«I woke up one morning and I no longer had a hair on my head. I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize myself: “Who is this person?”, “What happened to me?”. Within three days I no longer had a hair on my entire body: nor eyelashes or eyebrows. A shock. From that moment on, nothing was the same as before». Laura Aprati, Rai journalist, tells La Repubblica about the experience that changed her life. One morning she woke up and had no hair then within a few days, she lost all her hair including eyelashes and eyebrows, due to total alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that affects 0.2% of the world’s population .
Laura Aprati, tells her drama
It was 2013 when it all started. «As dramatic and painful as it may be, when you are diagnosed with cancer you already know what the side effects of chemotherapy could be and you have time to prepare yourself psychologically for hair loss. But I didn’t know anything, I was confused, and even the doctors I turned to were perplexed». Now the journalist, whose hair has grown back thanks to a treatment, has decided to tell everything to send a message of hope for the many who suffer from this pathology, but his is also a complaint.
The illness
«My alopecia was the consequence of fibromyalgia, but it was the baldness that weighed on me the most from a psychological point of view: you have to go to work, attend meetings, but it’s no longer you. The external appearance is crucial in relationships with others, even more so if you are precarious: illness puts you in a corner». The journalist decided to buy a wig: «Hor discovered an unknown world: the hair market, where people profit from weakness and fragility. An adhesive wig could cost more than 2000 euros and two were needed for maintenance».
Then the complaint
So Laura’s complaint is towards the lack of adequate support from the National Health Service pushed Laura to ask for greater sensitivity towards alopecia: «There is a lot of speculation surrounding wigs. Human hair is purchased for very little money, but in the shop it costs a fortune. Synthetic wigs are cheaper, but if you wear them and it’s hot it’s like having a plastic hat on your head».
«I am a journalist and my job also involves appearing on video, so I “made do”. On TV the image is substantial. I know, there is the case of Silvia Motta, the TV Talk host who presents serenely with a turban, has alopecia like Jada Pinkett Smith, Willy Smith’s wife, who in an interview spoke about the difficulty of acceptance of his condition. Everyone deals with the disease in their own way, but I felt fragile, I didn’t feel like it, so I constantly changed my look: I wore short wigs, then curly, wavy, straight. Varying helped me»
Therapy
Now Laura’s life has changed thanks to a therapeutic journey with Professor Alfredo Rossi: «I was lucky to have doctor friends who helped me. Thanks to them, I was able to access a new drug from the United States. I started the treatment last year and have seen a great improvement. In a couple of months I will be able to take off the wig and my eyelashes have already grown back». The journalist is now fighting for this disease to be recognized by the Health Service and to make it known that a cure exists. When tackling the journey, Aprati underlines the importance of the right mental attitude: «Alopecia is invasive especially in the mind, if you are not strong enough it overwhelms you. The disease defines you, but if you laugh, it may not be over yet, but you are definitely close».
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The messenger
