{"id":26244,"date":"2020-07-30T19:33:42","date_gmt":"2020-07-30T19:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cmshub.wpengine.com\/?p=319621"},"modified":"2024-11-03T15:16:21","modified_gmt":"2024-11-03T15:16:21","slug":"working-mom-with-stage-ii-breast-cancer-receives-custom-wig-made-of-her-friends-hair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/working-mom-with-stage-ii-breast-cancer-receives-custom-wig-made-of-her-friends-hair\/","title":{"rendered":"Working Mom with Stage II Breast Cancer Receives Custom Wig Made of Her Friend\u2019s Hair"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first half of 2020 just couldn\u2019t have gone much worse for Dana McSwain. Right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, as she was working full-time and caring for her two daughters and step-son, the 36-year-old was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer<\/a>.<\/span>Dana has no family history of breast cancer, but after her diagnosis, she learned she carried the BRCA2 gene mutation, which will increase her cancer risk for the rest of her life and increase her daughters\u2019 risk of cancer as well.<\/span>\u201cIt was a complete shock,\u201d says Dana. \u201cIt\u2019s not just you have stage 2 cancer, it\u2019s you have stage 2 cancer with this genetic mutation that makes you susceptible to even more cancers. It\u2019s a battle for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/span><\/span>Photo: Good Morning America<\/a><\/span>Of course, chemotherapy and cancer are no fun for anyone, but sometimes it\u2019s the smallest things that are the most difficult. For Dana, the prospect of losing her hair was one of the hardest parts of the whole ordeal.<\/span>\u201cYou kind of accept the cancer diagnosis and move on to the next step. So now I\u2019ve accepted cancer and prepared myself to go through chemo, which means losing my hair,\u201d she says. \u201cAs a woman, your hair may not define you but it sets you apart. I\u2019ve always had long hair, and I started to mourn that even before it was gone.\u201d<\/span>Less than two weeks after being diagnosed, Dana started chemotherapy treatments. And shortly after that, her hair began to fall out<\/a> in large chunks.<\/span><\/span>Photo: Good Morning America<\/a><\/span>\u201cI remember my second chemo was on a Thursday, and that following Saturday morning I took a shower and washed my hair and it came out in handfuls,\u201d says Dana. \u201cI got out of the shower that day and looked in the mirror and texted my whole family and said, \u2018It\u2019s time to shave my head.’\u201d<\/span>She thought wigs would make it easier to deal with the loss of her long hair, but when it came time to get one of those, she had trouble finding the right wig<\/a> that made her feel like herself without being ridiculously expensive.<\/span>\u201cEvery wig I put on I couldn\u2019t get it off fast enough. I thought, \u2018This is not me. This doesn\u2019t work.’\u201d<\/span><\/span>Photo: Good Morning America<\/a><\/span>Craving some support during this time of frustration and grief, Dana turned to a local group of moms on Facebook to vent about her problems. She told them about treatment and not being able to find a wig that felt right and asked for advice and tips.<\/span>Dana only expected to receive kind words, but she ended up with a lot more than that. One of the moms who saw the post was Carol Daley Cook<\/a>, whose child goes to school with Dana\u2019s daughters, and she immediately knew she wanted to help Dana get a wig, even though she didn\u2019t know how to go about doing it.<\/span><\/span>Photo: Good Morning America<\/a><\/span>\u201cI got to thinking, \u2018I have this really long hair, like down to my waist, and my poor friend is losing her hair to cancer,’\u201d Carol recalls. \u201cI put a note out just asking if there was interest in getting this [wig] made for her. I had no idea how and then I found a place online, a woman in Tampa [Florida] who custom makes halo wigs.\u201d<\/span>Hours later, Carol had been in contact with several women (and one 7-year-old girl) willing to donate their hair to make a wig for Dana. They handed over their locks to Christine Heinen, the owner of Chemo Diva<\/a>, who fashioned the strands into a beautiful wig for Dana. A week later, Carol was able to deliver it directly to Dana\u2019s home.<\/span><\/span>Photo: Good Morning America<\/a><\/span>\u201cWhen I opened it, I knew immediately what it was,\u201d Dana says. \u201cThe feeling of it had a different feeling than synthetic hair, and I knew it was real hair, and I knew Carol had cut her hair, so I knew that\u2019s what it was.\u201d<\/span>\u201cLooking at that wig and seeing the different colors and how it came together and knowing that every strand is something special and from someone special in my life, it was truly amazing. It was such an indescribable feeling.\u201d<\/span>Miraculously, this was exactly the wig that Dana needed. She says she kept it on the rest of the night and could not resist looking in the mirror and taking selfies with the wig.<\/span>\u201cI would not take it off,\u201d she said. \u201cIt just looked like me again, and I recognized myself.\u201d<\/span><\/span>Photo: Good Morning America<\/a><\/span>When she finishes chemotherapy, Dana will still have to undergo a mastectomy and radiation therapy<\/a>. But she says her story is proof that there are still people in the world who want to do good, even during times of turmoil. She has taken new strength from the community that has supported her during this difficult time.<\/span>\u201cI\u2019m blessed that we could help her and do something to uplift her during this tough time,\u201d says Carol. \u201cWe can\u2019t get together. We can\u2019t go have drinks, but we can still rally around each other. The power of women banding together, you can\u2019t underestimate it.\u201d<\/span>Check out the video below to learn more about this unique story.<\/span>  Share on Facebook<\/a><\/span><\/span>Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first half of 2020 just couldn\u2019t have gone much worse for Dana McSwain. Right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, as she was working full-time and caring for her two daughters and step-son, the 36-year-old was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer.Dana has no family history of breast cancer, but after her diagnosis, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26245,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44205,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26244\/revisions\/44205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}