Hair treatment 'brought my sparkle back' after cancer

A breast cancer survivor who said she lost her "identity overnight" after treatment, said specialist hair extensions had brought her "sparkle back".

Laura Rush was diagnosed in December 2024 at the age of 36 and underwent months of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiotherapy, before being given the all-clear.

But while she was "truly grateful" for the outcome, she said life after cancer had been emotionally challenging.

During treatment Laura lost her hair, her eyebrows and eyelashes, leaving her feeling like "a shell of myself".

"I literally lost my identity overnight and I lost everything about myself that I knew," she said.

She said getting through the treatment was one battle, but while the cancer was gone, so too was her sense of identity.

She said: "You do feel a sense of your kind of womanhood just slipping away really."

"I was ready to get back to me again, but my image and my body and everything wasn't there with it," she explained.

She said wigs left her feeling "like a fraud", while turbans made her feel self-conscious in public.

Then one day Laura came across a woman on social media who had alopecia and had undergone a specialist hair treatment despite having very little hair.

"I thought gosh, you know, I wonder if there's someone over here that would be able to do something similar with mine," she said.

She contacted hair extension specialist Taylor Keig, who retrained to create extensions suitable for fragile post-treatment hair.

"When she told me a bit of what she'd gone through I thought I've got to do something," she said.

For Laura, it marked a turning point.

"I remember when I first walked in and I had the beanie on and I wasn't smiling like this," she said.

"I would say I was a bit of a shell of myself. I definitely wasn't how I am today."

She said the change had brought back a part of herself she feared she had lost.

"It genuinely has bought me some happiness, that might sound trivial to some people, but it really has just given me my sparkle back that I feel was robbed from me," she said.

Taylor said hair loss following illness could have a major effect on confidence.

"Hair is such a big part of a woman's identity and when it goes, it just gets people down," she said.

Laura said the experience had changed her outlook on life, but urged women to regularly check for signs of breast cancer after discovering her own lump by accident.

"One thing I do want people to do is to please check," she said. "I wasn't checking and I just happened to be in the shower and I accidentally felt the lump."

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