“Telling my mum to become horrible. I remember her coming domestic from work, and I stated, ‘mum, everything is high-quality, [but] my hair is starting to fall out.'”
Nic Cumpilido, 24, faced surgical operation, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy while preventing most cancers, but the resulting hair loss took its toll.
Welsh health board figures advise guys are ways less probably to get right of entry to hair-loss guide, offerings, or wigs in the course of treatment.
Cancer charity Maggie’s Centre stated they need to be extra routinely supplied to men and entreated men to be open-minded.
Nic, of Bridgend, was identified with a mind tumor in 2015 whilst reading at Swansea University and is now in remission.
He lost hair all through extraordinary stages of his treatment, and it has considering partially grown lower back, together with his surgery scars seen when it’s far cut brief.
“Losing my hair did have a large, vast impact on my self-assurance,” he stated.
“I felt chillier, no longer just bodily, emotionally as nicely.
“I felt any other massive thing become happening to me – to get used to. I just desired to be regular.”
However, Nic tried to preserve it in angle, trying to “observe the humorous aspect” of the exclusive hair loss levels.
That determination noticed him have some “fun” with specific hairstyles, along with a mohawk, a shaven head with beard stimulated through TV show Breaking Bad, and one with an asymmetrical factor.
However, hair loss bobbing up from illness or treatment changed into nevertheless a taboo among men.
“Even though guys don’t communicate approximately it, that says lots approximately how guys are dealing with it, which is not nice,” he stated.
“Men do not communicate approximately feelings plenty besides, so it makes sense they would not simply speak approximately hair.”
Figures from 4 of Wales’ seven neighborhood fitness forums show handiest 14 of the 1,601 sufferers who received wigs or hair home equipment at the NHS in 2018-19 were men – this is less than 1%.
Cardiff’s Velindre Cancer Centre said the variety of guys who get entry to so-called bloodless cap treatments changed into “very low.”
The treatment can save you hair loss via cooling a patient’s scalp in the course of chemotherapy.
Alun Rees, eighty-two, from Mumbles, Swansea, decided to apply it whilst receiving a remedy for prostate cancer.
He stated: “Generally, you observed, as you are getting older, you are going to lose your hair besides. It’s a slow, natural process.
“But if you’ve got an excellent head of hair, I suppose it boosts your confidence [to keep it].
“You’re nevertheless at a completely low ebb, having long past through that [chemotherapy] however, human beings say to you, ‘you look true,’ and it lifts you.”
Alun said it turned into the best chance that he heard approximately scalp cooling but hoped it would be promoted to more guys with most cancers.
However, he might now not have considered using a wig or a hairpiece because of the stigma.
“Men are quite bizarre approximately men who wear wigs. It’s a joke, isn’t always it?”
One issue that could affect men in another way to girls is losing body hair all through some treatments.
Sarah Hughes, of Maggie’s Centre in Swansea, stated that whilst hair loss was likely less of a difficulty for guys than women, it was still a “massive difficulty,” especially for a few younger sufferers.
She believes clinicians and support corporations could “be better” about supplying information but additionally urged men to be greater open-minded approximately the options.
She said: “It’s now not simply making those assumptions that guys are going to be ok with partial or overall hair loss; it’s giving them a choice too.”
