cancertrial

Being the first person in my country to opt for the clinical trial is both quite cool and strange. I like that I felt brave enough to go full steam ahead trusting the scientists, Cancer Research UK, my medical team, NHS and the phase 2 findings of the trial but I was also intrigued into why no one else had jumped at the chance to do the trials either, yes they did in England, Scotland and Wales, but not in Northern Ireland until me.

“Other people have said no for various reasons, such as being in the middle of moving house so they didn’t want treatments to interfere with that, giving no reason but mainly losing the hair.”

This made me so sad to hear. The pressures us ladies put ourselves under for our appearances here at this junction was making it unbearable to making a health decision. And I know what this was like! When I first heard I would lose my hair if I did this trial which may or may not benefit me I was like ‘Hell No!’ but now to really think about it and weigh out all the pros and cons I would tell the next person, do the trial. Losing my hair is not the worst that is going to happen. The worst has happened, I got cancer, what would really be a kick in the teeth is having it again. The trials at least target this.

So I want to encourage other women to be brave and not let the loss of hair be the reason why they wouldn’t want to be part of this trial, having this extra chemo and possibly making their treatments more effective.

Making the decision to do the trial and thus lose my hair was best experienced AFTER I had made the decision. Like most hard decisions, it’s the making it that’s the hard part. Once you make a decision, the dust settles, you can see forward. So once I had decided to do the trial, knowing the loss of hair was going to be a part of that, I had clarity, I felt good, I was happy because I was relieved I saw a path infront of me.

What I did first was to look at how cool other people can look with a skinhead: