Apologies for not uploading anything sooner, to be honest it’s because I haven’t had much cancerous stuff to talk about over the last year (which is a good thing!) but I wanted to make a video which focused on something which, although a key “feature” in a person’s cancer journey during treatment, also continues to be a significant component of a patient’s recovery…the hair!

It’s the most obvious thing that people point out to you during and after treatment; how good you look as a baldy, how soft the little squiggly bits are, how jealous they are of your super soft angel curls, the list goes on! It can be a visual way of representing where you’re at in your journey….which can be irritating sometimes, especially when you’re not taken seriously with the whole “the chemo can’t be that bad, you still have hair”, or worse “your cancer can’t be that bad, you STILL have hair” comments… but on the other side of treatment, to hear “oh wow your hair is getting so long!” and “look at your hair, you look so healthy!” can be so uplifting 😀

My hair started growing back on 5th April 2012 after my auto-graft stem cell transplant 2 months earlier, and since then I haven’t had a single hair cut until now, 3 years later! I felt that getting my hair cut before then would be like cutting away the progress; that every extra millimeter of growth meant another extra leap further away from being ill. It sounds silly and I was actually getting fed up of having such a long, frizzy, split ended mess of a mop, but I just kept letting it grow.

It came back curly, but before I was diagnosed my hair was only very slightly wavy. I thought the curls might straighten out as the hair got older and heavier from the added growth but I was wrong! It looks like the curls may have stopped as my hair is quite straight until about half way down now, but again that might be due to it being weighed down…I guess we shall see after the cut!

Either way, my hair is still SO SOFT as it is essentially brand new hair, I haven’t dyed it, I don’t blow dry or straighten it very often at all and I drown it in conditioner…so that’s a plus!

For those who are interested in how long it will take for their hair to grow back, my hair after 3 years with no hair cut was 45 cm (18 inches) long! This is about average according to the internet, which says hair grows about 15 cm a year. I’m sure other factors would affect growth speed such as climate (my hair grows faster in summer, which doesn’t last long in the UK!), diet, medication, products and things like using hair dye or a lot of heat styling, but roughly 3 years of growth will result in hair which is past the shoulders 🙂

I got it cut last week and I’m glad I did, finally my hair has a style rather than ridiculous layers from each hair being the exact same length, and the split ends are gone so it looks less messy, yay!

If you’re interested in donating your hair or learning more about the Little Princess Trust, check them out here:

http://www.littleprincesses.org.uk/

Hope everyone is doing well, keep me posted on where you’re at in your cancer journey 🙂

Lots of love!!

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