Be inspired by raised awareness and a brave attitude

Inspiration can come from where you least expect it.

Inspiration for women can come from all sorts of places. Recently, Angelina Jolie has received a lot of positive attention from the media for her choice to have a preventative double mastectomy, due to her higher-than-average chance of breast and ovarian cancer. She stated that she publicised her decision because the testing and treatment she could access needs to be made available to more women across the world. Angelina’s actions are very commendable, as with the resources available to her, no-one would have ever needed to know.

Alongside the glamour and glitz of Hollywood, women can also be inspired this summer by a slightly more humble location; Yorkshire. Soap operas have often been a medium through which the British public has come into contact with a variety of disadvantages, disabilities, illnesses and oddities; their innate voyeurism is one of their keys to success.

Over the last few months, Emmerdale has featured the storyline of Brenda Walker’s brain tumour. Amongst the other trials and tribulations that come with such a horrible illness, Brenda begins to lose her hair due to the treatment she’s receiving. The soap manages to capture the grief associated with hair loss, and also highlights some other consequences which are likely to be overlooked by people without the problem. For example, Brenda stops sharing a bed with her partner so that he isn’t exposed to the handfuls of hair left on her pillow each morning.

Lesley Dunlop, the actress who plays Brenda, goes into a little bit more detail about how the character is feeling about the hair loss. “When it comes to the illness itself, she’s feeling positive.” However, in terms of her reaction to the hair loss, “She’s not feeling very good, really.”

Eventually, Brenda elects to shave her head. “…she prefers it to feeling ragged and unkempt. It’s sad for Brenda when she sees the bald patches…” In the true tradition of method acting, when the script calls for Brenda to enlist the help of Gennie to do the actual head shaving, actresses Lesley Dunlop (Brenda) and Sian Reese-Williams (Gennie) really go for it – the scene which aired shows Sian genuinely shaving off Lesley’s hair.

Lesley says, “I felt that it was the least I could do for all the people who don’t have a choice, really, and I felt absolutely fine about it. I did embrace it, actually.”

“I get lots of comments from people who have brain cancer or people saying, ‘Well done Emmerdale for doing this storyline and highlighting it’. It’s one of the highest killers of young people, which I had no idea about, but it’s also one of the lowest funded of all the cancer research charities. It only gets 0.7% of the funding, so it’s raising the profile of it.”

Raising the profile and awareness of lesser known deadly illnesses is an important crusade, and what Lesley says about brain tumours being a high killer of young people is certainly true. They are the second most common group of cancers in the under 15 age bracket, accounting for 27% of all childhood cancers. They are also the most common cause of childhood, teenage, and young adult death from cancer.

For those people who do make it through the cancer, returning to day-to-day normalcy is often all that they want. Getting things back to normal at work or school, at home, and with friends can be challenging though, when there’s a big reminder of the illness right there on top of your head – hair lost to chemotherapy often takes six months or more to grow back, and with radiotherapy, it may be the case that the hair never regrows.

Hairoom specialises in providing wigs and hair pieces to people who have lost their hair due to an illness, such as through cancer treatment. Our experts are trained to provide all the care and support needed, and will listen and respond to your individual requirements. Consultations are free and confidential, so get in touch with us today and take your first step on the road to looking and feeling like yourself again.