A moment that changed me: I lost my hair to cancer – and the trauma taught me an essential lesson

I found being bald truly distressing. But losing a vital part of my armour for that long year gave me a whole new perspective

There are certain things in life we take for granted. We don’t question them. I may not have always enjoyed “good hair days”, but I always had a big head of hair. I never succumbed to tweakments, fillers or Botox to try to hold back the ravages of time. It was my hair on which I lavished time, attention and money. I could rely on it to perform. When I was working, I would swizzle it up off my face, with a bull clip, then let it down at night if I was going out. It was well behaved and, without sounding vain, I thought of it as my crowning glory.

I am slightly embarrassed to admit that, when I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in November 2020, at 61, two days before England entered its second lockdown, one of the first questions I asked my oncologist was: “Will the chemo make me lose my hair?” His reply was: “Yes.” And he wasn’t lying. Within 10 days of completing my first round of chemo, I woke up one morning to discover my sleek mane had morphed into a crazy bird’s nest: matted, tangled and sticking out from my skull like a huge, wispy halo.