After being diagnosed with breast cancer last year, Jenna Fischer immediately thought she would lose her hair.
In an emotional roundtable with Today’s Hoda Kotb that aired on Monday, October 21, the actress known for her role on The Office talked about her decision not to shave her head during chemotherapy. spoke.
“When I was told I had to undergo chemotherapy, my first thought was, ‘I don’t want to throw up, I don’t want to lose my hair,'” the 50-year-old recalls. “I didn’t throw up, but my hair fell out.”
“And that’s what all of us women talk about. How much we Googled hair and hair pictures and thought, ‘What would that look like?’ The funny thing is, I don’t lose evenly,” she said. “It starts coming out in fits and starts. So I started with what looks like a big bald spot on this side of my head, and I want a really elaborate comb-over.”
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Since her diagnosis, Fisher has undergone 12 rounds of chemotherapy since February, three weeks of radiation therapy since June, and has since been treated with two other drugs intravenously.
She said she didn’t think much about completely removing all the hair during the treatment period.
“There was never a moment where I shaved my head,” she told Kotb. “I don’t know why. I thought, ‘Oh, should I cut it first? Should I shave it? What should I do?'” And I didn’t. ”
“I’ve always had a little hair here,” she continued. “I’ve always had a little bit of hair in the back, and since I was trying to stay hidden, those little splatters were helping with the illusion of hair. I was kind of like a tuck monk. I saw it. There was nothing up there.” Then, just do something here. ”
Fisher said she wore wigs and hats with hair to accommodate her hair loss. I joke that my family used to call them “wigat.” But she’s now ready to “ditch the wig” and embrace short hair.
Jenna Fischer celebrates the end of breast cancer treatment with her family.
Jenna Fischer/Instagram
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Fisher first shared the news of her diagnosis in an Oct. 8 Instagram post commemorating Breast Cancer Awareness Month. After a lumpectomy and several months of treatment, doctors told the actress there was no longer any evidence of cancer and she was “feeling great.”
There was no bell at her infusion center, but she and her husband, Lee Kirk, and their two children, son Weston Lee, 13, and daughter Harper Marie, 10, were there. We celebrated this milestone in our backyard.
Fisher told her followers she was sharing her story to encourage others to stay on top of their annual mammograms and ask their doctors to calculate their Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Score. .
“If we had waited another six months, things could have been much worse,” she says. “It could have spread. I saw women posting pictures of their mammograms on Instagram, and I had to set up my own mammogram pictures. I’m very happy. Consider this your shot at getting it done.”
