Head decoration ideas needed!

[sauergeek]

My sister is going through treatment for breast cancer. It's of moderate aggression, and has not substantially spread, though some was found in one lymph node separate from the original tumor. So far she's had surgery once, but the surgeons are going to go back in because they want to be positive they got everything. (They think there is too little healthy tissue on one side of the extracted tumor.) Afterwards she will be undergoing radiation treatment, chemotherapy, and an apparently promising third treatment that nobody I've talked to seems very clear on. Her prognosis is excellent for full remission and recovery.

Because my sister is expecting to go bald from the combination of chemotherapy and radiation treatment, she's looking for ideas for ways to decorate her head. I've come up with a good few; anyone have other suggestions?

• A laurel wreath, made out of real laurel (bay leaves will do).
  
• Head paint used by men with thinning hair, done in stripes of the various "natural" colors.
  
• Princess Leia style hair buns (and only the hair buns). As I recall there are ones out there that will stay on your ears with no other support.
  
• A monkey doll, the kind with velcro on the hands so it works as a headhugger. Everyone loves monkeys!
  
• A Marge Simpson wig, in the correct color and altitude.
  
• A live potted flower (will require padding and at least a chinstrap, possibly other engineering to stay attached).
  
• Advertising (see this example).
  
• A baseball cap with a built-in ponytail. Or a similar hat with built-in dreadlocks.
  
• A Minnie Pearl fruit hat (complete with dangling price tag). howDEE!
  
• A knight's helmet. Steel or plastic, either way. Faceguard should at least open and close.
  
• Art, drawn on in permanent marker (or some other suitable medium) by a favorite local artist. Or some other non-local artist.
  
• Two words: beer hat!
  
• A tiny clown hat. Attaching it will require some creativity, as from what I've seen clowns wear skin-colored hair covers and pin the hat to the hair cover.
  
• Western-style leather belt, with a holster containing paper airplanes. Throw the airplanes at people at random. Or stash snacks in the holsters.
  
• A fanny pack.
  
• Draw a unibrow that goes all the way around. Or perhaps all the way around except across the bridge of the nose.
  
• A coil of rope, just in case.
  
• Temporary tattoos. Or permanent ones.
  
• Antennae.
  
• Travel stickers.
  

Comments

[lizzielizzie.livejournal.com]

Headdress, like the medieval chix0rs wear. Either beads or chainmaille. Something like this.

Beaded fez!! Must!!! (But only if wears it while sitting on a tiny motorcycle and gets her photo taken.)

[kelkyag]

Bodypaint! One of the more amusing paint jobs I've seen was of a fried egg painted on a bald head.

Mad hats can be found in a wild array of styles. Ana Voog makes some of the more out-there hats that are posted on the crochet community -- I'm particularly fond of this one . There've been lots of others posted, but it's a sufficiently chatty place that it's hard to find things that aren't very recent.

[sauergeek.livejournal.com]

I like the bodypaint idea for an artistic medium.

Some of those hats are scary...

[kelkyag]

Some of those hats are scary...

And some of them are wonderful, and some of them are both. :) Having an excuse to make mad things can be a very good thing.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Inked-on (temporary, i.e use a permanenet marker) map of shape-of-head influences for phrenology.

[qedrakmar.livejournal.com]

Two words: Carmen Miranda.

The mostly accurate dotted-line cuts-of-meat-esque henna/temporary tattoo might be good, too. "Let's see... Frontal Lobe... Medulla Oblongata... Cerebellum... Hey, there's no lobe called the Aardvark Aarblongata!"

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

I still have a sort of giant hat thing made by hot-gluing about 100 styrofoam cups together so the bottoms are inside a big hemisphere. She's welcome to that if she'd like...

Unfortunately, the infamous circus-peanuts-hat-thing was thrown out a couple of years ago...

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

Ahgahd. You still have the cup-helmet? :)

The circus peanuts hat was tossed because it was well beyond stale and well into "stinky". :P

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Yep, it's still stashed somewhere back in in my scary closet of doom...

[lizzielizzie.livejournal.com]

Hat of do000ooom!

[xeger.livejournal.com]

Amusingly enough I found this in my bookmarks last night...

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

One of the employees of one of the bead catalogs I get had chemo induced baldness, and she stuck bindis all over her head in an interesting pattern. Kinda like having a jewelled head.

[sauergeek.livejournal.com]

What are bindis? And how did she attach them?

[andrewfeland.livejournal.com]

You can get liquid latex adhesive at costume supply stores and at places like Jack's Joke Shop. It's the stuff that professional makeup artists use to attach prosthetics for makeup jobs. Once you have that, the possibilities are literally endless. You could even use the latex to attach velcro, and just spiral outward (downward?) from there....

[dairryiere.livejournal.com]

I love the henna diagram idea!
If you want, I know a woman who has a pattern for a hand knit Elvis style pompador that she made for friend of mine in electric blue. Your sister could even knit it herself since she will spend more than half of her time at the doctors in their waiting rooms.

I'm glad I decided to lurk this morning, my mom just went through the exact same thing almost 2 years ago and is doing great now, nothing has come back. She ended up with 3 surgerys (lump, lymph, and a little more breast to be sure) by the time she started chemo and radiation but only lost about 1/3 of her hair. She, being a little less amused with interesting head ornaments, opted for a variety of seasonal hats.

[xinie.livejournal.com]

Ch-ch-ch-chia! Chia head!
Map of the world.
Glow-in-the-dark stars making constellations.
A fake hinge in the back, with a seam drawn around.
Small fez (chin strap might be annoying).
Circus-peanut-brain (ask Josh).
Fake stick-on ears in odd places.
Ferengi ears.
Faux rivets.
Curlers, stuck on with tape.
An LP, stuck on at a jaunty angle.