So did the hair loss bother you at all?

No, as I had hardly any hair at all, what’s a few more strands? it’s nothing. The only thing, I had a beard for twenty-odd years and that came off as well because I didn’t want bits falling here and there and I’d look like something from the deep. So I shaved everything off. My niece who runs a salon, she took it all off for me and I looked like a boiled egg. I shouldn’t have shaved my eyebrows off, that was ridiculous. I looked like something from a concentration camp. You know, straight out of the Munsters.

But they’d have fallen out anyway so
I don’t know. I don’t know but I know one thing, I used to have, I couldn’t shave a wet shave. I had to have, Joyce bought an electric razor, which I’m no good at, because up until I had this white hair I used to be very dark. And if I shaved in the morning and had to go somewhere in the night I’d have to shave again, and I could grow a beard in twelve days, and my brother is exactly the same. But now I shave sort of every other day, but it took a long time for my hair to grow back on my head. And I don’t think I cut my hair for about six weeks. And then of course I could see it forming and then I would take it down. I always cut it sort of a number two. I used to take it right down to the bone but I don’t do that no more. I’m under strict orders.

Has having this illness affected the way you feel about yourself as a woman – your femininity?

Well. That is the thing I was surprised about the most. It did have an impact on my body image. It really did. And I’m somebody whos very confident and I’ve got good self-esteem in my body. I’ve always been, I come from a family of chunky women, or sonsy women as we call them in Scotland, which means short and plump. And I’ve never, ever felt uncomfortable about my body, I’ve always felt quite secure in its abilities.

I think what knocked my confidence was my body wouldn’t work the way it used to work. I didn’t feel as strong. I felt as if my shape had changed. Facially I felt as if I’d changed quite a lot because my hair is so short now whereas it was always really long before. And I would sometimes, I avoided looking in mirrors for ages and thinking, I never ever classed myself as vain. But I don’t think vain is the right word to describe it. I think saying that it’s vanity really diminishes the impact that this illness has on you. I think that I would sometimes look in a mirror, and how I described it to a friend of mine was that when I looked in the mirror I could see the shock and I could see the impact of what my body had been through on my face. And I thought I looked really, really tired and I looked, a lot of people say to me that I’ve got quite bright eyes, but my eyes were really, really dull and it felt like I was walking about in an alien body. It just didn’t feel like mine any more. I’m getting used to it again. I’m starting to like it again. I’m not used to it. I’m not somebody who ever had a dislike for their body so to have that was very odd and disturbing to me. I didn’t like how my body felt, I didn’t like how my skin felt, I didn’t like my shape.

I actually put this down to being in pyjamas for most of a year, you know, that any clothes I wore I felt claustrophobic in even though they were too big for me for a while. And I had lost an incredible amount of weight and I didn’t look like me. Everything just looked, my eyes looked too big, my teeth looked too big, my face was pinched. I lost a lot of weight and my boobs didn’t look like mine, you know, they were just odd. It was like, Who belongs to them? they’re not mine. So there were lots of things like that when I was getting the treatment I never thought too much about it, it was after it I really, really, really felt as if my body had been completely ravaged by the treatment really.

Did any of the treatment make you lose your hair?

Yes, chemotherapy it started with, yeah. I was having no hair on my head.

What about the rest of your body?

Nothing there. No hair.

How did you feel about that?

I, yeah, didn’t exactly, no, well it started with like, I remember that once I joined back the office after my third chemo, there was a client meeting, there was a business meeting in a place about an hour by train from here. I went there and I was very, yeah, that was the only time I was very uneasy to face the business clients in a meeting, in a professional meeting with no hair. And I was wearing a suit and I was wearing a cap. So I could not find any other hat. I mean that was during summer so there was no winter, no cap or a winter hat or anything available in the stores. All I could find in one corner of my house is a baseball cap. So I went there and that was a time which I felt kind of weird. And I did not tell anyone neither my company or myself told the, or could tell the client that this guy is having this problem. My boss from India who was there in that meeting he told that, You don’t have to come here. We’ll manage But I said, No, no I’m okay. I can travel. I can go there. I’ll go and that will make me feel better So he allowed me but it was kind of weird, yeah. That was the only time which I felt. But the rest of the time in the hospital you see everybody is in the same condition so you don’t feel anything bad about it.

