‘Crowning Glory’, New Wig Charity to Help Ladies Through Chemotherapy

Last year I supplied a lady with a wig before she started Chemotherapy treatment. I was able to find a wig almost identical to her hair colour and cut it so it looked like her own hair, it was so realistic it even fooled her oncologist.A year later, she has set up a charity called ‘Crowning Glory’ to help local people who have lost or will lose their hair due to Chemotherapy and cannot afford a good wig. Her name is Helen Richardson and she has thrown herself into helping others handle a situation she has already dealt with herself, I think she is quite amazing.

 NHS wigs are available to anyone having treatment for cancer but the choice is limited and cutting or thinning is not usually offered, what arrives in the wig box is what you leave the NHS wig fitting room with on your head, whether it looks like you or not.

Losing hair for a woman is devastating but to be diagnosed with cancer, have Chemotherapy treatment, lose all your hair and have to face the world in an NHS wig…… how would you cope?

When I introduced wig fitting to my practise, I did so really to help my own patients suffering from alopecia. I learned how to cut a wig, to make it look not like a wig, so that those patients would feel confident about their appearance, whether their hair grew back or not. 

However, the ladies I have met in the last three years who need a wig due to cancer treatment have given me a different perspective. When a woman tells you they have 3 months left to live but they still want to look their best, what can you say?

Working as a Trichologist means that I see many women with hair loss problems, and those ladies are the people I first set out to help. Sometimes it can be quite hard though, like this morning I learned one of my wig clients had lost her battle with cancer, then my patient before lunch, a lady with thick hair, devastated that her thick (twice as thich as mine!) hair is not as thick as it use to be, how does it compare?

Trichological Scalp Treatment for Scalp Psoriasis and Other Itchy Flaky Scalp Conditions.

Many people visit my practise for advice on itchy flaky scalp conditions, many consider they have scalp Psoriasis following a diagnosis from a GP or someone else in the family who has Psoriasis. True scalp Psoriasis is quite hard to treat. Some patients react with excellent results with very little scalp treatment, most of which is carried out at home. Others may take some time to see a noticeable improvement. Psoriasis is genetically linked and there will often be someone else in the close family who is also affected by the condition. It is not curable but may be controlled to a comfortable level. Scalp Psoriasis is harder to treat than body Psoriasis, largely due to patient compliance. Treatment creams may be applied to the body several times a day, whereas patients may be adverse to applying scalp treatments on a daily basis, particularly if they only wash their hair once or twice a week. Unfortunately shampoo alone is not enough to maintain scalp psoriasis largely due to its short contact time during shampooing.

Fortunately many patients who think they have scalp Psoriasis may have scalp conditions such as  scalp eczema, dermatitis or just dandruff which  all respond to scalp treatment  very well in most cases and may need little or no maintenance once under control.

Trichological treatment for scalp conditions involves applying a scalp treatment cream containing moisturisers and a keratolytic to soften and loosen the scalp scale or crust. The cream is massaged into the scalp thoroughly then gently steamed for 10-20 minutes, the moist heat helps to soften the crust or scalp scale and aids penetration of the cream. It is emulsified with water and massaged again, rinsed off and shampooed. The softened scalp scale or crust can be gently lifted off. (We do not recommend you try to do this at home, picking off scalp scale which is not softened enough may result in bald patches). The scalp treatment is finished off with either a cooling moisturiser or anti-inflammatory lotion or gel.

Ideally this type of treatment should be carried out every two weeks to prevent build-up of scalp scale or crust. As the scalp begins to respond, clinic treatments can be less frequent until the condition reaches a point when clinic scalp treatments are not necessary at all. This is far more likely if the patient also treats their scalp at home with the recommended products at the suggested frequency.  

For more information on scalp conditions visit The Cotswold Tricology Centre at www.scalpandhair.com or www.cots-tri.co.uk

Finally…the Trichologists blog begins!

I start my hair loss and scalp problem blog following a very busy day at the clinic. I run the Cotswold Trichology Centre in Evesham and i’m hoping to bring you a little insight to the running of a hair and scalp clinic and the kind of problems we see. Most Trichology clinics appear to focus very hard on hair loss problems, there is great competition to rank first for hair loss but what about scalp problems? Today i had the pleasure of beginning scalp treatment for a person who had been living with one of the worst cases of scalp crusting i have seen for years. Crust and hair matted together up to around 2 cm thick in places. It is quite amazing to think that there are so very few people, medical professionals included who would know where to start with such a case or how it would evolve through treatment. My own methods have evolved with experience of treating cases such as this in the past which i will talk about in my next post.