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You’re listening to the Cornwall Cancer Cafe podcast so it’s Matthew and Emma here again to support you. Hello

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Thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund for supporting this podcast. So here we are talking about

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various things to do with cancer support and

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I’m gonna start the show off with this this hug thing big hugs big hugs to give a hug you get a hug and

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Also the important message that I am not a doctor or a consultant

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Nor am I nor am I just get that one in as well. Yeah, I’m not a psychologist. Are you no? No, are you a counselor?

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No, are you no?

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So what why are we here because we’ve lived with cancer. Yes, we’ve got both got lived experience

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So that’s the way we are talking about it

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We’re going from lived experience point of view and

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how important support is there’s all sorts of different types of support out there and

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Sometimes that support comes in the form of just looking after

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Your body during treatment and after treatment because I know that when I went through chemotherapy

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My skin did horrendous things nails fell apart

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And neuropathy I couldn’t feel my fingers balls of my feet my hair fell out it was horrendous

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So we’re gonna talk a bit about looking good and feeling better this week

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Did you?

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Have worries during treatment

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Not really because I was just focused on getting better

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and I thought you know

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I’m just gonna take whatever it is and then I looked at the side effects and

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Actually, does it matter what the side effects are because it’s more important that you’re feeling better at the end if you know what?

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I mean, but there are side effects and as you’ve mentioned, I mean you had horrendous ones. You must have looked really pretty

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We like well, I’ve never looked pretty

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With me I noticed the difference in my skin and my hair. So

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But a lot of the ladies obviously being a lady myself

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So I’m in a lot of groups that are ladies only and a lot of the ladies are dealing with breast cancer or ovarian cancer

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And I’ve had various different therapies that meant that they’ve they’ve lost their hair. They’ve lost their eyebrows the eyelashes

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their skins gone

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Very thin or very dry and they’ve lost all of their confidence and and it’s it’s a big sort of

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Emotional thing and when we were talking to the chair of the

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Cornwall lymphoma support group Mick Howell the other week you made a note about emotional

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yeah, I did I made it so he was talking about being a rough-to-tough defiamin and

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then he was diagnosed with cancer and

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It made him face his mortality

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whereas he hadn’t really thought about it as a fireman and he talked about having a lump in his throat emotionally and

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He said that he’s he now cries at commercials and I wrote down about emotion and the fact that sometimes you absolutely shut off your emotions

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But also your emotions can become

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More intense hyper if you like and I think we get a mix of both

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So I think in some ways you you do turn off your emotions

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But in other ways you’re then affected by stories on the TV or on the radio and you find yourself crying

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And sometimes that’s to do with the medication you’re on yeah, yeah, I hadn’t thought to blame the medication

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Well, I when I got very emotional and teary I found myself watching

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What’s it Andre Rue concerts and ladies in pink dresses dancing around I found myself crying at those

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Yeah, but they are beautiful aren’t they you can’t that would be why because you were so emotionally involved in it

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and so I think sometimes it gives you the gift of

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opening up emotionally and

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experiencing the arts more fully and

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Also, I suppose

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when you look in the mirror and

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You see your hair falling out or the fact you’ve had an operation and you look different or

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That’s your skin has changed that can lead to an emotional response

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Yeah, it certainly can you can lead to depression anxiety?

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All of those negative feelings, which

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You’re obviously going to to feel

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But if you do feel like that, please seek medical help

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There are groups and things out there

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But if you really are feeling depressed and suffering with anxiety go and get the proper help your consultants can refer you

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To help and there are services in Cornwall where you can refer yourself for mental health

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support as well, but what we’re talking about this week is the

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Organization called look good feel better and we’ve been talking to

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Sarah Emerson from that group. So I asked her what is look good feel better

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So look good feel better is a national. Well, it’s actually an international cancer support charity

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It originated in the States

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It was brought over to the UK

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Via the Estee Lauder companies

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as well as an organization called the CTP a

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Which is the cut the cosmetics toiletries and perfumeries association

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which is essentially a governing body for all beauty products that enter and

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And then subsequently go back out of the UK

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That was 30 years ago

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So the premise of look good feel better

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So we exist really to support all cancer patients women men young adults

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with the more visible and physical side effects of cancer and its treatment, so things like

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changes to the skin which we know can be

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Really really detrimental and quite significant to live with

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And obviously hair loss, you know loss of hair on the face the body obviously things like eyelashes eyebrows

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so anything that has

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Quite a significant

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detrimental effect to a person’s more emotional

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Health whilst going through cancer. So we’re talking to Sarah Emerson from look good feel better there

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talking about why look good feel better exists and

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what she was saying had

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Echoes of what you went through

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Yes, she mentioned about changes in skin. I know at the beginning we talked about it generally

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But for me personally, I’m alopecia has appeared or disappeared or whatever it is on my skin

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Just explain what that is. So alopecia is a change in the color of your skin. So on my cheeks

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I’ve now got some some sort of it looks like I’ve got

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splodgy suntan on my cheeks

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But it’s a type of alopecia. So with the immunotherapy that I was on

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Apparently that happens because I didn’t know about it. I asked my specialist about it

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He didn’t know about it and then I asked in a group

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Again a Facebook group. So we’ve talked about those in previous podcasts, but I asked in one of those and

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Half a dozen people came back and said yes. I’ve had the same

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I’ve had alopecia on my face

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Which just makes me wonder what’s gonna happen because the chemicals stay in your system for a while and I just wonder

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whether this alopecia is going to

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grow or recede or what’s gonna happen with it, so

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Yes, look good feel better might help with that share this podcast on your social media so others may benefit

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So I’m going to now find out from Sarah Emerson. Why is this project important to her?

