Healthcare Magazine September 2015 | Page 17

FEATURE ARTICLE SHORTENED HEADLINE
omed into a medical support service for children living with lated disease .
going through .
Almost 20 years ago , I got a phone call from someone at the Canadian Cancer Society asking about what they could do with all of the hair donations they were receiving . I suggested that we use the hair to make small cap wigs for children and then give them away . That ’ s really how it started .
There are lots of low-cost [ wig ] alternatives for adults , but not for kids . We now give away almost a wig a week to a child who is undergoing chemotherapy or suffering from alopecia . The program really helps the kids and the parents achieve a level of normalcy .
Q . Since the program ’ s inception , how many wigs have you been able to donate ? On the low end , we estimate that we ’ ve given away about 1,000 wigs over the past two decades . We never really counted , because if a child needed a wig , we made them one . Some kids who suffer from alopecia or other
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