All I remember is that it was a man and he, both my parents were there, and he said, It will probably take-, he said, It’s alopecia areata which means that patch will probably take a year to sort out, but what he didn’t know was that it was going to be more than one patch and carry on. So, yeah, he kind of gave me false hope, because I remember I was like counting down the months until the year was over and then it just carried on after and after and after a while I stopped counting. Which is another thing I want to say, because I put a timeframe on it and that was really-, that was really frustrating because I was kind of wishing the days away, but you kind of have to, what I’ve learnt now is that you can’t ever, you don’t ever know when it’s going to stop or start again. So you have to just let it, let it happen and just be patient with it and sort of don’t let it stop you, because for a while I was like, I’m not going to do this, I’m not going to go out, I’m not going to go to parties, I’m not going to buy these clothes, I’m not going to wear these clothes until my hair is back’ and you can’t do that because if that happens for the rest of your life, then you are always waiting to live.

Don’t be like that doctor like, yeah, don’t-, always, always make them feel comfortable. Like it’s an embarrassing situation having to show your hair when you have to and if you just do it in the nicest way possible and I think when, when the first thing you do when you walk into that doctors think is, All right, ok, can you show me this blah-de-blah? I think it would be nice to be treated more like a person then, than someone just coming to get like treatment, cos it’s more of an emotional thing than anything else like you wouldn’t walk into someone say, with cancer and you wouldn’t be like, Right, ok, blah-de-blah, straight in. You would get to know them, you would like talk to them and reassure them, but there’s no sense of that with, with alopecia.

I went a few times before I got referred and if they can see that somebody’s hair is getting worse just refer them because I still think now like I said earlier, if I had been referred back in March I don’t think it would have got the way it did because the treatment worked for me. And I think a lot of the hair loss as well cos I would put it down to stress and sort of the hormones but. When I found out I had alopecia, I stressed even more which I noticed even more hair fell. So I do think if I was referred earlier it would have, it wouldn’t have got to the stage it got to. And especially the dermatologist, not to say thing like, Have you searched on Google? Then you’ll already know the facts, don’t give people-. You-, I’d have preferred if he told me rather, cos I think sometimes you can all Google and you scare yourself cos it’s always horror stories so if he’d have maybe just spent an extra five minutes with me explaining why, why I don’t, even now I don’t even know why it happens all I know it can be an autoimmune disorder, just explaining more about it I think, I’d probably say, that’s all I’d say. Just because we’re not ill just because we’ve got no threat to our lives I think we still need as much time as anybody else cos of the mental effects it has on you. Even now I don’t think I’ll ever, mentally I don’t think I’ll ever be that same person I was before, ever, because this happened.

The only advice that I could probably give for just generally treating anyone with alopecia, not necessarily young people, but also older people as well is just to have the process sped up a bit more. Because I sort of like had my first GP appointment at the very beginning, but had nearly a month in between before I had my dermatology appointment at the hospital. And obviously at that point I’d lost nearly all of my hair. And I think if somebody hadn’t had the open minded approach that I’d had, I think they’d find that absolutely devastating and they wouldn’t know what to do. They’d probably jump straight at the local wig shop and then get would something that, probably wouldn’t suit them or you know, would have them seriously out of pocket. So I think that would be the only advice really that I would have, is just to have the process sped up a bit more.

A big thing I think is not just saying, It’s stress. I think it’s quite patronising for somebody to say it-, you know, it, stress has triggered it. Because I would say that I’m really not a stressful person and I, everyone will just say I’m really laid back. And I’ve never had any triggers that I can ever think of to have caused it. And I think it’s just kind of like a go-to answer for why has it happened, Oh, it’s stress. Cos it’s not. You’ve obviously, it obviously, with having eczema I’ve obviously got a bit of a history with autoimmune. So it’s obviously come hand-in-hand with that. And unfortunately it has just oh, well, I’ll just get rid, you know, attack your hair cells. But I think maybe I’d probably just like to have somebody to have sat down and maybe just explained. But I think it’s just cos it’s how I am as a person. I’d rather know about the ins and outs as to what has caused it and, you know, be like the scientific reason behind it, just so I could have a better understanding.

To be honest the doctors were nice. No one was ever rude but I think maybe more understanding I guess. I don’t know. So I think they just because they’re very medical kind of people they kinda see everything black and white and they’re like, You have a problem, try that, see if it works, type of thing. I think it’s a lot more-, I think it’s more of an emotional problem than more of a medical problem. I think they, they need to acknowledge that I guess because they are very like you ask them questions, they say, I don’t know. And that’s fair enough if that’s the answer but [laughs] it’s not-, it’s quite abrupt. It’s quite hard hearing that.

It’s gotta kind of be an assessment of what you think you can offer and if not what you can maybe suggest to a person so like if someone’s really struggling you can maybe say oh well maybe, like looking down the mental health route would be okay. But then you’ve got to I think be very careful of how you put that across, because obviously people still have those old kind of views about mental health and stuff. So that can then scare a person or that can put a person off. And yeah, but then with information just from anything, whether it’s mental health to wigs or to treatment or even just like sites like an online site where you can see that people actually deal, like deal with it and have it and stuff, so.

Could you say a bit more about sort of conceptions people might have about mental health support and you said that it might be off putting for somebody?

Yeah, like I know that when I first kind of got offered support for my mental health issues, I had totally different ideas of what it’d actually be. And although like that is changing in society, still people get scared of-, because people are naturally scared of the unknown so, if, also, if-. It’s a grieving process as well, so if you’ve maybe not accepted it, you could just be like no, no, no, I’m fine. I don’t need that help. And then actually they might be thinking well, I wish I’d of taken that help’ and then they might feel like they can’t go back to the dermatologist and then say well I’m actually struggling now’ or y’know. It took me a while to actually cry over the fact that I’d lost my hair, cos I wouldn’t let myself cry over it. And it literally took a good year or so until I actually let my emotions kind of affect me in the right way that they should be. So yeah, it depends on how a person’s dealing with it and how they will take a certain suggestion or anything.