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So I’ve had quite a varied career when I was younger a levels sales jobs things like that

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And I ended up working for benefit cosmetics for 12 years worked my way up within that industry

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Actually never in the beginning thought I would find myself in the beauty industry

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but there I was and and I think it was a bit of an eye-opener for me because

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Even just your everyday woman who maybe isn’t struggling with the additional element of a cancer journey

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the difference it can make to somebody when you just enhance how they appear like some lipstick or

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Choosing products that you know illuminate the skin

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Just the difference it makes to how somebody then starts to feel in themselves the demeanor the body language

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When I left benefit this became a really good fit for me because I left wanting to do something

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with a little bit more significance to give back to

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Maybe a different demographic

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And truthfully, I can’t help but feeling really blessed that I get the chance to do that if I’m honest

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And this is actually my 10th year. So I’ve been doing it for some time now and it never fails to

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Just

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You know warm my heart, I guess cheesy

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I know that’s cheesy Matthew, but it does really it just gives you that amazing feeling of wow

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You know, we’ve really made a difference to somebody today

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And what have you learned through that 10 years about how people?

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Find these even little wins in life

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whilst dealing with

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something fairly traumatic

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When when you’re at a workshop when you’re at one of our workshops

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And you see how how the attendees can come in the level of anxiety

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There’s fear. There’s nerves

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And there’s quite often. There’s a real downcast feeling you can see that this is that this is a

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Situation that people are really struggling with and how you see that change over the course of the two hours of the workshop

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And we have we have people leave in the room saying oh my god, wow

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Like I’ve got eyebrows again. Oh, I could I could I feel comfortable looking in the mirror again

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you know we have people who just refuse to look in the mirror in that very first sort of

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10-15 minutes because they just can’t cope with the image looking back at them

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so I just think you know, you talk a lot you talk a lot about positivity in your attitude with something like this and

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We see first hand the real sort of profound effect that that has Sarah Emerson there from look good feel better

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I think it’s important to say that every cancer patient is different and react to things differently

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So although there are probably lots of situations where it does help people. I think there’s also

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Probably people who won’t find the same effect on them

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I know when I went along I found it was more as a man going through a man’s group

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It was more to do with the fact that it was useful information

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Rather than an uplift for me because I learned about the safety of shaving

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particularly

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Yeah, I would say the group that I was in

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I I was in a group with a lot of confident ladies

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So they sort of sat there

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I think we learned more about the the makeup products and how to actually use them because I think a lot of us

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Some of these products were absolutely brand-new to us and we were like, well, what’s what’s this?

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You’d pick up something and what’s this and they tell you how to use it and put it on your face and you’d sort of go

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Okay, we’ll give it a go. But you know when she was saying about people being scared to look in a mirror

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The group that I was in there were there were definitely some ladies that were wearing headscarves or not wearing headscarves

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And they didn’t have they didn’t have hair at the moment or there was ladies that their hair was growing back

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They certainly

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Weren’t scared to look in a mirror

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But I think the the two hours of putting because ours was putting basically a face of makeup on

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So getting the eyebrows back and

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Trying to paint the eyelashes that they had. I think they

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They quite appreciated that that was quite nice for them. I found these sessions more informative than

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An uplift I’m not saying that people weren’t uplifted

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But it very very informative and I just wanted to find out from Sarah Emerson what effects it has on

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People during and after treatments to to look after their looks

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It has a huge effect huge effect and we spend so much of our time talking about this topic

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and talking about things like vanity and

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You know, this is not about somebody

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Thinking oh wow. I want to look amazing and I mean that in the best possible way

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This is about this is about when people have such significant changes to their physical appearance

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That they no longer recognize themselves

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They forget who that person was before the diagnosis

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And they can lose themselves a little bit in all aspects of normality can disappear

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And that has a that has a really profound effect

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And we also find that it does affect how a person can then tackle the rest of that journey

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You know the mindset element of when you’re feeling like that. You don’t feel like yourself

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You don’t feel like that the person used to be and there’s a huge element of can I do this?

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You know, I’ve lost who I am

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Can I do this?

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So for us to help restore that and bring back a little bit of control and normality for a person

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It reminds them of what what they’re capable of and who they are

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So yeah, it has a really significant effect. You were nodding a lot to some points in that

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Yeah, she was talking about how you lose who you were and how you change so much

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So I suppose physically

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Some people completely lose how they used to look they I’m for women and men losing your hair is

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such an enormous loss, isn’t it so

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Dealing with that but you know also being aware that there’s the services out there that can help you

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But the fact that you’ve lost your own hair is is absolutely, you know, it’s heartbreaking, isn’t it?

