This article is from the WeChat public account: Real Story Project (ID: zhenshigushi1) , author: Wen Lihong, from the title figure: vision China
A wig shop in downtown Guangzhou has been taking root for 3 years in the shopping street opposite the Cancer Hospital affiliated to Sun Yat-sen University. Cancer patients came here to find a replacement for hair loss due to chemotherapy. Here, most of the women who patronize and serve are women. You can say that they are ill and thinking about beauty, but they actually want more humble.
Undetected need
The main road meets the west side of the Cancer Hospital affiliated to Sun Yat-sen University, and it is divided into Dongfeng East Road and Xianlie South Road, one south and one north, separating the tumor hospital into a separate area. The people in Guangzhou referred to this hospital as “medium swollen”. From a satellite view, this hospital looks like a dune in the river.
The group of shops closest to the hospital is north of the hospital. It faces the hospital across Xianlie South Road. A five-person wide bridge connects the two banks.
Anyone who can survive on this pocket commercial street is to provide just-in-time shops for hospital patients. Hotels, fast food restaurants and pharmacies live the longest. There used to be a flower shop. Three years ago, online flower purchases started in the hospital. This florist was replaced by a wig shop when no one noticed it. The wig shop meets the appearance of cancer patients-even doctors who know the cancer well are rarely aware of it. After 3 years, this wig shop has not closed down, proving that this demand is real.
You can smell the shampoo from the store when you pass by the door. Customers do not need to hide the fact that they have cancer from the shop assistants. The big “medical wig” on the signboard and the store name provides the first hint and another line. The smaller font says “after chemotherapy” “Gray hair.”
This is the idea of the store manager Lin Caiping: “It is stated that it is a wig worn after chemotherapy, so customers do not have to cover it up, pretending that they are healthy.” For the wig, let the store staff measure the size of their head circumference. Lin Caiping also ordered the staff not to pierce.
The glass wind wall along the street is decorated with “Welcome, happy mood” color bars. The store is not large. The 15-square-meter storefront is staggered with shelves and 60 wigs. Long hair only has 3 tops, and it is displayed on the innermost shelf of the store. Lin Caiping does not want customers to notice them.
Lin Caiping insists that he works for others. Five years ago, she went to a wig factory to apply for a sales department supervisor and passed the boss interview. On the first day of her post, she was taken directly to the hospital ward by a colleague. It wasn’t until she responded that she was measuring the head circumference of a cancer patient. She did n’t understand it—I did n’t go to the clothing market to persuade the store owner to buy a wig for the model. , But customized wigs for patients with cancer.
At that time, the entire retail department only had counters in pharmacies. Every day at work, Lin Caiping and another colleague ran to various hospitals to sell wigs in the ward. “But you don’t have a storefront, it’s hard to reassure you.” On the advice of Lin Caiping, the storefront was chosen opposite the “swollen”.
Women living in different families will be treated differently after suffering from cancer. After doing this business for 5 years, Lin Caiping has become accustomed to, and each has his own destiny.
Among Lin Caiping ’s customers, there is a Chaoshan woman accompanied by her son. She does not speak Mandarin, and the boys who are still at school are brave enough to pretend to be mature and bargain with Lin Caiping. Breathable, the wind blows from any angle without revealing the car’s stitching wigs. A newborn mother is not so lucky. She found abnormal breast swelling and pain while breastfeeding and went to the hospital to detect breast cancer. When she returned home on the day of the diagnosis, her mother-in-law would not let her touch her children: the baby would not need you to feed her in the future.
People who share the same role have different personalities. Women who have husbands who help patiently with new hairstyles are much happier than women who leave their impatient husbands off the street and insist on going into the store to see wigs. After looking at the shop, Lin Caiping silently rated the husbands who came.
Affin from Longyan, Fujian, entered the store for more than 20 minutes to wash her wig. Her husband stood under the tree in front of the wig store and was waiting for her with a mobile phone.
She took off the wig and gave it to the clerk. Then she immediately took off the silk scarf around her neck to cover her head. After tying it, facing the mirror, gently adjusted the edge of the silk scarf to cover the position of the hairline . No one speaks, wig shopQuiet, after Affin fastened her silk scarf, she turned to see the clerk Ling Ling stop and comb a wig in her hand, tearing a few white hairs from her head.
“Can you pluck my white hair?” Affin took off her headscarf, and Ling Ling asked her to sit in front of the mirror. On Affin’s scalp, the hair was re-growing, and the tufts were only one knuckle long. If I didn’t look carefully, I thought that Affin was bald. In the tuft, a short silver-gray hair thicker than black hair was rooted in top.
