OCOEE, Fla. —A cancer diagnoses is never an easy pill to swallow, and it’s often associated with the very difficult decision to undergo chemotherapy treatment. For Raquel Giorgio it meant exactly that, along with the daily concern of what life would look like throughout the fight she had ahead.
“My whole world came to a halt, and I was filled with fear, and I wondered if I was going to die,” Giorgio said. “I wondered if I was going to make it through chemotherapy. It was a long journey that was outlined for me, and I just wondered if I could make it through it all.”
What You Need To Know
- Paxman Scalp Cooling is a treatment that is paired with chemotherapy treatment meant to lessen the amount of chemo that reaches the hair follicles, as a result, lessening the hair loss a patient experiences during the process
- Officials at Orlando Health say the treatment is not guaranteed to work, but so far has demonstrated some success with patients
- Raquel Giorgio was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023 and lost little to no hair during a years long journey of chemotherapy. She's crediting the Paxman cooling system for helping to save her hair
- Paxman Scalp Cooling treatment was not covered by insurance according to Giorgio, but she says it was still worth it
On top of those worries, Giorgio shared concerns about losing her hair, which is common for a lot of people with cancer. However, Giorgio was presented with a unique opportunity to try to save as much of her hair as possible throughout her year-long battle.
Though officials at Orlando Health said that the treatment was not guaranteed to work, Giorgio agreed to try something called the Paxman Scalp Cooling machine: a cold cap that is connected to a machine that circulates freezing cold water to the blood vessels that supply the hair follicles, lessening the amount of chemotherapy that reaches the hair follicles.
The Paxman Scalp Cooling machine allows cancer patients to experience less hair loss when undergoing chemotherapy. (Spectrum News/Jaclyn Harold)
“And as a result, patients experience significantly less hair loss,” said Dr. Regan Rostorfer, an oncologist at Orlando Health.
Officials say the treatment has been successful in some cases, and the hospital has even increased the number of Paxman machines they have available. However, the journey through treatment was not an easy one, and a successful experience might not have been possible if the cancer was not caught early.
“Following the diagnosis, I called her, and I said I’m going to get a wig, and I need it to look exactly like my hair. So, we went through a series of two wigs to find the right one and colored it to look exactly like my hair and cut it to look exactly like my hair,” Giorgio said.
It wasn’t a lump in the breast or even a mammogram that helped Giorgio jump start her fight against breast cancer. Instead, it was going the extra mile and simply asking for an ultrasound.
“I didn’t feel anything,” said Giorgio. “You should get your mammogram, but when you’re at your primary care facility or at your gynecologist, you should ask for an ultrasound.”
Giorgio was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023, but she says due to dense breast, her diagnosis might have come at a much later time.
“If we had waited for another mammogram, it would have been a year from now, and this would have been a completely different story, and I wouldn’t be as happy as I am today,” Giorgio said.
For a year, she went through chemotherapy treatment, coupled with the scalp cooling treatment. Giorgio said the process was difficult because of the intense cold on her head, but in the end, she shared it was all worth it.
“I was so scared that I’d look like a cancer patient and I would venture to say that throughout this whole time, I’ve managed to look just like myself, and that made me feel a little more normal,” she said.
“We’d wet my hair down, and it would be completely wet. We then had to put conditioner on it, and then you put this cap on that you have to get as tight as possible because if it’s not tight, it’s not going to work. And if we’re going to go through all of this, we’re going to make sure it works,” Giorgio said.
Most treatments started with an hour-and-a-half of allowing the treatment to freeze her head first before the chemo treatment would be started. After sitting through chemo for about an hour to an hour and-a-half, Giorgio said she sat another hour-and-a-half to allow the scalp cool treatment to defrost. The treatment is also not covered by insurance and ranges in pricing from $100 to $350.
Though the diagnosis and the journey to beat cancer was not something Giorgio could have ever imagined for herself, she says she was blessed to have a support system that helped to keep her optimistic, and with the scalp cooling treatment successfully helping to retain her hair, looking good helped her to feel good throughout her process.
