Emily ▶ NY

Emily | New York
Age: 30
Diagnosis: Triple Negative Breast Cancer
Chemotherapy: Taxol/Carboplatin, Adriamycin/Cytoxan, Keytruda
Total Treatments: 16 
Infusion Center: Weill Cornell Medicine

Tell us about yourself.
A few weeks after my 30th birthday, I was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer. It was so scary at first, potential metastasis to the bones and lung and not a great prognosis even if there was no metastasis. I felt like I was exiting the land of the living and entering a weird new reality that I wasn’t sure was worth the struggle. I was scared of what the treatment would do to my body, mind, and spirit. My biggest fear was losing my hair. It’s a huge part of my identity. I love to surf and travel and play sports. Wigs are awesome, but doing the things I love in one felt impossible.

“It isn’t vain to want to keep your hair. Keeping mine has been tremendously helpful in staying positive, and I truly think that helped the chemo do its job.”

Did you have a successful experience using DigniCap?
I heard that cold capping doesn’t typically work for people on AC (Adriamycin (doxorubicin) and cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan)) but my boyfriend encouraged me to try DigniCap. I ended up having incredible results with pretty minimal discomfort. I kept 95 percent of my hair after 12 rounds of Taxol/Carboplatin. I finished with 4 rounds of AC and was shocked to have kept 80 percent of my hair 2 weeks post treatment.

Why was trying to keep your hair during chemotherapy important to you?
Keeping my hair made cancer SO much easier to deal with. I look and feel like myself. I have surgery and radiation left to complete, but my most recent scans are cancer free! Having my hair helps me feel confident that there will be life after cancer treatment, a life beyond my wildest dreams. There is already so much life. I’m writing this from the beach in Bali!

What advice would you give to someone who is going through a similar experience, or who has recently been diagnosed and is considering scalp cooling?
It isn’t vain to want to keep your hair. Keeping mine has been tremendously helpful in staying positive, and I truly think that helped the chemo do its job. DigniCap is the best money I’ve ever spent. It’s definitely worth a try! Even if I had lost all of my hair during AC (which I didn’t), I still think having my hair for the 3 months of Taxol would have been worth every penny.