How I lost my hair and that was the least of my worries

I write this with my dashing young hairdresser Alex in mind, because he has told me he reads this blog, although Ben (Little Red Hen) has Told Over Him and says that Alex only pretends to read my blog when in fact he has never laid eyes upon it. Shaw being so small, word gets around. However, I forgive Alex most things (will come to reasons why later.)

Once upon a time I had thick glossy dark hair. It was so dark that when we had to do a survey in Junior 1 about which people in the class had what hair colour, it was the majority opinion that me and David Jones had BLACK HAIR. Which has damaged me to this day and I would like to take this opportunity to announce that my hair has never been black, just DARK BROWN.

It was an affliction to me still, because in the 1980s "Sun In" was widely seen as the way forward. You sprayed this on your hair and lovely blonde highlights appeared in your already blonde hair. I knew fine well that if I sprayed this on my hair it would have no effect whatsoever so I just watched in bitter envy as my friends Sara, Andrea, Paula, Vicky and Bernice merrily Sun-Inned their golden locks. Even my cousin Andrea, a redhead, could give herself attractive strawberry blonde highlights using this magic product, and Diane had dark hair like me but hers was always well cut so there I was, a complete hair pariah.

Me and my sister used to have our hair cut at home by a mobile hairdresser, an ill-tempered woman whose name escapes me. We never, ever liked our hairstyles and when we reached the age of about 16 we began to rebel in extreme ways. Determined to be a blonde at last, I generously applied some bleach that was meant only for streaks all over my head, causing my scalp to burn agonisingly. I left it on for as long as I could endure, but upon rinsing I was revealed to have dark orange hair that had assumed the texture of a Brillo pad. I then set about applying Directions dyes.

For the uninitiated, Directions dyes come in bright colours such as Shocking Pink and Pillarbox Red, as well as purples, blues, violets and greens. You used to get them from Afflecks Palace on a Saturday afternoon and then get them everywhere. By teatime indelible dye would be staining the bath, the sink, the bathroom floor, any shower curtains which might happen to be in the vicinity, assorted towels, your neck, your face and anywhere else it chanced to run onto. Having attempted to limit the damage to the bathroom (futile) you would set about your neck and forehead with a facecloth (worse than useless,) Japanese Washing Grains which in those days they used to sell in the Body Shop; and finally, in desperation, with a pan scourer, which you would rub furiously over the stains for half an hour at a time, but to little avail.

Finally by 7 pm, you would have to settle for a purple - stained forehead which had every appearance of a nasty form of dermatitis. Thus "sorted" you could iron your hair and go to the Banshee for the night. I once slept on the floor at a house party with a man's arm beneath my head. For the next two days his arm bore the shade of my hair colour, Passionate Purple or Violent Violet I think it was.

By the time I went to university I had grown weary of the Directions routine, needed to save my facial skin in case of romance and anyway, my hair was ruined, or as Jim Killock said, "it felt kind of crunchy."

I therefore let my hair grow long like a hippy and put red henna on it now and again. This was another almighty faff. You had to mix the henna powder (another thing the Body Shop used to sell before they went really rubbish and stopped stocking Japanese Washing Grains and 99p shampoos) with hot water and let it cool. Then you put this warm green sludge, to all intents and purposes looking like a cowpat, on your head and wrapped it in a towel, then sat for hours waiting, putting your life on hold until you could rinse it off. Once, in my student house, we did this and when we went to rinse it (a process which takes two people and at least half an hour) the water had gone off. So we had to be smuggled in a car to the nearest Halls of Residence, where we sneaked into the bathrooms to use (steal) their copious amounts of hot water.

But at least henna made your hair shiny, and so there I was with my dark hippy hair, having the ends trimmed about once a year, until the lovely Martha was born when I was 26, and she kept yanking it so I had it cut into a sensible middle aged bob, and then grew it long again when she had grown out of the pulling-hair stage. So I had long dark hair which, when I discovered ghd straighteners, could be made to look very lovely indeed, although I did not appreciate it at the time.

This happy state of affairs continued for nine years, until I had it cut into a sort of layered bob because I was breaking up with Viagra Boy. This was not a good cut but once I grew it out a bit, Alex took over the cutting and I took the ghds to it, all was well.

