Patient Education Activity - Look Good Feel Better

I am some days behind in my postings as the pc is still down. Son is waiting for his friend to be available so that they can go shopping for parts and the friend can help us build a new pc. Coincidentally, son is home on medical leave after having 2 of his wisdom teeth extracted. And now, my JC1 daughter is on exam leave before the promos next week. Sometimes, my sec 1 daughter needs the laptop for her homework. So where priority is concerned, I am last in the queue. Actually, I would rather prefer a pc any time as I have the feeling that I am getting some kind of sensation on my hands when I used the laptop - not too sure if I am getting paranoid.

11 Sep 2008, Thursday, I participated in the "Look Good Feel Better" programme organised by NCCS and Tote Board (Singapore Turf Club), and supported by Singapore Cancer Society.

According to the leaflet, this programme offers :
"Free, two-hour workshops led by industry-trained beauty professionals on make-up and alternative hair fashion; and an opportunity to know other women in cancer treatment."

This programme originated in the US and "was developed specifically for women undergoing chemotherapy or radiation treatment. It is dedicated to improve self esteem through knowledge and a practical approach to appearance related side effects of cancer treatment."

Pamela, our beauty consultant for this session, showed us how to cleanse, tone and moisturize our face, and the proper way of applying makeup. We also learnt how to categorise colours into cool, warm and neutral, and how we should always have the same category of colours on our face and our clothes, like blue clothes do not go with green eye shadows.

Cool colours are blue, purple, pink(?), some shades of red.
Warm colours are green, orange, yellow, brown, some shades of red.
Neutral colours are white, black, grey.

Gosh, before this session, I wasn't even aware that the colours we put on our face could clash with the colours of our clothes, except maybe the blue and green mismatch. I practically slapped on the same colours for almost any occasion, work and play, as I don't buy a whole range of this stuff. The way we looked with mismatched colours must have been a real turn-off for people like Pamela.

For years now, I have since stuck to the minimum of powder, blusher and lipstick, fortunately, because I found out that teenage kids, especially boys, don't like their mums appearing in their school all painted up and looking like dolls. Also, when there is parent-teacher meetings, I won't want my kids' teachers to remember their mum for the wrong reasons.

Now that I have been given some pointers and brought home some samples, I would probably put them to good use on the appropriate occasions.

Siti showed us how we could 'mess' up our wigs and still look good. We also learnt about the different types of wigs and different ways of tying the scarf.

Here's Siti showing the stuff that we can do to our wigs:


As the programme is not very well-known to other cancer patients, the organisers are enlisting the help of the media to help promote the programme.

For more information and available workshops, please call 62219578 (Singapore Cancer Society).