Thanks to the Kans’hair association, women with cancer benefit from free beauty treatments in Saint-Raphaël

To offer free care to women with cancer, Santina De Marco has imagined a circular economy. The sums collected thanks to its customers who come for permanent make-up at low prices, are paid to the “Kans’hair” association. Many patients sent by Draguignan hospital thus benefit from Santina’s know-how, free of charge.

Located in the Epsilon 1 craft area of ​​Saint-Raphaël, the “Kans’hair” association wants “to restore self-esteem to the sick by helping them to face treatments that are often psychologically traumatic in addition to being physically painful. By taking care of them, the clients also make a charitable gesture and help the patients”. An exemplary united beauty.

Camouflage scars, recreate an areola

Santina De Marco, passionate about aesthetics from an early age, attended a vocational school after having a serious road accident.

“I had nasty scars and I put a big fringe in front of my forehead. But at 18, I tried to make them less visible and I met Doctor Robert El Haddad, a plastic surgeon in Paris. He reattached the facial muscle, repaired and refined my scars. But I was still missing my eyebrow. He had traveled to learn different techniques and he was the one who told me about permanent makeup for my eyebrow. That was there. I was thirty years old and it was not widespread. He directed me to an expert and I took training to specialize in becoming a restorative dermographer myself”, says the professional.

Return a look, a smile, a breast

Santina De Marco then joined the practice of Doctor El Haddad. His work completed the aesthetic comfort allowing to better support the consequences of illnesses or accidents. “He operated to camouflage cancer scars, children’s harelips, burnt people, and I redid eyebrows, lips, I recreated breast areolas. I worked with him for twenty years. We relieved so many people who felt so bad about themselves and could no longer accept themselves. It’s a great story because he is a surgeon of great humanity who has helped tens of thousands of people”, she continues.

“We worked to make people more beautiful, to find each other. I was always very moved and touched to see the faces that lit up when they looked at themselves in a mirror after the reconstructions. People who no longer dared meet, explains the restorative dermograph. It is true that it is not covered by social security, yet it is extremely important for patients because by losing their hair, their eyebrows, their breasts, they no longer recognize themselves.

But an orphan disease has caught up with Santina on her generous journey. A rare immune-mediated myasthenia gravis affecting the neuromuscular junction. Its manifestations reflect a transmission defect between the nerve and the muscle, responsible for a muscular weakness which worsens with the effort. “All of a sudden my arm was falling off, my leg was not responding, a whole side was not moving, I couldn’t swallow, more and more memory loss. It took doctors years to diagnose my illness and relieve me with adequate treatments. A long struggle”, confides this Raphaeloise at heart who trains nurses in her practice.

Declared 80% disabled, she left Paris and its too heavy pace eight years ago to settle in Saint-Raphaël and be closer to her three children, two girls aged 29 and 27 in Aix-en- Provence and a 20-year-old son, soldier at 21^e RIMa. This is where she implemented her association “Kans’hair”. A cabinet that is always full: “I would like patients to be able to access this care despite the absence of a commitment from social security”.

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