Hair loss

Hi Matty72 

Worrying about losing your hair is natural but your partner could ask about scalp cooling, which can help reduce or prevent hair loss while having chemotherapy. I didn't chose to have it but there are people in the group who have.

As for whether she'll definitely lose her hair, no one can say for certain one way or another and a lot depends on the drug combination that she's on. I had EC once every 3 weeks for 3 cycles followed by paclitaxel once every week for 12 weeks as adjuvant therapy when I was diagnosed with TNBC. The chemo nurses told me I'd more than likely lose my hair on these drugs and it started to thin almost immediately. After about 5 weeks I got my husband to use his hair trimmers on a number 1 setting to get rid of most of it.

Towards the end of having paclitaxel my hair had started to grow back again, along with my eyebrows and eyelashes.

Please don't fall into the cancer myth about staying positive all the time. No one can feel positive all the time and it's natural for her to have days when she feels low. You might want to take a look at these blogs Toxic Positivity Part One and Toxic Positivity Part Two which explores this further.

Wishing you both all the best

Most of the chemo drugs used in breast cancer cause hair loss to a greater or larger extent. Based on what people seem to have, she is likely to spend half her treatment time on EC, which causes a lot of hair loss, and the other half on either Paclitaxel or Doxetacel, which also causes hair loss, plus other treatments depending on her cancer type. As others have said, scalp cooling helps some people reduce the extent of hair loss. Unfortunately she has to find her own way through it and it’s inevitable she will want to research and will feel negative at the moment. It will hopefully become easier once treatment starts. 

I lost my hair twice - in 2022 and 2023. It’s not nice to look at your bald self in the mirror but it does pass.