Hi everyone,
Sorry for the ignorance, but can u explain roughly what a cold cap is please, i have a rough idea, but not much more.
Also, is it used in all hospitals?
My chemo will be at Milton Keynes hospital, although i haven’t got my results yet so i dont know which chemo i will be having.
Thanks in advance for everyones input.
Sandrae x x x
the cold cap is what it says it is :-), a very cold cap you put on you head to try and stop the chemo drugs reaching the hair follicles so that hopefully you can avoid hair loss. I used the Paxman system, which has a cycling helmet contraption attached to a cooler. The inside of the cap is frozen down to minus 6 or 7 and this is placed tightly on you head about 45 mins before your chemo treatment. Once the treatment is given you need to keep it on for about 2 hours. The cap fits very tightly and has a chin strap, a rather fetching look - not!
There is a lot of controversy about how sucessfull it is, for me I kept all of my hair using it my onc told me there was a 50 50 chance of success but in some areas they quote as low as 20% success. it is not the most pleasant experience, you can suffer from that brain freeze thing that you get when you eat ice cream sometimes, and it does mean that you are in the chemo unit loner than if you just went for your treatment.
I never got the brain freeze thing, due I think to taking 2 paracetomol half an hour before they put it on, it was very cold and not pleasant for the first 15 mins, but after that it didnt seem too bad, I did manage to keep all of my hair though and although it was hard work I think its worth it now as I have got my hair back to exactly how it was before treatment began. I dont think every hospital has it available, but I know that some ladies on here managed to hire something similar that they had to keep in their own freezer and take to the hospital each time. Perhaps one of those ladies will be along to tell you about that soon.
Hope this helps, if you want to know anything else there are a couple of threads about the cold cap on here and you can also message me if you want to ask anything
Good luck
Dena x
thank you for your speedy reply Dena,
Got a better idea now
Sandrae x