NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Makeup blankets a table like a beauty banquet, and a dozen women on a lunch date devour it with delight.
SANFORD MYERS, GANNETT
Cancer patient Debbie Hunt applies her makeup at her in White Bluff, Tenn. home on Monday, Jan. 9, 2012. Feeling better is what beauty is all about, Hunt says.
The ladies pucker their lips, applying lively shades of lipstick like Sugarberry and Amber Suede. They smile and peer into hand-held mirrors to examine their newly tinted faces. They chat about moisturizer, mascara and manicures.
They seem happy, healthy.
But a closer look reveals a bald head under a cute hat, a well-fitted wig. Reflections show weight loss, dry skin, rashes and complexion changes. Nausea, fatigue and, for some, hair loss, are now-familiar effects of their disease, and many of the women gathered at the Vanderbilt Breast Center here for this midday makeup soiree feel a shadow of their former selves.
"When you have in the back of your mind, 'I'm dying,' it sometimes takes a lot to wake up every day, get dressed, pretty up your face, and be normal," says 56-year-old Deborah Holland, who in April was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that starts inside the bone marrow.
Beauty seems superfluous when dealing with disease, but looking good, medical experts and patients say, can be a crucial psychological boost. Simply applying blush or slipping on a sharp-looking shirt can provide a sense of normality.
"Look Good … Feel Better" seminars, which take place across the country sponsored by the Personal Care Products Council Foundation in cooperation with the American Cancer Society, teach participants how to apply makeup to give the impression of eyelashes and how to draw eyebrows. They offer tips on ways to deal with skin issues and demonstrate how to devise head coverings using practical and inexpensive items. And more than that, they illustrate the importance of caring for yourself — inside and out.
"I truly believe a positive attitude works as much as medicine," says Debbie Hunt, who has lived with Stage 4 cancer for the past three years. "I think for all women, the better you look, the better you feel."
Remnants of normality
Stripping the bandages from her breastless body terrified Teri Johnson-Hiett after her mastectomy. Bruises covered her upper torso, drains sprouted from her sides, and her chest caved.
"The first time you see yourself, it's a scary sight," she says. "You are sunken in; you don't even look like a man. It feels like you have lost a human quality, especially being female."
Years earlier, Johnson-Hiett watched her mom battle cancer. Even as her mother's body attacked itself inside, Johnson-Hiett saw how important outside appearance was to her. There was no doubt her mom would lose her hair, eyebrows, eyelashes. When they shaved her mom's head, she cried.
"It's so funny because you are diagnosed with cancer, and yet you are so focused on the fact that you are going to lose your hair, and how are you going to go through the world looking like that?" Johnson-Hiett says. "Just like your breasts, it's a part of you. Women identify themselves from across the room by their hair: 'It looks great, where did you get it done?' "
Like many women, Johnson-Hiett's mom felt as if her bald head labeled her a cancer victim. The moment she found the right wig, her confidence was renewed.
"She was deteriorating inside," Johnson-Hiett says. "She was losing weight, she had burns on her skin, burns on her esophagus. She couldn't swallow. And yet, the idea of having something that made her feel normal put such pep in her step. It was a gift."
When Johnson-Hiett's own breast cancer diagnosis came less than a year after her mother died of the disease, she also struggled. A mastectomy meant removing a part of who she was. At first, it was devastating. She was a 29-year-old, recently single mother of two, trying to date again.
"For the first couple of days, I wouldn't look at myself," she says. "I was terrified to."
Now, as a physician practice manager for Tennessee Breast Specialists, Johnson-Hiett sees women every day who question how cancer, lymphoma or another devastating disease is going to affect how others see them and how they see themselves. Johnson-Hiett offers the understanding and insight, and she reinforces the idea that normality should be a priority.
"You can't stay in pajamas all day if that's not who you were before," she says. "You have to find the similarity to who you were, even if it is putting on mascara and lipstick and looking in the mirror at yourself."
A dose of confidence
For Holland, that was a struggle.
The day she sat in the doctor's office reading a recent Vanderbilt newsletter, she felt nothing like herself.
"With a condition like this, sometimes there is depression that goes along with it," she says. "I was feeling kind of low."
Then she read about the hospital's "Look Good … Feel Better" lunches and signed up.
There, she found a room full of women who shared her experiences. Some were newly diagnosed; others were multi-year battlers. There were young and old women with lung cancer, breast cancer and leukemia.
Around a table covered in cosmetics, they shared stories of fear, loss of control, fatigue and self-doubt. Women who ran households, worked in business and taught children each expressed how disease had robbed them of their confidence.
"All of a sudden I don't feel good about myself," said Patricia Nichol, who was a schoolteacher for 35 years before her cancer diagnosis. "And I don't like that."
Others nodded. In a week or two, cancer can confiscate everything that women believe defines them, but, cosmetologist Nancy Wenberg says, the transformation doesn't have to be paralyzing.
She discussed drawing in eyebrows and demonstrated how to create a cute head wrap out of an old T-shirt. She emphasized the dangers of bacteria, particularly with eye makeup and manicures, for those with an already-compromised immune system. She shared tips on effective moisturizers to combat the scaling skin induced by drug therapy.
Most important, she showed the women how to look beyond the cancer patient.
"Every woman's cancer is a little bit different, and their perception is different and treatment is different," says Dr. Laura Lawson, breast surgeon at Baptist Hospital here. "But as is true for this, as well as everything you go through in life, your outlook has an impact on how you handle things."
Seeing is believing
And feeling better is what beauty is all about, Hunt says.
With her cutely trimmed, dirty-blond wig and flashy, manicured fingertips, Hunt has embraced good looks. She was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer in June 2008 and is undergoing her third round of chemotherapy.
Her cancer isn't curable. It will be treated as a chronic disease for the rest of her life, so she has chosen to adopt a daily routine that is as ordinary as possible — and it has a few new perks.
"I can get dressed quicker than my husband now," she says with a laugh. "It is kind of exciting thinking I don't have to do my hair every day."
But it's also more than that.
When you have makeup on, and a wig, and you are dressed up, you feel stronger and more confident, she says. "You seem to feel a lot more alive."
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On the Web:
— For more information on any of the clinics, call the American Cancer Society at 1-800-227-2345 or visit Look Good … Feel Better, at lookgoodfeelbetter.org
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