Emma was devastated when she went bald following her ectopic pregnancy and has since retrained as a cosmetic tattooist to help others with hair loss.
A teacher who went bald in less than a week has retrained as a cosmetic tattooist to help others cope with hair loss.
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Emma was devastated when she went bald following her ectopic pregnancy and has since retrained as a cosmetic tattooist to help others with hair loss.
Single mum Emma Holmes, 40, says that she has helped thousands of people dealing with alopecia, which she herself went through after a sudden hormone change caused by an ectopic pregnancy made all of her body hair fall out in just a few days.
As Emma explains, losing her hair was the worst ever period of her life and much of the work that she does now as a tattooist at Medicare Cosmetics in Redcar is to provide psychological and emotional support for people going through what she did.
She added: “For a woman, losing your hair is absolutely terrible. I know what you go through and it’s horrible, so now I want to help other people who are trying to deal with this as much as I can.”
Emma underwent keyhole surgery at the James Cooke University Hospital in Middlesbrough to have one of her fallopian tubes removed – a procedure which sadly cannot save the pregnancy – but just a couple of days later, while staying with her parents, Julie and George, both 64, she began to notice some very unexpected side effects.
“It was utterly terrifying,” said Emma, who at that time was working as a supply teacher at local primary schools. “My hair was just coming out in handfuls and I couldn’t stop it.”
“I never really got an answer,” said Emma. “The doctors just said that it was probably to do with a sudden change in my hormone levels after they removed my fallopian tube. Knowing that didn’t make it any better though.”
Emma at Medicare Cosmetics where she works as a tattoo technician (Collect/PA Real Life)
Single mum Emma Holmes, 40, says that she has helped thousands of people dealing with alopecia, which she herself went through after a sudden hormone change caused by an ectopic pregnancy made all of her body hair fall out in just a few days.
Describing her own experience of the rare hair loss condition as “terrifying”, Emma now works as a cosmetic and medical tattoo technician, tattooing on eyebrows for women who have also lost theirs to alopecia.
Emma with her son George (Collect/PA Real Life)
As Emma explains, losing her hair was the worst ever period of her life and much of the work that she does now as a tattooist at Medicare Cosmetics in Redcar is to provide psychological and emotional support for people going through what she did.
“When my hair started falling out I didn’t go out of the house for weeks and weeks,” said Emma, mum of four-year-old George.
“I just stayed at my parents’ home and cried quite literally non-stop, thinking to myself, ‘I’m not a bad person, I work hard and treat people kindly – so why has this happened to me?’”
Emma in 2011 as her hair began to grow back (Collect/PA Real Life)
She added: “For a woman, losing your hair is absolutely terrible. I know what you go through and it’s horrible, so now I want to help other people who are trying to deal with this as much as I can.”
For Emma, the onset of alopecia started when she discovered she was pregnant in June 2009, having never thought she could conceive following a burst appendix aged 16 which damaged her reproductive organs.
However, heavy bleeding indicated that all was not well, and Emma, from Redcar, North Yorkshire, was quickly diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy, a complication that affects roughly one in 80 pregnancies, when the embryo is fertilised outside the womb.
Emma with dad George at a wedding in 2006 (Collect/PA Real Life)
Emma underwent keyhole surgery at the James Cooke University Hospital in Middlesbrough to have one of her fallopian tubes removed – a procedure which sadly cannot save the pregnancy – but just a couple of days later, while staying with her parents, Julie and George, both 64, she began to notice some very unexpected side effects.
“It was my mum who realised first,” recalled Emma. “She looked over at me one day and noticed that there was hair all over my shoulders and on my jumper.
“I thought it seemed odd but didn’t think too much about it. Then I got into bath and that’s when I realised that something was terribly wrong.”
Washing her hair, Emma was horrified when large clumps of her long brown locks started coming out in her hands.
Emma in her Medicare tunic, 2018 (Emily Hunt/PA Real Life)
“It was utterly terrifying,” said Emma, who at that time was working as a supply teacher at local primary schools. “My hair was just coming out in handfuls and I couldn’t stop it.”
Emma’s hair loss carried on for the next few days until all of the hair on her body, including her eyebrows and eyelashes, was gone, leaving her head entirely bald.
“I have no words to describe how devastating that is. I was never the sort of person before who was particularly obsessive about my appearance – I’d wake up each morning, put on a bit of mascara and tie my hair up in a ponytail, and that was it,” she said.
“But from that day when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t see the same person.”
Emma was so shocked that she stopped working and didn’t leave the house for four weeks, except to visit the doctors to try to find out what was happening to her.
Blood tests were taken, but no definite answer could be given as to why her hair had fallen out so dramatically and in such a short space of time.
Emma's hair has grown back, but thinly (Collect/PA Real Life)
“I never really got an answer,” said Emma. “The doctors just said that it was probably to do with a sudden change in my hormone levels after they removed my fallopian tube. Knowing that didn’t make it any better though.”
Feeling embarrassed and self-conscious, with the thought that no man could ever want her looking the way she did, Emma broke up with her then boyfriend although he still wanted to continue the relationship.
The only place she felt safe was with her parents, without whom she says she thinks she wouldn’t have survived the ordeal.
“My mum and dad were wonderful,” explained Emma. “They were both devastated too, but they didn’t ever really show it. They were just there for me, and really took care of me when I needed it most.”
Emma in 2010, a year after her hair loss (Collect/PA Real Life)
But after a month of hiding away indoors Emma knew that it was time to come to terms with the cards life had dealt her.
After buying a brown synthetic wig, which she says she always wore with a hat for fear of it falling off, she found work as a nanny, looking after a six-month-old baby.
The experience was just what Emma needed to get back on her feet, as she says her employers, realising how vulnerable she still was, were incredibly kind to her, treating her as part of the family, helping to restore her confidence.
The occasional negative comment however, was a reminder of how fragile that confidence was, and though people were mostly very kind to her, it only took one comment to knock her back.
Emma recalled: “I remember someone once said something to me about the colour of my wig not suiting me. It was just a small throwaway comment but it sent me home crying.”
Surfing the internet obsessively for ways of dealing with her new baldness, Emma eventually stumbled across cosmetic tattooing, a technique which permanently pigments the skin, and in 2011 decided to have eyebrows tattooed where they had fallen out.
However, the tattooing was done so poorly that Emma was so upset she tried to wash it off when she got home.
“It was terrible and I cried and cried afterwards, thinking to myself, ‘I could do a better job than this,'” she said.
A natural do-gooder, Emma, who was now without full-time employment, realised that this could also be an opportunity for her to help others.
Retiring from her job as teacher for good, Emma enrolled on a six-month training course to become a tattoo technician in 2011 at the Finishing Touches school in West Sussex.
Since then she has treated thousands of people who come to her for a range of reasons , but who, like her, want something help restore their self-esteem.
Emma said: “My clients vary in age from 14 to mid-80s. They all have different stories as to why they come to me for help, but because I’ve been through it too I can sympathise and feel a solidarity with them.
Eating a fully organic diet and having scalp injections which push a steroid under the skin promoting hair growth, Emma’s hair has even started to grow back, albeit very finely, no longer requiring her to wear a wig and she says that now, after all those years of anguish, she finally feels comfortable in her own skin again.
She said. “I tell people who come to me for treatment, ‘You will survive this’. I hate the saying ‘time is the best healer’, but it’s really true – things do get better.”
