Today’s Jill Martin took fans on the emotional journey of trying on wigs amid her ongoing breast cancer journey.
“This looks just like me, right? It’s hard,” Martin, 47, said through tears in an Instagram Story video on Wednesday, December 27. “I feel like I could style it. It’s fun, it’s like playing dress-up. I’m dressing up as myself.”
In a second video, Martin said it was “hard and strange” to be shopping from a wall of wigs. “Maybe I’ll be a brunette,” she added.
The television host also revealed that she was going to get her “eyelashes done” after losing them three weeks after undergoing chemotherapy treatments. “I want to feel like myself,” she said, noting that she felt like she was getting an “Ambush Makeover,” referring to her popular Today show segment.
“Thank you for all your nice notes,” she told fans. “I feel better. It was a tough day, but I feel better about it.”
After getting her eyelashes done and putting on her wig, Martin showed her Instagram followers the final results.
“Remember ‘Ambush Makeover’? This is what you look like before,” she concluded. “Been through a lot to get to this point. I’m pretty happy with it.”
Martin revealed her breast cancer diagnosis in July, explaining that she has the BRCA gene mutation, which can give patients a higher possibility of developing cancer.
Two months later, she wrote an essay for the Today show’s site and noted that she was “doing OK” physically after undergoing a double mastectomy but “emotionally is a different story.”
“In the past six weeks, I learned I am positive for a BRCA2 mutation, had stage 2 breast cancer, then had a double mastectomy and learned that my life will soon look very different,” Martin shared in August. “It’s been a roller-coaster.”
Martin explained that there was initially “a good chance” that she was cancer-free, but she needed “further treatment to help ensure that.”
Doctors removed 18 lymph nodes from her breast, one of which was cancerous, and “believed they had gotten it all.” Martin will also require “a full hysterectomy” to help guarantee a “decreased” risk of developing ovarian cancer.
“I thought it was important to share this journey with you in real time. I have shared the happy, the sad and now the scary,” Martin wrote. “We will get through this together.”
Updating fans on her cancer journey in October, Martin told Today hosts Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie that undergoing chemotherapy “has been hell” for her and her family.
“Cancer will take whatever you let it,” she said. “It will take your soul, it’ll take your hair. And that might seem small to you, but it’s not. Cancer wants everything.”
Despite her health setbacks, Martin explained that continuing her career on Today has provided a sense of normalcy. “The Today family is my family. It feels like home to me,” she said. “Everyone knows what I’m going through and everyone’s amazing. You think I’m gonna let cancer take away something else I love to do?”
