Tania Steere
TEN years after she began losing her hair, Sarah Ford had resigned herself to a life of wearing headscarves to hide her alopecia.
But to her shock and delight, a course of steroids she was prescribed for a chest infection had an unexpected side effect – her hair began to grow back.
Ford, 26, began losing patches of hair due to stress when she was 15.
By the age of 20 she was completely bald, and by the age of 22 had lost all the hair on her body, including her eyelashes and eyebrows.
She had never tried any treatments, as an alopecia specialist had told her they were a waste of time.
But when she went to the doctor in April last year with a chest infection, she was prescribed a short-term course of high-dose steroids and within weeks her hair follicles were starting to re-grow.
Ford, a stay-at-home mother to her two children, said: “I was so excited but I didn’t know if it was going to stay. It looked as if someone had shaved my head when it was starting to come through.
“I’ve got a full head of hair now. I don’t have to think about how people will react or what scarf I will have to wear.”
Ford, from Swansea, said she was tormented by school bullies as a result of her hair loss, adding: “I was devastated when it started to go patchy – at that age all you think about is hair and make-up.”
Her confidence plummeted, and she spent nearly a decade refusing to go out without a scarf tied around her head. She said: “People would look at me and think I had cancer.
“A woman even stopped me in the street and asked me what type of cancer I had because she’d had cancer. People just assume.”
Ford married her husband Neil, 31, four years ago wearing a specially-made headdress.
Now celebrating her renewed confidence, she said: “I am getting used to going out without a scarf on. It had become a kind of security and it was very weird going out without it for the first time. I want people with alopecia to know there is the possibility of your hair growing back even when you have been bald for years, and to look into all the options.’
Ford was told she could not continue taking the steroids, even at a low dose, as they can have serious side effects such as muscle weakness and osteoporosis if taken for too long. But she remains hopeful that her miraculous head of hair is here to stay. – Daily Mail