One young lady is showing all those who must give up their hair due to cancer just how beautiful one can be with or without hair! From Texas, Andrea Sierra Salazar, is a 17 year-old model who was surprised to find that she was diagnosed with stage 2 nodular sclerosis Hodgkin lymphoma after a doctor’s visit.
The treatment one must undergo when living with cancer is the cause of hair loss.
Chemotherapy, the treatment that is used to treat cancer, specifically targets rapidly dividing cells. However, it is indiscriminate in the cells it attacks just as long as they rapidly divide like cancer cells.
Therefore whether it is a healthy cell or an unhealthy one it is wiped out by chemotherapy, and unfortunately the cells contained within your hair follicles which keep them healthy are some of the most multiplicative cells out their which means they are taken out by the chemotherapy as well.
Andrea’s mom told her that she should make the most of her modeling career if she was going to be missing more school due to being in the hosipital.
And that’s exactly what she did! Andrea has loved modeling since the age of 13, and after losing her hair, she began noticing all the other little girls at the clinic who had felt less confident about themselves due to their hair loss.
“I see all these little girls, and you can see it in their faces that they lose all confidence in themselves,” she said.
“I want them to know that your hair or your physical attributes doesn’t define who you are – what really matters is your inner beauty, the way you treat others, and if you’re a kind person, that shows through.”
Andrea’s mom also spread the word to many photographers that her daughter was looking to do some more modeling, and about her unique situation. One photographer, Gerardo Garmendia, was the photographer that captured Andrea’s most inspirational moment! Her in a stunning gown, posing on a matching chaise, without a wig!
For Andrea getting to that place wasn’t easy at first.
“[At first] I didn’t feel confident enough to do a version without a wig,” she said, “but then I realized that I had no reason to be ashamed of the way I looked, I should be proud”
“It’s not only about my outside beauty, it’s about the inside. That’s what really inspired the photoshoot without the wig.”
Her confidence in her beauty has inspired many!
With over 100,000 shares on social media with the caption, “Cancer doesn’t stop me from being a princess”, Andrea Sierra Salazar has definitely reached beyond her goal of originally inspiring those girls at her local hospital, but many others as well!
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