Then came the dread news of breast cancer and the spectre of chemotherapy. When I told people I was going to have chemotherapy their main reaction was "will you lose your hair?" I said yes, and they said "oh but never mind, it might just thin a bit." When I told them that with FEC chemotherapy (the type I had) you ALWAYS lose ALL your head and body hair, they shook their heads sadly and told me to "be more positive." Some even suggested I did not have the chemotherapy at all so as to avoid the hair loss, but as my oncologist had told me it would add an extra 5-10% to my 5-year survival chances, going bald was the least of my worries.

I was offered the "cold cap" which involves having a freezing cold thing put on your head before, during and after the drugs being administered. I declined this for four reasons. One, it would mean I had to travel to the Christie hospital miles and miles away each time I had the drugs, as they do not "do" the cold cap at my local hospital. Two, there was a chance that the chemotherapy would not be as effective as it was not getting to your scalp. Three, it only works for 50% of people and even the 50% have thinning hair. Four, I had endured an awful experience at Guide camp, when I disobeyed orders not to wash my hair, had to rinse it in freezing cold water, and it was like needles of ice going into my head. I thought the cold cap might well be like this and decided I would rather go bald.

I was given a wig prescription ("one wig"), to be obtained free from a shop in Manchester, where I journeyed one grim, rainy Saturday with my sister and Martha. In a small cubicle I was given wigs to try on by a kindly lady who assured me that she was a Qualified Hairdresser. As I still had all my hair I had to wear a "wig stocking" on my head to flatten it down, which made me look like a burglar.

In the next cubicle there was a young woman, younger than me, who was with her boyfriend/husband. She wanted to get a long silky wig (such as I fully intended to have myself) but he told her it would not be very practical for the gym. Martha, my sister and me turned to each other in horror and mouthed, "the GYM?" As if anyone undergoing chemotherapy was going to give two tosses about going to the bloody gym! My sister wanted to whip aside the curtain and tell her, "Fuck him off. Fuck him off now," but restrained herself.

It was a gloomy occasion. I tried several wigs on and it was not fun. Not fun at all. Which is ironic because when you tell people you are going to lose all your hair they say "Think of the FUN you can have with different wigs!" I decided on a long auburn one, to be ordered by the shop and collected the following week.

When I had had the first dose of chemotherapy, I went to Manchester to collect the wig, feeling very ill and hating everyone who blew cigarette smoke vaguely in the direction of my face, as this made me almost throw up all over them.

I then went to have my hair cut by Alex. He was very young and very kind. He bought me a doughnut from Greggs and took two and a half hours to cut my hair into a pixie shape which made me look about ten years younger. I was cheered by this, as at least when my hair grew back I would not look late-middle-aged.

Every hair follicle on my head began to tingle in the ten days following this haircut. I gave a few experimental tugs. The hair came out in tufts, painlessly. It was not even slightly fun. I was going bald.

The next Saturday morning I knew what must be done, because I did not want to wake up one morning, totally bald with a pillow covered in hair. On a more practical note, I was becoming weary of sweeping up hairs from the floor. I drove to Argos and bought a set of cheap clippers. As I drove up to my sister's house, tears pricked my eyes. She offered me a can of Guinness. It was 11.30 in the morning. I accepted. She then set to with the clippers. When I emerged with a number one cut half an hour later, it did not look too bad. I looked a bit like Demi Moore, as I had lost so much weight with the cancer and the worrying.

A few days later, enraged by the terrible itching all over my scalp, I took a Wilkinson Sword razor to my head. I was bald. Not thinning, not Demi Moore, not Sinead O'Connor, bald. With a pink, shiny head that headscarves slipped off. Thank goodness for the wig, I thought. And for the other wigs that I bought from the Internet (my favourite being "Polly" by Hothair.)

I bought some Buffs (tubular patterned cloths worn by climbers) and some beanie hats, because I quickly realised that answering the door bald is a social faux pas equalled only by, say, walking around Shaw market wearing nothing but red Ann Summers underwear. People would recoil in horror as though my whole person was naked, not just my head.

I hated wigs. They were itchy and I was always wanting to tug them off and scratch my head, usually in some inappropriate place like the library. I developed a resentment. I wanted to wear a T-shirt that said, "yes I'm bald, get over it." I wanted to say "Fuck you" to every pitying look but instead I decided I may as well get some mileage out of it (so to speak) and would whip my wig off when driving, because the man in the next car who was about to overtake on the inside lane wouldn't want to cut up a bald woman, now would he? This worked.

