I knew it would only be a matter of time before the last hair left its follicle. I wanted to stay one step ahead, so decided to shave my head down to a number 2. So, I shaved my hair before the bastard fell out.

Laid in bed one evening, playing with my new number 2 cut, I thought I’d pull a section to see if there was any advancement on that dreaded side effect of treatment. It came out. I wept. I now had a number 2 cut with a patch for god’s sake. I thought I wouldn’t be bothered but the more that came out, the more exposed I felt and the more of an introvert I became. Back to those sad lonely days of hating myself. It was only once I lost my brows and lashes that it really hit my core. I had always had long, think black lashes growing up, framing my blue eyes but now they were gone not even a stub remained. This wasn’t doing my confidence any good at all. This is when a calling came and Naomi Waite posted on social media, looking for willing models to take part in a webinar for brow tattoo training techniques, so I commented “me me me me me me”. She invited me in, and after a consultation I made my way to the room to be filmed and have my brows tattooed. It helped bring my confidence back, but I was still conscious of people spotting me from 500m away with these new, prominent brows.

I felt at ease with Sarah, the consultant, her experience of helping others like myself and those who had experienced alopecia reassured me that she understood how important it was to me for my brows to still look natural. I never had caterpillars, nor did I want them now. As a cancer survivor herself, we were on the same page, and I can’t thank her enough for helping restore my confidence in myself. The next job was to get my lashes sorted before I had nothing left to work with. Thanks to the gorgeous Carrie Bradburn, I had individual lashes inserted so they would last throughout my treatment and provide a base if I needed any refills. This really helped when looking in the mirror, confidence on the outside was returning despite how I still felt inside, but this is when I knew I had to get stuck into some fundraising to help others to keep me going. Cancer is sometimes about looking at the lighter side, at least I didn’t need to bother shaving my legs and I still managed to get a tan despite being pretty much radioactive.

At that the point of becoming completely bald, I had a host of new physical sensations to get my head around – literally. I underestimated how bloody cold it would be on the daily dog walks, which is when I adopted my hat, later to feature in a number of photographs and Facebook lives. A trademark if you will. Despite saving on shampoo, I really had to think forward when planning where I was going to make sure I could keep warm. On top of going bald, another side effect I experienced from chemo was feeling cold a lot of the time. Especially when outdoors, even with a few layers I could still feel uncomfortably cold. A hinderance some would say when going into the winter months, but this time the big C dealt me a good hand when it came to Chelsea’s graduation.

When ordering tickets, she had informed the graduation office of my situation in order to reserve some seats close to an exit in case I felt I needed the fresh air or to nip to the loo. As seating was unreserved, it was going to be a small bonus to know I could nip out without disturbing the entire ceremony if needed. A cold November in a cathedral was not going to be the most comfortable with a bald head so I fashioned (quite well in my opinion) a headscarf to go with my outfit. As it happened, once we had left Chelsea to join her course friends and enter the cathedral with all the graduates, we went through the main entrance to find our allocated seats. When handing in our tickets to be shown which area we were heading for, a helpful member of university staff escorted us through the crowd, and as we kept walking and passed more and more empty seats, we realised we had been placed in the VIP section, on stage, amongst professors and only a few seats away from Giles Brandreth! Obviously, still waiting outside to enter the ceremony, Chelsea had no idea where we had been seated so I’ll let her explain how she came to realise where we were:

Luckily, I had noticed one of my uni pals only a couple of people in front of me when joining the graduate queue to get in, so she moved back, and we queued together. At the time her grandparents were making their way in through this entrance as it provided easier access, so she gave them a quick wave, and we got talking about wondering where our parents had ended up sitting. Sure enough, she saw her parents not long after we made our way into the main ceremony, but I still couldn’t see mine. Uni staff were eager to get us into our designated seats, as it happened mine was on the front row and I was reminded to smile as we would be on the live stream and recorded for the ceremony DVD. Little was I aware that as I sat down and looked up, there they were. Parents, Fiona and Conor all sat on the stage looking back at me – for fucks sake. What on earth are they doing there? Please tell me they haven’t sat there by mistake, as on the row in front I could see my lecturers and the Vice Chancellor of the uni. There’s me thinking the front row would shield me from seeing them as I walked up to collect my degree, I’d have been a drop in a very big ocean of graduation gowns which suited me just fine, no attention on me as I try and not trip up or something on my way up to the stage. But, NO! Instead I’m walking onto stage with Giles on the left, parents on the right still wondering how on earth they managed to make it there. If Mum thinks she can do double for my Masters graduation – she can do one!

The only way I can think to describe the event was like sitting in Hogwarts, surrounded by all of the professors and looking out to hundreds of black gowns and nervous faces. At this point Fiona nudged me to say, “fucking great this, you can wear that headscarf next time we go to a gig or event”. The one and only time I’d worn the headscarf, I came up trumps!