cut patients’ hair and styled their wigs. But after those two volunteers left, the salon had no one to offer those services. Thus, Woods stepped in to fill those shoes, although she doesn’t cut human hair. Still, she said, the salon maintains enough supplies and volunteers to help all of its clientele.

“So far, we’ve been able to meet the needs of cancer patients,” Woods said, pointing out that people also donate new scarves, wigs, hats, scarves and makeup.

In the year Woods has served as coordinator, an 82-year-old woman, Virginia Hammond, has made fleece hats and turbans for the salon. From the Heart, a group that meets at a local coffee shop to crochets hats, also donates to the cancer center and other hospitals.

Today women cancer patients needing to tend to their appearance and nurture their femininity can visit two Magical Touch salons – Downtown Richmond and Stony Point in Southside, which opened in 2003.

“They leave with a feeling of hopefulness,” Woods said. “They feel much better about themselves.”