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Along with a healthy diet, Griffin says exercise—mainly Pilates—helped her get through treatment. "They have made such strides in terms of anti-nausea medicine," she says. "I exercised almost every day through chemo." On days when exercises seemed impossible, she still got up and took a long walk. "You really have to treat this as a psychological battle," she says. "It's no different than a soldier deploying to Afghanistan. ... He has his family supporting him just like I had my family supporting me, but you still go into it with a soldier's mentality."

Griffin's Body Armor: Her Lipstick and Wig
A chemotherapy patient's hair is expected to start falling out by Day 17 of treatment. That day never came for Griffin because she chose to take matters into her own hands. "A few girlfriends and my 7-year-old daughter and I went to my favorite hairstylist at the Four Seasons, and he shaved my head," she says. "It was a little bit emotional, but it was also very empowering. I recommend that to all women—shave your head before the hair starts falling out, because it's very debilitating. You don't want to be a victim of this hair coming out and start to look sickly. People tell me 'You didn't look sick through this entire process.' Well, I certainly did while I was in my bathroom in the morning, but I took a little extra time. If I took the time to put on a little lipstick and draw in my eyebrows, I could tell the difference."

When she walked around town without any makeup on, Griffin says people's eyes would dart away. "I could tell they felt so sorry for me," she says. "And that is not the way you want to feel when you're going through this process. You want to feel large and in charge. You want to feel like G.I. Jane. You want to shave your head, and you want to learn how to rock a wig."

One of Griffin's tips: Don't treat a wig as a sign of sickness. "I can tell you one thing: Nobody in Hollywood is wearing their own hair," she says. Griffin made an event out of wig shopping with her twin daughters and dubbed one of her long, brown wigs "The Miley Cyrus." A short, edgy red wig with blonde streaks became Griffin's Josie and the Pussycats look. "It was funky," she says. "I had never been a redhead before, and people loved that wig."

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