Women who took chemo drug say they were not warned of permanent hair loss

Women who took a drug to fight breast cancer say they were never warned of a side effect  permanent hair loss  that left them looking sick long after they were treated for the disease.

I had a normal head of hair and I am now completely bald, said Cynthia MacGregor, 50, of Montreal, who has been diagnosed with alopecia universalis, a loss of all body hair.

Another sufferer, Shirley Ledlie, 51, of Brittany, France, said: It’s like having ‘I am a cancer sufferer’ tattooed on your forehead.  I look like an 80-year-old, ugly old man.

This lasting side effect of the chemotherapy drug Taxotere, in combination with other drugs, came to light when cancer patients began living longer. These women are now finding that survival comes at a cost.

Balding women from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and France are calling themselves the Taxotears. They include one Taxoterrorist, the nickname for Ms. Ledlie, who posted pictures of her balding head on the Facebook page of the pharmaceutical company.

We want every woman who’s been offered Taxotere to know it is a possibility, so it is her choice whether to take the risk or not, Ms. Ledlie said.

In Canada, about 10,000 patients, including an estimated 6,500 with breast cancer, were treated with Taxotere last year, according to Claudette Baltayan, manager of product communications for Sanofi-Aventis Canada Inc., the drug’s manufacturer.