Seller Ling pinched the silver hair with her forefinger and thumb nails, and pulled it hard—the silver hair was not pulled down, rolled into a small roll, and still stood on the scalp. Afen couldn’t help laughing: “It’s more tenacious than black hair.” Lin Caiping hid behind the cash register and heard their conversation, and was amused. Later, Sister Ling found a pair of scissors from the drawer, and carefully found out 7 or 8 white hairs on Affin’s scalp, and cut them off against the scalp.
Women like Affin, wig shops receive nearly 20 people a day, most of them are regular customers who come to maintain wigs in the shop. Most wigs are women with cancer. Sick customers endure pain and need to talk. Lin Caiping insists that she only recruits female salespersons. This is written into the recruitment notice. The only two male employees in the wig shop were hairdressers. Lin Caiping rented a small shop next to the shop. Men usually stayed next door to help deal with the wigs waiting to be trimmed.
One day this week, there are more men, five. Except for the three sons who accompanied the mother and the husband of a customer who was resting in the store, the real customer was only an old man who was a rare old man. He was suddenly informed by the doctor that he would return for a brain examination and surgery next Monday. Shave your head. “Suddenly. Suddenly I shaved my head. How do I see people? I still want to see people. Hey.” Women who received chemotherapy for cancer “will never” bald, Lin said.
What impressed me most was a year ago when a girl in elementary school was brought by her mother to pick a wig. The mother and daughter look good, but they insist on buying the lowest price. The clerk helped the little girl to measure her head circumference, select a good payment, and before paying, the woman said that she had to make a phone call before the clerk knew that the child’s father actually did not agree to buy a wig for her daughter.
The man scolded his wife on the other side of the phone and asked his wife to give the phone to her daughter. He coaxed his daughter: “Daughter is good, let’s treat the disease well, don’t wear a wig, okay?” He heard the daughter’s promise and hung up the phone. Lin Caiping guessed that the girl was actually unwilling. When she left the wig shop, Lin Caiping saw her wiping her tears without making a noise.
Mothers are often keenly aware of their children’s emotions. There was a woman who had a daughter with hair loss to make a wig. The girl was in a low mood and could not answer the mother and the clerkReason, Lin Caiping read from her manners “what else is the point of doing this?” Pick a wig, the woman goes to the checkout counter, and her daughter walks to the storefront to wait for her.
Beside the store is Xianlie South Road, where the car is coming and going. The mother lowered her voice and said to the clerk aside, “Help me out and look at her. Don’t let her crash into the road.
Female clerk who has become a doctor for a long time
The red dense teeth combed through the woman’s hair, and hung a short black hair with two index fingers. Hong Jie’s hand did not move. Under her own weight, the black hair fell off her comb teeth and floated to the ground.
A woman who has shaved her hair when she first came to the store. The clerk, Red Sister, has handled three people this year, and she realizes that she will soon be the fourth. There are many contacts with cancer patients, not only Lin Caiping, but other shop assistants have a long history of seeing the disease and becoming a doctor. Women who choose to undergo chemotherapy will begin to lose hair on the 16th day after the first dose of the chemotherapeutic agent is injected into the body. Within 3 days, the patient will see the entire hair loss. For women with cancer, this is an additional torture that spreads from the flesh to the vision, rubbing the heart. Red Sister has worked in a wig shop for 3 years, and she knows this better than patients who received chemotherapy for the first time.
“You have severe hair loss, shave it off.” Her voice is gentle, but she speaks quickly, without giving women time to hesitate. “The store can borrow a wig for you and wait for your hair to finish. You can pick it up now. “
The woman reached out and caught the falling black hair in the air, twisting it in her hands. The hair was finally twisted into a small black ball and fell to the ground, and the woman got up and sat in the barber chair.
Women working in wig shops have a lot of cancer knowledge in their heads. They have not specifically learned the medical knowledge of cancer, nor have they searched for relevant information using search engines. They all heard it from customers and observed it.
As long as they are willing, they have enough time to reach customers, because after the sale of a wig, the follow-up work of the wig shop is very long. Some women have to undergo 8 chemotherapy sessions before and after, with a 21-day interval between the diagnosis and the end of the chemotherapy. At least 10 months have passed between the “medium swelling” across the road.
Without chemotherapy, patients also come to the hospital. Sometimes I come to check, sometimes I just wait for the report. I do n’t know where to go when I wait in line and wait for the result. I just come to the store and chat with the staff. The knowledge of these diseases was kept in mind by the clerks through chat.
Some days after the chemotherapeutic agent circulates in the patient, the scalpBegan to ache. Lin Caiping once encountered a customer who told her that when she touched her scalp, she felt a needle and felt painful. She also felt pain when she touched the pillow at night when she was sleeping. This pain does not know when it will end, and women are afraid that it will last a lifetime. Lin Caiping comforted her: “I used to have a symptom with you, rest assured, it will be fine in about 7 days.”