Dear me, it was, well having long hair, and I mean really, really long, to, I mean when they said I had acute myeloid leukaemia I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry, I was just more, Wow. As soon as they said, Your hair’s going to come out’, floods of tears. And my dad was like, You’re kidding me. it’s going to grow back and you’re crying. And I was like, Yeah, but I’m going to look different. And oh yeah, oh God, did you look different. Because one day you’ve obviously got hair and then you’ll look in the mirror the very next day and there’s nothing.

And certainly I think the last thing to go was my eyebrows and my eyelashes and I just remember looking in the mirror one day and thinking, God I had more eyelashes than that and more eyebrows than that. And I remember going like that and they were in my hand, totally, and you just feel you just don’t want anybody to see you with a bald head. And, you know, you’re going through hats, scarves, wigs, and as I said, at that time the NHS ones were woeful. And I’m only a young girl so I wanted something a bit more stylish, if you like. So my mum and my friend went up to South Ken to look round at shops. And in fact one of the nurses on the ward looking after me said to me, Whenever I go out’, and she lived in London, and she said, When I go clubbing in London I never go out with my normal hair. And she said, I always wear wigs. And she came in one day and I just couldn’t stop laughing because she had this long blond wig on one day, she came in the next day and she had this brown one on. And she said, See what looks you can create. She said, You can be anybody you want. She said, You can be Jennifer Aniston one day and Angelina Jolie another day. And that put a smile on my face. Didn’t last long though because obviously the reality is that you’re not these people and you do look different and bodily you obviously look extremely thin. I think about that time I was barely seven stone and I’m quite tall, I’m five foot six. So it was awful, and obviously extremely pale with no hair and, you know, you’ve got a partner and you think to yourself, God. I must look a fright. But when you did put the wig on and you did put, obviously, some make up on and clothes on and everything, you could look pretty normal, but for a woman I think it’s a very shattering experience.

You do get, like everything else, you do get used to it. You do look in the mirror and it’s part of the normal life. It took time, don’t get me wrong, it did take time and obviously at first if someone would walk into the hospital or my house I’d be, Quick quick quick. Where’s a hat, where’s a scarf, where’s something?’ Dump it on your head. But after a while it got to, Oh can’t be bothered’, you know, and they’d see you and first of all they would walk in and they’d be, [gasp]’, you know, but then again you start talking and then they realise you’re still the same person and it’s still me.

And after a while you do get used to it but the very first I’d say few months is a very, very daunting, shattering experience because, not only are you dealing with a life-threatening disease, you’re looking in the mirror and you’re looking at a different person. And you’re also bodily, facially, everything, but as I say, I had long hair and my cousin cut it off and I’ve still got it to this day. Kept it.

You said you wore a wig.

Yes. Yes.

Did you wear the wig all the time or just sometimes?

No. I only wore the wig if I was going out. I didn’t wear it in the house or in the hospital really. Very uncomfortable. Because I knew it was a wig, nobody else would probably have known, but I just didn’t like it. Like I say, I only wore it if I went out.

Was it supplied by the hospital?

Yeah. Well you had to go up to [city] and get fitted. There was a shop up in [city] that you went to. I got fitted for it and stuff. It was okay. I wasn’t bothered about losing my hair. It didn’t bother me as much as I thought. You know, I thought I would have been a lot more upset. But I just had accepted the fact that this was going to happen. There was nothing I could do about it so I just had to accept it and it was going to grow again anyway. I knew that so, you know, for a few months I was bald.