#lockdownhairdespair - Megan's Story

Meg pre-treatment

“I was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2016 at the age of 44.  Following a lumpectomy, I discovered the cancer was in my lymph nodes, so further surgery was required. My overriding feeling on discovering that I now needed chemotherapy as well as radiotherapy was the fact that I was going to lose my hair. I know that might sound a bit vain to some, given that I was facing a life threatening illness.  Within days I was talking to specialist nurses about what I could expect and one of my first questions was how soon my hair would fall out.  I was expecting the answer to be that it would  be a fairly slow process over a period of several weeks. I was shocked to discover it was likely to be about 14 days after my first session of chemo.  I decided then that I needed to get my longish hair cut short (despite not ever having it short before) My reasoning was that the shorter hair falling out would be less traumatic than long hair falling out.  I was wrong! When I came back from the hairdressers with my new short cut, my 8 year old daughter cried.  I was really concerned about how she was going to cope when I was bald and that really worried me

With Steve

Exactly as the nurses had advised, two weeks later, my scalp started to feel peculiar and a bit sensitive and as I touched the side of my head, a big clump of hair came away in my hand. Although I knew this was going to happen, it was still a massive shock.  Over the next 2 days, I was finding hair on my plate at every meal time and my husband was quietly sweeping up behind me as it fell out at an increasingly faster rate.  The time had come to take control and shave my head which my husband Steve did for me one Sunday morning. He did his best to keep me positive, but when I saw my reflection in the mirror, I cried. It might sound odd for someone with cancer, but up until that point I’d felt healthy and well. I’d come through both operations and hadn’t suffered any side effects from the first round of chemotherapy, so I didn’t feel like a cancer patient, but all of a sudden I looked like a cancer patient and the reality of what I was going through really hit me. I managed to hang onto my eyebrows - much thinner than they’d ever been before, but still there, and that helped.  I lost all but 3 of my eyelashes, (and it’s still a novelty now four years on to have something to put mascara on!)

Lake District fun

That summer, on holiday with my best friend Jen and her family, we walked up a mountain in the Lake District and on reaching the summit, I spontaneously ripped off my hat and celebrated my baldness right there and then.  It was a sort of moment of acceptance for me. And my daughter (along with her brother) coped amazingly well with their bald mummy when it came to it.  I have very few photographs of me without hair, but this photograph with my little girl is very meaningful and still makes me really proud that she, along with her brother has coped so brilliantly well with everything that has come our way.”

Meg X