I Lost My Hair When I Got Cancer

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This is Karen, and she wants to tell you about one of the sad episodes of her life. Karen is 15, and some time ago she was about to lose all of her hair that she had been growing all her life. This is what happened.

She was born with beautiful dark hair, which they say is a rare thing with newborns. When she was growing up, it got even darker and even more beautiful. Karen stood out in all her pictures right from when she was a small child, as her mom enjoyed giving her different complicated hairstyles every day. The truth is, Karen wasn’t particularly beautiful, so her hair was the thing that made her feel pretty and confident. Every time someone met her for the first time, their first reaction was: “Oh what beautiful hair! Can I touch it?” There are some people who have something unusual about their appearance and who get irritated by this kind of constant touching, but Karen really liked it.

As she grew older, Karen started getting a lot of attention from boys. She prefers to think that this was because of her wonderful personality, but she was honest enough to admit that her hair was the reason why they found her attractive. You see, she had never really cut it and it was really, really long. This is why she had always taken good care of it, and at some point, started being too cautious about the health of her hair. For Karen, every hair that was lost was a reason for panic, even if she understood quite well that she was exaggerating the problem. She was so paranoid about it that she started having nightmares about losing her hair lock by lock. She would wake up all scared and sweaty.

But don’t think that Karen’s hair was all that she cared about in her life. No one could have called her a shallow person – she did well in her studies and had a lot of hobbies, including sports. And it was because of sports that she started noticing that something was wrong. She was getting tired very quickly; she started losing a lot of weight even though she would eat a lot. Even worse, she got these bumps on her neck that alarmed her mom a lot, so much so that she took her to the ER at once. And after several tests, some of which were pretty painful, she was taken into hospital with a horrible diagnosis.

Karen had acute leukemia. You know, that kind of diagnosis that straightaway makes you calculate how much time you have left. She was in a state of shock and didn’t know how she was supposed to feel. The funny thing is, if there was anything funny about this situation, it was the idea that she was going to lose her perfect hair that made her emotional. She would look at the bald heads of other kids in the department and just cry her eyes out. It’s silly, of course, but this was some kind of protective reaction towards the stress she felt. And for Karen, her hair was a symbol of her happy, healthy life that she had now lost.

When she was preparing for chemotherapy she didn’t even think about the process or results; instead she could focus only on looking for ways to save her hair. She understood that this was foolish, that she was supposed to be concentrating on keeping her spirits up and fighting the disease, but she just couldn’t help it. Then suddenly help came when she least expected it. Her doctor suggested that she try a new hair loss prevention therapy that essentially meant freezing her scalp during the chemo. It was still undergoing trials, but due to her unusual hair the doctors were interested in how she would react. They said that it was the only credible hope to save her hair, or at least a big part of it. Of course, Karen agreed!

So Karen started her chemo more focused and more positive – if you can call yourself positive in such a situation. What’s more important, she now had hope. The hope of saving her hair was closely connected in her mind to the hope of getting better, which is an enormous deal when we are talking about leukemia. She would sit wearing that funny freezing hat getting her therapy and pray that it would go alright. And her prayers were heard. Some time has passed and now she’s in remission, slowly returning to her normal life. And what about her hair? Well, she’s lost some of it, but it still looks good after all the treatment. More importantly, now that she’s a bit older Karen has developed a calmer attitude towards her hair, and she’s not as scared to lose it as much, as she has now knows that when she loses it nothing horrible happens. But she’s convinced that focusing on keeping her hair as a symbol of her healthy life has helped her to fight the disease. She’s glad that’s she still able to tell you this story and thankful to her hair for this.

Music by Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com

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