The panic seen by Lin Caiping was not even noticed by the doctor. A doctor who has worked across the road said that doctors do know that chemotherapy can cause this pain, but from the doctor’s standpoint, he is dedicated to treating the disease and saving his life. Naturally, he rarely thinks of telling patients such a small degree Pain. When working in the hospital across the road, she passed by Lin Caiping’s wig shop every day. She never noticed that the patients left the hospital, turned around and went to the United States for beauty, and did not expect that some patients would be worried about scalp pain all their lives.
I don’t want her to know too fast, too straight forward
A person who has cancer, in addition to devoting himself to treatment, will also give part of his energy to the wig shop. You can explain it as the pursuit of beauty, and Lin Caiping is more willing to use a low-profile statement-she wants to change back to her pre-illness.
Occasionally, there are customers who customize wigs purely because of hair loss or pursuing new styles. Lin Caiping found that they often pursue trendy and bright styles. People with cancer often take out previous photos and ask for the same hairstyle as before.
It’s Thursday, and 3 long hairs have finally moved. A woman was still dissatisfied after trying 4 short hairs. The salesperson took off another short hair and tried to help her try it on. She kept sitting in a barber chair and refused.
The woman explained to the shop assistant that her short facial hair was not good-looking, and her tone became impatient: “I got fat by taking hormones, my short hair looks good on others’ heads, but I don’t see it well.” A self-portrait, half held up to show the clerk standing side by side serving her, trying to prove that long hair really suits her.
Liu Hai’s long hair is hanging down to decorate her goose-shaped face, with slender eyebrows. The clerk looked at the photo and said, you used to have a classic beauty.
That was a pre-cancer selfie. At that time, she was working at a chain of real estate agencies and gave birth to a pair of baby boys. Later, cancer was found in her body. A long hair came off under the effect of a chemotherapy injection. The breast on the left was not preserved. Hormones added fat to the body and face. The apple muscles bulged upward, squeezing her eyes more slender.
From the tumor hospital, the woman passed by Lin Caiping’s wig shop. After trying on 4 short hair that was not satisfactory, she told Lin Caiping that she used to have long hair and wanted to find a wig similar to her previous hairstyle. Lin Caiping had no choice but to remove a long hair from the model doll’s head, walked back to the woman, and combed the woman’s previous hairstyle against the photo.
Styling her hair, the woman looks left and right in front of the mirror, the fat on her cheeks opens, and her former self does not appear in the mirror. She didn’t speak again, took off her long hair, put on her hat, and went away sadly. Lin Caiping felt that the woman’s fantasy about beauty was over, and she annihilated the woman’s fantasy.
Of course, Lin Caiping can help women try on long hair immediately, but just hope to keep it as long as possible. With the same hairstyle, the women stayed beautiful before the illness. At that time, the skin color was good. Occasionally, they applied some light makeup. During treatment, hormones caused obesity, their faces turned yellow, and their makeup was not taken into consideration. “I don’t want her to know so fast, that’s too direct.” Lin Caiping couldn’t bear it. She wanted to help the woman to find a short hair that she liked, so that she forgot the idea of trying on long hair, but she failed.
Women who come to buy wigs in the store are silent by themselves and rarely talk.
Amei doesn’t. She came from Guangxi and had just had her first chemotherapy shot. Her hair was still intact. When talking to the clerk and other customers in the store, her slender eyes were raised upwards, and her cheeks were flushed. That day, until Amei left, the clerk on the side told Lin Caiping that the night before, because Amei had talked to another customer, they chatted endlessly, and the closing time was half an hour late. In Guangzhou in October, the weather was cool at night, and when the shop assistants packed up the store to leave, Amei and her new friend who met each other were still chatting under the tree at the door.
In the beginning, Lin Caiping and Red Sister were helping Amei’s hair while listening to her one by one. Amei made a speech, saying that the disease was found at the village chief’s house for dinner. At the banquet, she drank some wine, made her stomach, and couldn’t pull it out in the toilet. When she went to the town hospital for an examination, the doctor said that she couldn’t rule out the worse, and let her go to the big hospital. In Guangzhou, doctors discovered that cancer cells had invaded her ovaries. “Why did you say it was so sudden?” Amei asked.
By the time of checkout, Ah Mei only said one word: be cheaper. For a wig of 880 yuan, Red Sister dropped below 500 yuan all the way, explaining to Amei that it was close to the cost price. Amei still said, “I know, it’s cheaper, I spent a lot of money on the treatment.” The youngest son who stayed home alone in Guangxi: “Oh, I want to end the weekend soon. He goes to school to board, and doesn’t need to stay at home alone.”
“How much do you saySell it to you. “Sister Hong said.
Amei has a price. Unable to be the master, Sister Hong asked Lin Caiping for help. Lin Caiping thought for a while: “Give her.”
