Elmhurst salon owner helps cancer patients through hair loss

Until you see the wig display, you first notice what's missing from a new Elmhurst salon.

After you ring a doorbell, you enter an immaculate space and find no blow dryers, busy bodies or lingering smell of hair dye. The windows are frosted to ensure privacy for clients who come from as far as San Francisco and Utah.

Pleasantries here are deliberately phrased. Kimberly Johnson, the owner of Chrysalis Custom Hair, and her stylists don't ask women, "How are you?" but rather, "How are you today?" to stay in rhythm with what they're feeling.

Johnson knows when they will begin to lose their hair and how to care for their delicate skin. She's well-aware of the nickname - "red devil" - for a particularly unforgiving form of chemotherapy.

But Johnson doesn't treat women as fragile beauties or tiptoe around their diagnosis. Her job is to find and tailor a wig that most closely resembles their hair and to show compassion.

On this morning, Samantha Chuskas is opening up to Johnson about the surreal reality of being both a mom of three and a breast-cancer patient planning a double mastectomy.

"My grandma had stomach cancer and my mom had ovarian cancer, and I was lucky enough to test positive for the BRCA2 gene," Chuskas said. "So now I get to lose both my breasts and get a complete hysterectomy. But I'm alive."

Those stories put everything into perspective, not just at this time of year, but every time clients sit in the vanity chair. They all have cancer.

'Whatever it takes'

Johnson opened the original Chrysalis Custom Hair in Chicago five years ago and the Elmhurst flagship in May. The name for the wig boutique - exclusively for women with cancer - refers to the protective shell from which a caterpillar emerges a butterfly.

The transformation in the appointment-only salon starts with women sending pictures to stylists.

"It doesn't have to be from today," Johnson said. "It can be from Christmas. Just when you had a good hair day, so we can see the colors and textures of your hair."

Johnson has meticulously designed the salon with a spalike privacy. Coffee is served in fine china. New stylists must complete two months of training before they help women try on wigs in two separate rooms.

"In one room, people could be bringing in champagne and kind of making a party of getting a wig, and in the other room, people could be devastated and crying, and sometimes you have to be between the rooms," Johnson said.

She usually encourages women to book an appointment as soon as they have a treatment plan that will cause hair loss. Wig fittings often can be done during one visit. But making a wig look just like a patient's hair takes precision and time.

Johnson gives an example: To highlight a wig, stylists take little samples of hair and color match it, up to 20 or so times, especially with redheads, to develop the exact shade. Stylists first paint a section to avoid over processing, wash the wig, put it in a "fancy dryer," move to the next section and repeat.

"We will do whatever it takes," Johnson said. "Some clients need to come back a bunch of times because they just want a little snip here or a highlight, and we're just accommodating, accommodating, accommodating because these people are sick. That's what we do. We're here to help."

Before opening Chrysalis, Johnson volunteered for cancer support organizations with a degree in psychology and a family history of the disease. Her mom has had melanoma, her grandma colon cancer. Her uncle died from pancreatic cancer, and then his wife was diagnosed with liver cancer.

She's concedes it's sometimes emotionally draining running the salons, but she tries to unwind by spending time with her 16-year-old son.

"You just have to learn how to turn it off," she said.

'Everything is OK'

Every October, Johnson hosts a "wig giveaway" to provide donated and refurbished wigs to patients who otherwise might not be able to afford one.

"It's a day where everybody touches up their mascara a lot," Johnson said during this year's event.

She again carefully chooses her words, referring to women as "recipients" of the giveaway, not winners. Over four years since the inception, 200 women have received wigs, or 50 annually. The salon accepts donated wigs from cancer survivors who want to help other women in need.

"We were getting so many calls with people asking what to do with their wig now that they're done with treatment," Johnson said.

She treats all her clients with dignity and understanding, knowing when to give women space and when to tune into their anger, their frustrations, their uncertainty.

Alsip mom Sandy Doolan found out about the giveaway on Facebook and received a strawberry blonde, shoulder-length wig days before starting chemotherapy for stage 2B invasive ductal breast cancer.

"When you're living it, you've just got to do it, and I think after it's over I'll think back, 'How did I get through all of this?'" Doolan said. "But when you're doing it, you've just got to do it. Does it take me out of my comfort zone to come here and have to do this? Yeah. Definitely. But, like I said, you've got to do what you've got to do and open up and trust that everything will be OK."

The transformation

Chuskas, who also has stage 2 breast cancer and lives in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood, won't be done with chemo treatment until February. Her best friend, Marge Drozd, signed her up for the giveaway.

"I just want her to feel beautiful," she said.

Chuskas arrived to the boutique in a York Street strip mall near I-290 a few weeks after going to another salon with her sister to shave what was left of her brown locks.

"We were just all siting there crying, and then I was done, and I left, and I was just like this is crazy. Why me? Why me? I used to have long, beautiful hair and then - yeah," she said.

Chuskas was diagnosed in July after she felt a lump in her right breast during a self exam. A mammogram revealed four masses. She thought about mortality and then her three children, ages 2, 16 and 25.

"This doesn't define me. I want to send my 2-year-old to school," she said. "You don't know how you think one day your life's perfect, and then someone's like, 'Hey, you got cancer.'"

Johnson quietly listened as stylist Katie Bloomquist fitted the synthetic wig.

"It's adorable, Sammy," Drozd told her friend. "I love it."

Adjusting to the shorter style, Chuskas ran her fingers through her new bangs and smiled. So did Johnson.

"It feels good. It looks good," she said. "I think it could pass for me."