'I FELT TOO UGLY TO BE LOVED'
Baz fell in love with courageous Jemma
When her hair fell out, Jemma Thompson thought her life was over, but it was
just beginning
Getting ready for a girls' night out used to be simple for Jemma Thompson.
First she'd glide straighteners over her waist-length brown hair, then she'd apply serum to make it shine. A dash of lipgloss, and she was ready to go.
"I never felt the need for lots of make-up - if my hair looked right, I felt gorgeous," remembers Jemma, now 23.
Until, that is, her hair started to fall out. One morning she noticed a bald patch the size of a 5p piece on the crown of her head. At first she thought nothing of it, but just a week later, while she was drying her hair, she noticed the patch had grown to the size of a golf ball.
Single and living with three friends in a rented flat in Leicester, she confided in her flatmates. When they said they couldn't really see anything and that it was probably nothing, Jemma tried to feel reassured. She hoped it was just a phase and that her hair would grow back again, but it didn't. Soon, no matter how she styled her hair, the bald patch was always visible, so she bought a bandana to hide it.
Jemma worked as an office temp - and each time she started at a new company, people stared at her bandana.
"Everyone was nice but I felt like such a freak - and looked like one too," she says. "It was mortifying."
Three months after she found the bald patch, Jemma woke to find her pillow covered in hair. She ran to the bathroom, stared in the mirror and screamed.
"My scalp was bald - I just had a few strands of hair left. I was horrified by my reflection. I didn't look like me - I looked hideous. I burst into tears," she recalls.
Terrified she was seriously ill, Jemma rang her mum, who lived nearby. "I hadn't mentioned anything to Mum before, but she'd suspected something was wrong. When she saw me totally bald she started crying too," she says. Together they visited Jemma's GP who diagnosed her with alopecia areata.
He explained that the condition - which also affects TV presenter Gail Porter, 38 - is an autoimmune deficiency that confuses the body into attacking its hair follicles.
"I sat staring at my doctor as he explained my eyebrows and eyelashes would fall out too. I'd be left totally hairless. As my mum reached for my hand and squeezed it, she was quietly sobbing," says Jemma.
The GP prescribed some steroids to stimulate hair growth, but advised her there was no cure.
Back home she ran to her bedroom, locked herself in and cried for hours.
With the support of her mum and friends, Jemma tried to carry on as normal. But within a few weeks the steroid treatment aggravated her scalp, triggering angry red sores. So she stopped going to work. In fact, she stopped going out at all. "I was sure people were talking about me and staring. I already felt like a freak as it was," she says.
She dismissed her family's concerns and spent her days slobbing about in jogging bottoms and oversized T-shirts watching daytime TV. Depression started to take hold and the outside world soon seemed like a very scary place.
"Occasionally I reached up to tie my hair into a ponytail like I used to, then my fingers touched my bare scalp and I'd flinch. Sometimes I couldn't hold back the tears," she says.
Jemma refused pleas from her flatmates to join them¿ on nights out. She went back to see her GP, who prescribed antidepressants. "It sounds trivial, but my hair was what made me feel attractive. Without it, I felt ugly, like I'd been stripped of everything it meant to be a woman."
Her parents, although divorced, both supported her. "My dad would drive down from Derby and take me to McDonald's for a coffee - but knowing I couldn't bear to be in public, we'd go to the drive-through. And Mum was always calling round, but I'd refuse to go anywhere, which upset her."
On the rare occasions she did go out, people stared. "Once, at the supermarket, a little boy pointed at me and asked his mum: 'Is that lady going to die of cancer, Mummy?'"
Jemma dropped her shopping, ran to her car, drove home and slammed the front door behind her, deciding she couldn't face the world any more.
So she used the internet to do her shopping, spoke to friends on email or over the phone, and stayed inside where no one could see her. "I felt safe that way," she admits.
Days turned into weeks, but sometimes she would venture out for a drive in her car. "I was outside, but hidden inside the car, so no one could stare at me," she says.
On one of her drives, her battered grey Peugeot ground to a halt on a busy street. "I was petrified of having to ask a stranger for help or calling a garage and being stared at by the mechanics," Jemma says quietly.
She grabbed her mobile and scrolled through the numbers in her contacts, stopping at Barry Cram, known to friends as Baz. He was an HGV driver who she'd met a few times on nights out with friends before she'd lost her hair. Knowing he lived nearby, a desperate Jemma called him. "I told him what had happened," she remembers. He arrived 15 minutes later, called a mechanic, then drove Jemma home.
