What they would see.

Go to Google. Type in “cancer patient.”

Click Images. What do you see?

Now imagine you’re walking down the street.

You pass a woman in a cotton headscarf, not a single curl of hair in sight.

What’s the first thought that flashes through your mind?

When you picture cancer, what do you see first - the chemo? The pain? The hospital bed?

Or the hair that’s no longer there?

If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll know it’s the hair – or lack of it – because that’s the image we’ve been taught to see.

At first, it wasn’t something I worried about – a distant thought, really. But then again, in a few short days, I’d already been bombarded with so many changes and choices to make that there wasn’t the mental capacity to deal with any more. 

But once chemo started, the brutal reality of it all would soon follow. In just a few short weeks,  I’d be staring into a mirror, facing a version of myself I didn’t recognise.

A version I’d only ever seen in movies or charity campaigns. Never in my own life.

I was never especially precious about my hair growing up.

Grown-ups would tell me to embrace it. Teenage boys would tease and taunt me for it.

The joys of being a redhead. The joys of being a “ginger.”

It’s not that I was ever ashamed of the colour of my hair. Far from it.

It was part of me. Something that made me stand out.

I was just never one of those girls who spent hours curling and twirling, making sure every strand sat just right. Even now, I’ve accepted that my hair is forever unruly – and honestly, I’ve made peace with that. For the most part!

Of course, once you leave your school days behind you, you start to love yourself a little more.

No more playground bullies. No more piercing comments. Just normal people, growing up and not giving a shit what colour your hair is or isn’t.

And that’s how it should be.

It’s only hair, right? What’s the big deal?

Well… As I would come to realise, I loved my hair more than I thought.

Its stubborn flicks and waves. Its bright copper glow.

It was mine. And it mattered.

It set me apart. It expressed who I was. It told people something about me before I ever spoke.

It was my identity. My signature. My label.

And losing it meant gaining a new one – whether I wanted it or not.

As the weeks passed after my first infusions of chemo, the moment I’d been dreading crept closer.

It started slow at first – a few strands here, a couple of small clumps there. Nothing dramatic. Nothing I couldn’t pretend wasn’t happening.

Then, one morning, everything came apart in the shower.

I had been so weak from the treatment that mum had started helping me wash – including shampooing my hair, while I still had it.

But on this particular morning, I knew something was wrong.

I was sitting on the little shower seat while my mum gently massaged my scalp with the kids’ shampoo I’d been told to use.

Seriously – a 23-year-old being washed like a toddler, using baby bubbles because adult products were suddenly too harsh for my skin. What had my life become? I even had to use a kid-friendly toothbrush.

But then Mum’s expression shifted, and her eyes dropped to the floor.

I couldn’t see what she was looking at – but I didn’t have to.

And although she didn’t want me to see, I turned anyway.

There – tangled in a mess of soapy water – my hair lay in matted clumps. Slipping down the drain like it didn’t belong to me anymore. Even when I’d dried off and she tried to brush it through, each stroke took more of it, and that’s when I knew it was time.

As always, the nurses were incredible.

My parents, brother, and Ben were nervous, quiet, unsure of what to say.

And I simply sat in the middle of the room, fearing the sound of the razor.

I knew it had to go. I couldn’t keep waking up with hair in my mouth, on the pillow, stuck to my clothes, tangled in the sheets – everywhere but on my head.

But knowing didn’t make it easier.

As I watched it fall around me, it all became real – because apparently the chemo, the transfusions, the pills, the nausea, and all the relentless emotions weren’t already enough to prove I had cancer.

But this… this was different.

This was the moment I became the image people picture when they hear the word. That woman on the street in her soft cotton hat.

This was the moment cancer wasn’t just inside me anymore.

Now, you could see it.