“Sometimes you just have to laugh,” said Jill Martin, who lost her hair during chemotherapy for breast cancer
Jill Martin/Instagram
Jill Martin
Jill Martin remains optimistic as she recovers from chemotherapy.
On May 4 Today The show’s correspondent posted a video on Instagram showing off her wild hair and joking that it grew back during her cancer battle. The 47-year-old was diagnosed with breast cancer in July 2023, just a week after testing positive for the BRCA gene. She lost her hair while undergoing chemotherapy.
“So I just want to keep it honest. People have asked if my hair grows back. Um, it does… it just grows back,” she said, laughing.
In the clip, Martin showed a coffee cup with a picture of a duck with plants growing out of its head and compared himself to it.
“Claudia – who helped me with the cold cap that saved about 30% of my hair and made it grow back faster – sent me this mug and said, ‘This is how your hair will grow.’ So look at this, Claudia.”
“We are twins,” she said, holding the cup in front of her face.
Martin also boasted that her eyelashes and eyebrows are starting to grow back. “But I just wanted to highlight my hair today because it’s really extraordinary,” she joked.
The lifestyle author captioned the video with the teasing words: “Name the movie of the character I look like. Sometimes you just have to laugh. 😂 ❤️💃💪🏼”
Related: Jill Martin shares emotional videos as she tries on wigs and experiences hair loss after chemotherapy: ‘I’m dressing up as myself’
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In October 2023, Martin told PEOPLE that during her breast cancer treatment, among everything else she was dealing with, losing her hair was what she was most afraid of.
“It sounds silly, but I love my hair,” she said. “I’ve always been proud of it.”
When her surgeon, Dr. Elisa Port, told her about cold capping—a procedure that literally freezes hair follicles at subzero temperatures during chemotherapy to prevent them from absorbing the chemicals—she was willing to try it to see if it could prevent her from losing too much hair.
“When it comes to hair, everyone has a different choice,” Martin told PEOPLE. “For some people, shaving their head is empowering because it means they’re taking control of the situation before cancer takes over. But of course, it’s a decision no one wants to make.”
She added: “Because I’m still on air on Todayand I’m on Zoom calls and continuing to work while I’m going through this. I just didn’t want every conversation to be about my hair. I didn’t want everything to be about my appearance.”
Martin said she put the cold cap on at the same time as she was undergoing chemotherapy, which meant she sat in a chair for 12 hours at a time during those sessions.
“If I hadn’t used a cold cap, I would be completely bald right now,” she said at the time. “It’s like I had brain freeze for 12 hours.”
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