"I asked him in for coffee - it was the least I could do," she says. She couldn't help noticing he was gorgeous, with piercing blue eyes and a lovely smile. "I didn't think any guy would ever look twice at me. I mean, why would they?"
Baz didn't ask why she had a scarf around her head, but listened as she confided in him how lonely and unhappy she was, then promised he'd call her the following day.
He did - and from then on became a regular visitor to her flat. "We'd sit on the sofa watching TV and, for the first time in ages, I heard myself giggling and having fun," says Jemma.
Having Baz around made her feel more able to cope. Then a few months later, Jemma was showering when she realised her body hair had disappeared. As she checked herself in the mirror, she saw that most of her eyelashes and the hair in her eyebrows had gone too.
Later, when Baz arrived, Jemma tried to muster a fake smile, but then decided to come clean.
"I pointed to my naked eyes and he shrugged and said: 'Yeah, I know' And then I tried to tell him I had alopecia, but couldn't get the words out and ended up sobbing, so I just pulled my bandana off and stood before him, bald.
"He didn't bat an eyelid. He just smiled and said: 'So what?' Then he leaned in and kissed me. He said he'd been dying to do that for ages. I couldn't stop smiling."
When he asked her out on a date, she accepted. "We went to a safari park, so I could feel safe in the car," she says. "But with him I stopped worrying about whether people were staring. I just didn't care."
And when they fell into bed for the first time, Jemma felt confident that he loved her just how she was, and any nerves simply evaporated.
Baz's love also gave her the boost she needed to make an appointment with a wig specialist on the NHS.
"I put one on that was dark brown like my hair used to be, but I was so pale, I looked like Morticia Addams! Instead I went for a graduated blonde bob and loved it."
Newly confident, she arranged to meet some friends in her local - her first social outing in a year. "I was nervous, but as soon as I arrived all my friends smiled and came to talk to me. I was laughing and cracking jokes like old times."
Eight months later she and Baz moved in together and Jemma went back to work, too. In April, after three years together, Baz proposed with an antique solitaire diamond ring. The couple are now saving for their wedding day, planned for next summer.
"When I lost my hair, I thought no one would look at me again," says Jemma. "But Baz showed me I was still a beautiful, desirable woman. I never thought I could be this happy!"
Baz, 27, says: "When I first met Jemma, I thought she was attractive but never really had the courage to do anything about it. When our paths crossed again, I didn't know anything about her alopecia. When she showed me her bald head for the first time, I didn't really take it in because I was so moved by her decision to do it. I just looked at her eyes and saw her vulnerability and courage, and fell in love with her on the spot. Her hair loss doesn't bother me at all. I love her to pieces and I know she'll look amazing on our wedding day."
PHOTOGRAPHY: SYRIOL JONES HAIR & MAKE-UP: CAROL MAYE AT NEMESIS JEMMA WEARS: CARDIGAN, ASOS; JEANS, DOROTHY PERKINS BAZ WEARS: SHIRT AND JEANS, BOTH BURTON JEMMA WEARS: DRESS, NEW LOOK
This article has 3 comments
I know how jemma feels I lost all my hair 20 yrs ago
all the hair on my body went within 2 weeks it was terrible but with the help of my family and friends
i did cope I sometimes wear a wig but not very often ,after about 13 yrs i did get my eyebrows
and eyelashes back also my pubic hair but not on
my legs or underarms (bit of luck there )I wear head scarves all the time all are different colours
and I am told they look great.I wish Jemma all the
best she is very brave to go bare .thats the one thing I cant do .only at home of course.
regards Maria .......
By mrs.maria fowle. Posted June 10 2009 at 8:22 PM.
my 9 year old son has alopecia areata , he just has a few strands of hair left , no eyelashes and half of his eyebrows . He found this really difficult when it started with people staring and kids telling him he had cancer . One night he asked me if the next stage was death , i had to hold back the tears and explain to him again that he was not going to die. He now doesnt let it bother him his class mates now know what it is and have stopped asking questions , he goes to boys brigade and ice skating and i think everyone just accepts him now .Sometimes its more me when i hear strangers talking about him , but i try not to say anything as he is stonger than me .The doctor said it should grow back in time ,we wait paciently and hope it does .We are very proud of him as this was a magor change in his life, what a boy .
By maryellen. Posted June 7 2009 at 9:19 PM.
What a very couragous young lady who has came through such a soul destroying time and beaten it...I wish her all the happiness with her husband to be xxx
By Fotoronic. Posted June 6 2009 at 10:46 PM.