Jewish Journal

Hair transplant symbolizes a more normal life
By Vanessa C. Reyes, Journal Staff Writer
August 29, 2006

Sarah Mermel, left, with Dr. Bernard Nusbaum

For some people, hair is about style and color.

For Sarah Mermel, it symbolizes a more normal life.

Mermel, 22, has been fighting a brain tumor since she was 12. It caused her to lose her hair permanently.

"It's hard for her, as a young woman, not to be able to style her hair and everything has to be done privately." said her mom, Lory Mermel.

Through what Mermel calls a miracle, her family met Dr. Bernard Nusbaum, a fellow congregant of Chabad Center of Kendall.

"Through the temple, I met Sarah because the attends and someone had told me that one of the things she wanted was to have her hair and be normal, so hair is my life, as far as a profession, and all I deal with is hair-loss patients," Nusbaum said.

Nusbaum is the founder and president of the Hair Institute of Miami in Coral Gables.

He knows first hand what not having hair can do to self-esteem. He went bald in his early 20s.

"I understood the psychology of someone who suffers from hair loss," Nusbaum said. "The opportunity to help Sarah was important. She is a young individual who had gone through so much already and I'd actually use my talents to help someone and help do a reconstruction for someone who does not do it just for cosmetic enhancement."

What usually costs from $5,000 to $10,000, depending on the number of procedures the patient needs, was free to Mermel.

"I was the greatest recipient really because of the joy I received the day she came and I know I had put a smile on her face and she told me how happy she was," Nusbaum said. "I get rewarded daily by people telling me that I changed their life, but this is a very special life to change."

Mermel's struggles began when she was 12 and her family discovered she had a tumor on the left side of her brain.

Through lengthy chemotherapy and gamma knife treatments (a less-invasive radiation that destroys unwanted cells). Sarah's body appeared to have fought off the tumor's growth.

Five years later, another more aggressive tumor emerged and the family was told there was nothing that could be done.

Nothing giving up, Mermel found a clinical trial program with Judah Folkman, a specialist in anti-angiogenesis, a process believed to block the supply of blood that feeds the tumor.

Sarah's body did not respond well and she had a stroke when she was 18. Because of the radiation, Sarah lost her hair permanently, and as a result of the stroke, Sarah lost some of her cognitive functions.

The right side of her body is paralyzed, she now reads at a sixth or seventh-grade level and her speech was impacted.

"She was in gifted classes and after stroke, she didn't know which letter was which," Lory Mermel said. "She can't add or subtract or do all the number things because that part of the brain received a lot of damage, and so did the part that tells the right hand to move and [right] leg to move."

But the stroke did not change her heart.

"I talk a little slow, but four years ago I didn't talk at all," Sarah said.

"Thinking that I am paralyzed until I die [is one of the most difficult things] and I that I am not normal anymore. It is hard to get up and go to the bathroom, but I put on my brace on my leg and pit a brace on my arm and go to the bathroom. But I love my life. I love my family and I love my friends."

Their faith helps the family pull through.

"I've lived in hospitals mainly - in and out of hospitals for treatments for Sarah," Lory Mermel said. "My husband prays a lot and if we didn't go to Chabad, we wouldn't have [met] Dr. Nusbaum."

Now Sarah is able to style some of the hair that is growing out and she is expecting another treatment to have more hair transplanted from the back of her head to the top.

"Right now, we are in a position that we feel that we killed that [cancer]. It stopped growing and she is not taking anything." Mermel said.

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