Jill Martin shares emotional video of herself trying on wigs after chemo hair loss
Jill Martin Brooks is taking another emotional step in her breast cancer journey. After losing her hair during chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer, Jill, 47, shared videos on Instagram of her experience shopping for a new wig.
“It’s really hard and strange,” the TODAY contributor said in one Instagram Story posted Dec. 27 while showing the shelves of wigs to choose from. “But I’ll make believe I’m playing dress-up,” she says. “Maybe I’ll be a brunette.”
In another Instagram Story, Jill shows off a blond wig, playing with the strands and tucking some behind her ear.
"This looks just like me, right?" she asks the camera, with tears in her eyes. "It's hard. But ... I feel like I could style it," she continues. "It's fun. It's like playing dress-up. I'm dressing up as myself."
In another Instagram Story posted earlier in the day, Jill also shared that she'd lost her eyebrows and eyelashes about three weeks after chemotherapy. "I'm going to get eyelashes now," she says in the video. "Sort of like an ambush makeover on myself."
She also shared a selfie after getting her eyelashes done. In the picture, Jill is all smiles after she shows off her new look, inspired by her appearance prior to being diagnosed with cancer.
Diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer earlier this year, Jill has been candid about the ups and downs of her experience. She's undergone a double mastectomy, had 17 lymph nodes removed and endured an aggressive chemotherapy regimen.
In an effort to preserve her hair, she also tried cold-capping, a procedure that freezes the blood vessels in the scalp, reducing the amount of chemotherapy drugs that get into follicles.
"At the beginning, I (was) like, I’ll just shave my head. And for some people, that is their journey and that’s soothing for them,” Jill said on TODAY in October. “I’m not a big makeup person. (My hair) has always been something that makes me feel like myself.”
At the time, she estimated cold-capping had saved about 70% of her hair.
As of November, she still needed to go through radiation treatment and, eventually, the removal of her ovaries and fallopian tubes to further reduce her risk for ovarian cancer.
On Thanksgiving, she took time to reflect on what she'd been through — and give thanks for the body and treatments that helped her.
“I’m grateful that my body has allowed me to get through this. Cancer wants to take whatever you have — it wants to take your friendships, it wants to take your job, it wants to take your health, it wants to take your hair, it wants to take your family … it wants to take everything. And so you just have to sort of fight where you can, and keep what’s important to you,” she told TODAY.com at the time.
She also shared how reframing her approach to cancer treatment helped her cope. There isn't a typical beginning, middle and end when it comes to a cancer journey, she said.
“You have to know that cancer is so powerful and insidious. You can’t work on beating it — you have to work on strategically dealing with it," she said.
Jill is also thankful that sharing the realities of her experience — like getting a new wig — has an impact on others who are following her story. “The amount of people who have gotten checked, who have tested positive or who are now taking preventive measures ... I would do it all over again," she said.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
