Wick mum with cancer to have hair shaved off for children’s charity
A Wick mum is determined to create something positive from her cancer diagnosis – by having her hair shaved off and gifting it to a charity that makes wigs for sick children.
Sarah Scollay (42) is due to start chemotherapy this week and she admits: “I know it’s going to be rough.”
Rather than allow her long blonde hair to fall out gradually as the treatment for cervical cancer takes effect, Sarah has arranged for her friend Kirsty Newlands, a barber, to cut it off.
Sarah will then donate it to the Little Princess Trust, a charity that provides free real hair wigs to children and young people who have lost their own hair through cancer treatment or other conditions.
Meanwhile, Sarah is running a GoFundMe page with donations to be shared equally between two causes that are close to her heart: Encompass Caithness and the Wick Youth Club sensory room.
Sarah is chairperson of Encompass, the pressure group campaigning for new and improved social care services for people with autism, neurodivergent conditions and additional support needs. She has two children who are both on the autistic spectrum.
She has already raised £1240, exceeding her initial £1000 target.
Her first six weeks of chemotherapy will be at Caithness General Hospital.
“It’s the really strong one I’m getting and that’s why I’m going to be losing my hair,” Sarah said.
“My hair is always immaculate. I always have my hair nice – you’ll never see me with a bad hair day!
“I’ve purchased a lot of wigs because obviously I don’t want to scare my kids. I want to look as normal as I can.
“I got upset about it when the oncologist told me that I’m going to lose my hair, my eyebrows and eyelashes. I thought, what’s one way I can control this?
“I was speaking to my friends about it and they said it’s going to be worse if you just let it gradually come out. I said, well, what can I do to make it more of a positive experience rather than all doom and gloom?”
Kirsty is due to travel up from Fife to shave off Sarah’s hair at the weekend.
“You don’t start to lose your hair until week two or three,” Sarah explained.
“It’s not going to be easy, but at least I know that my hair will be turned into wigs for children with cancer. There are synthetic wigs as well, but it’s nicer to have human hair – it just feels more real.
“There’s so much you can do to disguise it. I don’t want to look ill when I am ill, because I think it makes people gasp in shock.
“Because I’m somebody who wears makeup and my hair is always done, I don’t want to look completely different.
“You can get eyelashes, you can even get eyebrow stencils – you can draw them in. I’m going to do all of that.
“The first thing is acceptance. There is shock to start with, and you get upset, and then it’s, well… this is going to happen regardless, so what can I do to make it more positive?
“Being told you’ve got cancer is one of the easiest parts of it. It’s the process after that when it gets worse.
“You have to get a biopsy to tell you what type of cancer it is, then you have to get an MRI to see if they think it’s spreading, then you have to get a PET scan… You’re waiting for results every week, you’re waiting for that phone call.
“The easiest part of this was the start, when they told me I had cancer. Until you’re going through the process it’s like mental turmoil every week up until they tell you your treatment plan.
“They will tell you your survival rate if you want. I said I don’t want to know my survival rate, I just want to know can you help me?
“What they said to me is we’re going for a cure – so that, to me, is positive.
“It’s horrible getting told you’ve got cancer. Even though people in my family have had cancer, I was so naïve about the bits in between that are much worse than the initial diagnosis.
“I know it’s going to be rough. Obviously you have doubts, because they say they’re going for a cure but then they say they can’t guarantee it.”
Sarah is full of praise for the support she has had from the NHS and Macmillan Cancer Support.
She pointed out: “The Macmillan nurse said you can’t guarantee anything in life. But she said the NHS wouldn’t spend all this money putting you through this extensive treatment unless they thought that this was going to be successful.
“That gives me hope. It’s worrying because it’s the unknown.
“Some people it affects differently. I know there’s a lot of tiredness. Right now I’m tired all the time and that was one of the symptoms that I had, constant fatigue.
“I have to say the NHS has been amazing. They’ve been consistent and somebody is always on the phone, because I’m going to have to get radium as well, and brachytherapy treatment after that.
“They’re hitting me with everything to make sure I come out this the other side.
“And the Macmillan nurses are so empathetic, they understand what you’re going through. You have moments where you’re wanting to speak to somebody, you’re wanting a pick-me-up.
“I don’t want to dwell on the negative. You need to have a strong mindset to get through something like this, because it’s going to be tough on you mentally and physically.
“You have to try as much as you can to be more positive, and that’s kind of the approach I have to life now.”
When her continuing treatment requires her to spend time at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, Sarah plans to make use of the nearby Maggie’s Highlands cancer care centre.
“One of the courses they run is managing hair loss,” Sarah said. “It’s a big thing for the majority of women, to lose your hair.
“It’s not the be-all and end-all, because you’d take your life over that any day of the week – but for women it tends to be a bit more difficult, I think.”
Sarah is aware that she may need to scale back her Encompass Caithness commitments as her treatment progresses.
“Annemarie [Simpson] is the vice-chair and she is very good,” Sarah said. “She is driven and passionate and she does a lot already.
“We all do a lot in Encompass and we did so much fundraising over the summer.
“I’ll play it by ear. If I feel all right I’ll go and do things, but apparently this chemo is quite hard on your body.
“They’ve pre-warned me this is going to be pretty brutal, so I’m not going to do things that I can’t manage. I’m going to take a back seat to a certain extent, but we have a lot of things going on over the next few months and I would like to be still involved to a certain degree.
“Encompass has been a big thing for us over the last year.”
Sarah is grateful for the donations that have been made on her fundraising page.
“Wick has got a community spirit,” she said. “If something is going on in somebody’s life, the community does get together and help. People are so kind.”