Then all my hair fell out. Eyelashes, eyebrows, leg hair, armpit hair, need I go on? By this stage, however, I was so violently ill with every dose of chemotherapy that I didn't care how bald I was, or where, because I was so scared and sick. The day I spent six hours in Oldham A and E with various nurses and doctors trying to find a vein in my hand, arm, foot, anywhere to get some IV fluid and anti-emetic drugs into my bloodstream, I was wearing an orange and brown patterned Buff. I was never able to wear it again after that night (when I discharged myself from the medical assessment ward, as I felt it safer to be in my own bed at home, there being no acutely ill psychiatric patients or alcoholics in my house.)

I should, at this point, say that FEC chemotherapy has the unfortunate side effect of making you fatter. It is the result of taking steroids; staying in bed for weeks unable to move; eating anything you can keep down; and it alters your metabolism in some mysterious and cruel way. So I was now bald, with no eyebrows or eyelashes, and bursting out of my size 12s.

All around me, people were urging me to "think positive," "stay positive" and "be more positive." It was known, they told me, that "positive people" had "the best chance of recovery. Well, in that case I should have been dead a week after diagnosis. The fact is, there is nothing whatsoever "positive" about throwing your stomach lining up, not being able to drink any kind of fluids, water tasting like tuna brine, hating to look in the mirror, and taking your temperature constantly because if it goes over 37.5 C you must go immediately to hospital (and at Oldham A and E when I went, they could not even find the document that tells you how to treat patients who have life-threatening neutropenic sepsis as a result of chemotherapy. How reassuring.)

There was nothing positive about developing phlebitis in my left arm where the nurse had punctured a vein injecting the chemotherapy drugs on my first visit, allowing th drugs to spread into the tissue around my wrist. There was nothing positive about waiting 7 hours for an out of hours doctor to come out to give me some antibiotics, as I was in severe agony. Although I did find myself saying the Hail Mary over and over, and I'm not even a Catholic, so I suppose the Pope can chalk up another one for the "no atheists in foxholes" theory.

The veins in my arm went rock hard, like wire, and I couldn't straighten it. The pain was intense and after 3 "cycles" of chemotherapy, with 3 left to go, the chemotherapy nurse said it looked as though my arm was permanently damaged and that there was no way she could risk injecting any more vesiccant drugs into it, even if she could find a vein.

I therefore had the choice of having a Hickman line inserted for the drugs to be put through, or stopping chemotherapy. The Hickman line is a tube, one end of which is inserted into a large vein atop your heart, and then the tube is "tunnelled" under your chest skin to emerge above your right breast. To say I was terrified of this procedure is like saying Osama Bin Laden has Muslim leanings. I spent a week reading about it, Googling "Hickman line problems," "Hickman line infections," "Hickman line deaths" and watching a video of the "insertion procedure" on the Internet. I insisted on sedation; in fact the nurse at Christies (who was an angel) who was putting the line in said to the sedation nurse that she wanted me "fully knocked out" and even as I was away with the fairies I was still asking if I could have more sedation. ("No you can't!" said the sedation nurse, sounding shocked. "You've already had a really high dose.")

You cannot have a bath with the Hickman line in, but have to shower every day with Hibiscrub, a bright red antibacterial "wash" which looks like epirubicin - the "E" in FEC, which is the one that ruins your veins. Is it any wonder I now have an addiction to Lush bath melts, and take so much joy in the simple act of having a bath? The tube had to be taped to my chest at night, or tucked under a bra. It had a green "bung" on the end and was yet another visible reminder that I was being systematically poisoned but should be more positive and more grateful, all these new drugs, five year survival rate in the 80 per cents, blah blah. (46, 000 women a year diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK, 16, 000 a year die, it is the main cause of death in women aged 35-45. Keep smiling!)

A district nurse came out every week to flush the Hickman line with Heparin and check that it wasn't blocked. The district nurses were lovely, (see, I can be as positive as the next woman) but one of the nurses, a man, was a "feeder" - one of those men who have a fetish for fattening women up - and insisted on ordering me cans of high-calorie milkshakes and fruit drinks. As if I would ever willingly drink anything containing 2400 calories! I kept them in the cupboard, but after a while he started checking the cupboard, got suspicious and said "they don't seem to be going down" so I had to start hiding some in a different cupboard for when he came round.

