Not much later, she visited her OB/GYN, just to get it checked. They told her they believed it was benign and sent her on her way
Sometimes, a simple reminder that the phrase "you never know what someone is going through" truly resonates. At least, that's how Alanna Vizzoni feels.
The 28-year-old was out for dinner with her fiancé in April when a stranger walked by and complimented her hair. To the passerby, Vizzoni might have seemed like a normal, healthy woman. What they didn't know was that just a few months earlier, she had lost her hair while undergoing breast cancer treatment. This was the first week she was wearing her hair without a bandana or wig.
"That's a moment I've been waiting for since the day I found out I had to do chemo," Vizzoni tells PEOPLE exclusively over Zoom. "I knew I was going to lose my hair, and I was waiting for the day when I could wear it again."
"Getting that part of my identity back -- it's awful to admit how much you care about how others perceive you, but it's just human nature," she adds. "You want to feel beautiful. I was so scared of looking sick or having people wonder, 'What's up with that girl's hair?' So, when a stranger said, 'I love your haircut' -- without knowing anything about me -- it was a reminder that I'm on my way to getting my life, my identity and my happiness back. It symbolized that I'm out of the woods."
Vizzoni was diagnosed with Stage 2 hormone-positive breast cancer on March 1, 2024. Just a few months earlier, in November 2023, her fiancé (then boyfriend) discovered a blueberry-sized lump in her left breast.
At the time, Vizzoni, then 27, wasn't overly concerned. But after some encouragement from her fiancé, she visited her OB/GYN a month later, just to get it checked. They told her they believed it was benign and sent her on her way.
"But after two more months went by, I felt like something was wrong," she recalls, remembering how she was suddenly struck with an overwhelming urge to get it checked again.
"I went back and said, 'I need an ultrasound,' " she continues. "They prescribed the ultrasound in February, and then they ordered a biopsy. I was like, 'Oh my God, this is really scary.' I think that was a few days after Valentine's Day. By the last week of February, I had the biopsy, and on March 1, I got the call that it was breast cancer."
Vizzoni quickly began treatment at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, starting with a lumpectomy, followed by a mastectomy for "peace of mind."
However, only after surgery did doctors discover small traces of cancer in one of her lymph nodes, prompting them to recommend eight rounds of chemotherapy and egg freezing as preventive measures. Vizzoni describes receiving this news as "devastating," and even harder than her initial diagnosis.
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One of the hardest parts was accepting that she would lose her hair. Despite cold-capping, a technique used during chemotherapy to minimize hair loss, by the end of her treatment in August, Vizzoni had lost 90% of her hair.
"I felt healthy, I looked healthy, and suddenly I was going to be sick and look sick," she says. "It was hard to come to terms with because I'm just a normal girl. The night I got diagnosed, I had plans in the city with my friends, and it was just a moment of pure shock. How could this happen to me?"
"My hair was so long, and it made me feel beautiful and feminine. Suddenly, it was taken from me, and my breasts -- another symbol of femininity -- were trying to kill me," she adds.
Through it all, Vizzoni slowly began to open up to her family and friends about her diagnosis and found support in organizations like Five Under 40, which donated a real wig to her that she wore throughout her treatment.
Despite how difficult it was to share her diagnosis -- since it made the situation feel more real -- Vizzoni wanted others to understand that if you notice something wrong, to get it checked out. So, she decided to share her story on TikTok and Instagram.
After posting her first video, she was quickly overwhelmed by the response.
"I felt that was a little freeing because I didn't want to hide," she says. "I didn't want to hide what was happening to me. I wanted to face it head-on."
"I wanted to let people know there is life after this, and you're going to be okay," she adds. "When I was first diagnosed, I was looking for someone who had been through it -- someone a year or two ahead of me -- to tell me that it was going to be okay. But it was hard to find that. So, I'm happy to be that for some people."
Since then, Vizzoni has continued to share her journey online, including how, in August, her family and friends threw her a party to celebrate the end of her chemotherapy, where her boyfriend proposed to her.
She also opened up about her prognosis, which includes being deemed cancer-free but still needing to take hormone-suppressing medication for the next five years.
"I have people DM me all the time saying, 'I just got diagnosed and your videos make me feel like it's going to be okay,' " she says. "That just makes me feel fulfilled in a way that nothing else ever will."
Recently, Vizzoni shared the video recounting the story of the stranger who complimented her hair. The offhand comment meant so much to Vizzoni, looking back she admits, "I'm literally going to cry just thinking about it."
The video quickly went viral, amassing more than 680,000 views and thousands of comments.
"This is why kindness matters so much. You never know what your kindness will mean to someone else 💗," one user wrote.
"My sister just finished chemo. I can't wait for this for her! ❤️," another said.
Someone else commented, "I will never forget when my hair was barely growing out from chemo a girl said my "pixie cut" was so cute and it made me feel so happy 😭💕."
"I wonder if she saw it," Vizzoni says. "She had no idea how much her words meant to me. But since then, I've felt so much more secure. I'm wearing my hair the way I want it, and it feels great. It's a new look, and I love it. That moment, her compliment, was the turning point for me."