Love made me hairy!
Hayley and Don
Monday 11th February 2008
It was a new start. A time to make friends and experience adult life. I'd just started at the University of Nottingham, reading Modern Languages, and it should have been the time of my life.
But instead, I was terrified of what people would think of me — the girl in the bandanna.
Everywhere I went, people would stare.
'She must have cancer,' I'd hear them whisper.
But I didn't have cancer. I'd had alopecia since I was 13.
Back in 2001, when me and my sister, Nikki, then 12, were playing hairdressers, my mum, Sheila, 34, had combed my shoulder-length hair and gasped.
'Your hair, sweetheart,' she said. 'It's falling out in patches!'
I spent a sleepless night, crying and feeling the bald patches. And the next morning, the doctor confirmed Mum's fears. I had alopecia.
Over the next few weeks, I watched in horror as the rest of my hair fell out.
'Don't expect it to come back,' the doctor told me afterwards.
Those next few years were terrible. While my friends were enjoying their first kisses, I was hiding behind a cap or bandanna.
'I'm hideous,' I'd weep.
By the time I was 16, though, I was determined not to let my baldness bring me down, and
I started volunteering at the local Alopecia Areata Support Network, helping other kids come to terms with losing their hair.
So now, starting uni, I should have felt full of confidence. But my lack of hair still nagged at me. People see a bald head, not a person, I thought. But the students in my hall voted me Week One Rep and my confidence soared.
Soon, I left my room without my bandanna and even had dinner with my mates without it on. No one seemed to care. So I stopped wearing it altogether. A year later, I went to Madrid for a year to improve my Spanish. Within a week, I'd met an Englishman in a bar. His name was Don Timson, he was 35, and wasn't bothered about me being bald.
We liked each other immediately, then the strangest thing began to happen. I felt a soft, downy fluff on my head. Then, fine, brown hair began to push though.
'My hair's growing!' I yelled to Don, just weeks after we met.
'My love's making it grow,' he beamed.
Three months on, it's still growing, but doctors have warned it could fall out again. I don't know whether it's the sun, sangria, or Don. But even if it's a case of 'hair today, gone tomorrow', I'm going to make the most of it while I can.
For support and information on alopecia, visit www.alopeciaareatasupport.co.uk.