It was a desperately frightening, lonely, long dark night of the soul, in the depths of winter, and with a hollow Christmas to endure rather than enjoy. I was grateful for my friends in the Facebook support group. None of us told each other to be positive. We talked about crying all the way to each chemotherapy session, the despair when the nurses couldn't find a vein, the cheapness of the biscuits in the chemotherapy "suite," the state of our poor arms. One of them said she felt as if we were helping to drag each other through a dark tunnel to the light at the other end. We shared the proverbial gallows humour and we share it still.

My well-adjusted daughter was with me 5 nights a week - I am grateful to my ex-husband for not even suggesting she would be "better off with him". She told me, "We had a good life before this and we'll have a good life when this is over." My ever-practical sister told me that I had only lost my hair temporarily, whereas "some people are just really ugly and they aren't going to get any better looking ever, and they have to live with it, but your hair will grow back" which I had to admit was true.

I also had wonderful friends - Jayne and Maria, who came to do housework for me; Vicky, who brought me food and made me eat it; Diane, whose cousin was dying of leukaemia at the time I was having chemotherapy; another Diane, who herself was in the terminal stages of breast cancer but phoned me because she wanted to give me support; Ceri, who brought me a hot water bottle when I was shivering with cold; Andrea D, who gave me massages; Jay, who made sure that my nails were done every two weeks even at a time of crisis. Sara, who came over from Spain, took me wig shopping and cleaned the kitchen a dozen times. My sister and Andrea T, who came to chemotherapy with me and watched the evil poison being injected into my arm, and did the washing up. Debra and Martin,who brought their beautiful granddaughter round and let me feel comfortable about not wearing a wig in front of them. Chris, Bev and the wonderful team at Oldham Cancer Support Centre, where I had Reiki, relaxation therapy, cups of tea and TLC.

I learned that the positive-attitude merchants tended to stay away, and I did not miss them, sitting there as if it was my funeral already but admonishing me for not being cheerful enough. But when I felt after every cycle of chemotherapy that I could not go on, there they were, telling me how selfish I was and that I had a nine year old daughter to think about. What a good thing they pointed that out, I thought bitterly. If it hadn't been for them I wouldn't have given a thought to how my early death from breast cancer would affect my daughter, or whether I had the gene which would make her inherit it, or how I could make sure she inherited my house, or who would be there for her when she is 15 or 17 or 21 or 37 and needs her Mum.

At the end of January, I had the last dose of the evil fecking FEC . The nausea stayed with me for weeks afterwards, and ever time I went to Christies for radiotherapy and smelled the alcohol hand rub at the door I was almost sick. I took Martha to see "He's Just Not That Into You" at the cinema, and was just thinking how good it was that we were getting back to normal when I got a whiff of KFC and had to lean out of the car to throw up.

I had the Hickman line taken out. No sedation this time, I was brave. I did cry, but that was because I had just read in the Tamoxifen leaflet that the main side effects of this tablet, which I would now need to take daily for five years, were NAUSEA and WEIGHT GAIN.

Whether my hair grew back was the least of my worries. I was fat, fatigued and thought about dying all the time. In fact I spent 90% of my waking moments looking up "secondary breast cancer" on the Internet. But grow back it did, slowly, and in April I went back to work, refusing to wear a wig, as I had by this time become militant about refusing to disguise the fact I'd had cancer, or to discuss it in hushed tones as if it was syphilis.

By the end of May I went to Greece on holiday and had to start using "hair putty." All too soon I was back at Short n Curlys getting a style. A style! Soon I was spending a small fortune there, not to mention the £90 on ghd "pencil thin" straighteners, because do you know, after you've had chemotherapy, your hair grows back curly? And everyone tells you, "your hair's grown back curly!" I know, I know, I feel like a poodle with a bad perm, don't talk to me about curly hair.

I even joined the gym and lost weight (note positive attitude again) and in September I climbed Snowdon, curly hair and all.

But on the one occasion that I let someone other than Alex cut my hair, the stylist went scissor-happy and I went home looking like Julie Andrews in The Sound Of Music. I have learned my lesson. Only Alex is up to the job. Let us hope and pray he does not emigrate.