Meet Meredith, a cancer patient who discovered scalp cooling following conversations with her oncologist, nurse practitioner and doctor. Like many patients who must undergo chemotherapy, Meredith says that she was most distressed about losing her hair, so naturally, she was grateful to have technology recommended to her that could prevent or drastically reduce this side effect. 

Meredith also reflects that the scalp cooling process wasn’t nearly as painful as she had expected. She tells us, “In my honest opinion, I was expecting it to be much worse”. She goes on to say that her nurse gave her medication to help ease her anxiety about chemotherapy. In addition to helping her deal with her anxiety, Meredith found that the medication she was given also helped her deal with the cold from the cap. 

Often when patients are going through chemotherapy treatment, many can feel the need to wear a wig or head covering to maintain their identity. Meredith did wear a wig and caps during and after her treatment until she felt comfortable, but she says, “I was able to cut my hair into a cute long pixie much faster”, versus other patients who had been on her chemotherapy drug course and not cold capped. 

Asked whether she has any scalp cooling haircare tips for other cap users, Meredith says, “I used conditioning masks on my hair to smooth it”. She also took daily vitamins for hair growth, once her oncologist had approved this. 

When we asked Meredith how she feels about her scalp cooling experience, she explains that she was “happy to retain roughly 40% of my hair” during treatment. In an ideal world, Meredith would obviously have loved to keep all of her hair, but, nine months after her treatment, she told us she has had “extremely fast hair growth”. Overall, Meredith says that her scalp cooling experience is “10 out of 10 for Paxman”, and, post chemotherapy, she has been able to achieve hairstyles which “would have been impossible”, had she not cold capped. When asked if she would recommend scalp cooling to others, Meredith says that she would recommend the process to others “100%... and I do”.