Seeing that Lin Caiping handed the wrapped wig to her, Amei didn’t reach out to pick it up. Lin Caiping still asked himself: “In the future, you will be ill, your hair will grow out, and if you do n’t wear your wig, do n’t throw it away. When the old white hair grows, you can cover it.”
Amei returned to her: “Change another bag, I don’t like black, black is not good.”
Lin Caiping returned to the checkout counter and found a purple eco bag in the drawer. She shook to Amei: “Is this color unsuitable?”
For the first time, Lin Caiping knew that cancer would return, two years after opening the store. An old customer returned to the store two years after leaving “Swollen.” That day, she walked in with the wig that she bought during chemotherapy, let it wash and oil, and let Lin Caiping shave her head again. Lin Caiping didn’t understand what happened. The woman explained to Lin Caiping that the doctor told her that her cancer had recurred, so she returned for chemotherapy.
It turned out that the disease would recur. Lin Caiping said that this was an individual case, not all of them. In the past two years, she knew that 4 customers had encountered this condition. After that, when another customer came to the store, Lin Caiping would say with stitches, don’t lose the wig in the future, and use it to cover the white hair.
Go to the dunes
Early this year, Lin Caiping also walked into the sand dunes across the road.
For two consecutive medical examinations, the same index was abnormal. The doctor ordered Lin Caiping to conduct further examinations.
For five years working in a wig shop, Lin Caiping’s family has been persuading her to change careers, fearing that she will get sick from work. On a few occasions, she found that she was actually scared—on three occasions, she cut her hands while helping her guests trim her hair. When the blooddrops came out, she couldn’t help thinking about what cancer the guests had Can be transmitted through blood. In theory, wearing gloves can isolate most of the hidden dangers, but wearing gloves is awkward, so Lin Caiping has been working with his bare hands.
When the husband heard the news, he advised her not to do it. In the first year of their marriage, Lin Caiping was taken to the hospital due to an ectopic pregnancy and lost a few bags of blood. He almost did not return from the ghost gate. At that time, he had experienced the terrible feeling of losing his wife. Although the abnormal indicators were not related to Lin Caiping’s work, he still wanted to persuade his wife to quit this job dealing with cancer all day.
Lin Caiping didn’t know before. It used to take a lot of courage to admit that she had a physical problem. The husband asked her to take a good vacation to accompany her to the “medium swollen” examination. The day before her departure, Lin Caiping thought, otherwise, it would be better to know nothing. Until she went to bed, her husband supervised her to register, and did not let her escape.
The inspection report will not come out for a week. When returning to the store, Lin Caiping works just like anyone else. However, Red Sister was more anxious than her, always asking her: “A Ping, how do you feel about your body and what are the results of the test?”
On the day of the result, Lin Caiping walked across the overpass alone and took the report across the road. Precancerous lesions, but not cancer. The doctor didn’t say much to Lin Caiping and let her go. From the doctor’s attitude, Lin Caiping guessed that she was fine.
Nothing has changed. Lin Caiping said that earlier this year, several media reported the story of the wig shop, and the condition of the wig shop was also the same as before. The turnover has not changed significantly, and recruiting people is still as difficult as before. At the beginning, I read the report and thought of the people working in the store. Lin Caiping took someone to the hospital to help the guests to measure their heads. After returning, the other party retreated. Lin Caiping then realized that people who were born with no discomfort in contact with the illness could have been in despair. So, when she said she had just opened a store when a candidate came out of the ward, Lin Caiping didn’t notice that she was gone, she expressed her understanding.
“Precancerous lesions”, Lin Caiping sometimes ponders these four words, not knowing that the cancer cells have quietly sneaked into her body. “It’s impossible to prevent it,” Lin Caiping said. If you are sick, you can’t escape it. The most important thing is not to regret it.
In the past six months, there is no sign of her resignation. For Lin Caiping, it was just another case to comfort customers.
Taking a wig, Amei didn’t leave, stood beside the cash register and talked with Lin Caiping for more than ten minutes. Someone turned on the hair dryer. In the small wig shop, she raised her voice unconsciously.
Amei said that she hasn’t finished working hard in this life, her eldest daughter hasn’t graduated from university, and her youngest son is still in elementary school. The two parents-in-law came to Guangzhou to see a doctor. The weekend was coming. The youngest son came home from a boarding school. He had to stay in a five-story home in the countryside for two days alone. He also said that he did not know how the disease would develop.
Then I didn’t say anything here. Lin Caiping pulled out his mobile phone and focused around, pretending to reply to WeChat. She saw that Amei’s nose was red, and her eyes were red.
“If I cried, she wouldn’t be able to hold her back. I don’t know how to end it at that time?” Lin Caiping thought like this, I don’t know if it would comfort Amei or comfort herselfalready.
* Affin and Amei are pseudonyms.
This article is from WeChat public account: Real Story Project (ID: zhenshigushi1) , author: Wen Lihong