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I have to say that when I because I lost my hair twice and

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First time I lost my hair was during my first lot

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so I think it started coming out after the second infusion of my our chop chemotherapy and

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By the time it had all come out halfway through my treatment I

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Do you know?

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It was almost like a war wound for me and I showed it off as a war word look look what I’ve been through

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Yeah, see that that’s the other side of it, isn’t it?

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I think I think when you’ve got cancer and when you’re having cancer treatment you are fake you are ill

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you are feeling ill you are ill and

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If you can actually wear a war wound people will see you and realize there’s something wrong with you

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Now, I think if the treatment you that you’re going through

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Doesn’t affect you as much so like the treatment I was on

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All of the side effects were within my body

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So there wasn’t anything there to show apart from the surgery that had but my surgeon was so amazing that my

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My war wounds are you can hardly see them, but I’m really aware that I’ve had all of this

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But from the outside nobody is so every once again, everyone is different. Everyone reacts to

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Their diagnosis differently

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So something I say won’t ring bells with someone else and something you say won’t either but

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They’re all valid

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Issues and points of view that you might have someone else might have yeah

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What Sarah was saying about losing who you were? I think that’s a very valid point

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So we’re gonna now find out what Sarah said about is it all just about makeup lots of things

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We often have to tackle that people don’t consider

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You know before they start treatments the things that when the eyelashes go the eyes become really watery and can run quite a lot

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Same for nasal hair, you know, if you lose your nasal hair during chemotherapy

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The nose can run you can get quite so in that area under the nose and then yes

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The nails can become really brittle and can break but they can become black

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In two extreme effects of actually, you’re not losing the nail losing the nail bed all together

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and that’s a for me that was a big thing the fingers because I play guitar and I had

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peripheral neuropathy and

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That’s you know where you know

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The you can’t really feel the fingertips and you get that tingling and I couldn’t really feel the guitar well enough to even

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Play it for a long time. So that had a real emotional side to me as well

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I can imagine and you know and what that highlights is it isn’t the vanity side of it

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A lot of the time it is the actual practicality of doing the physical things that you do

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every day and I mean

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What we consider and what we take into consideration, I guess is the right way to put it

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Is that for a lot of people a cancer journey for everybody is very different

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How you want to talk about it who you want to talk about it with the amount of information you want

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You want to divulge or you don’t want to divulge. It’s really quite personal to you

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But it becomes really hard to have control over that side of things when it’s quite clear from a physical appearance perspective

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That there’s a change and quite a significant change and I think sometimes

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Added to the practicality effect, you know, you can’t really hide that with your nails. You can’t hide that it’s happening

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It’s very hard to hide that it’s happening to your hair

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You know, we find a lot of our gents massively don’t want to wear wigs or like like perhaps our female

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Our female sort of patient reach would be more comfortable with wigs headscarves and whatnot. Visit our website

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www.cancercafepodcasts.org

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It’s often easy to

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Assume when we’re talking about looking good feeling better and makeup and things like that

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It is about women but men do need this an awful lot as well. So I got her to talk more about

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Shaving but then once again women shave to they do safe shaving is such an important an important thing

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And to be honest regardless of sort of what treatment plan you’re on

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You will always be be slightly more

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Compromised with cancer and with with any form of cancer treatment

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So yeah, you know raise a house is raise out is crucial

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And I think one of the reasons we become so passionate about what we do is that there is literally no other advice out

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There you know when we first I mean we first

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Realized that we had to provide something for

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For for the male population

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Through it way back before covert and probably around about 2017 the amount of

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Sort of inquiries we started to get to see look at I can see you don’t do anything for men

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Because at that point we were predominantly women’s women’s charity. Where do I go for this advice?

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You know, how do I find out about these things? What can I use on me skin?

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You know, what fabrics can I use because I’m finding it really uncomfortable wearing certain fabrics

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So we started to look into ways and we’re absolutely flabbergasted that there was absolutely nothing out there nothing at all

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We and we straight away as a charity said well this we can’t have this this is not right

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You know, we need to develop something. So so here we are

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But yeah, I mean safe shaving

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I don’t think I think it’s taken for granted a little bit that if you wet shave you can just

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Crack on as you always have but you’ve got to be so careful

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and

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Razors are an absolute breeding ground for bacteria based on the fact that we usually leave them lying in

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warm wet

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environments

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They’re full of like sort of skin particles and hair particles of being used

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And we don’t usually people don’t consider that and I was absolutely

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Petrified about shaving through lots of points when I was you know

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Neutropenic absolutely petrified any any chance of cutting myself and

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one of the things I learned because they had a

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barber from Redruth come in and

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He gave us some tips on shaving and one of the things I never knew existed

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There are these little sort of match. They look like a little packet of matches where if you do cut yourself shaving

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You can then wet this and then put this on the cut and it heals so much

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Faster, I never knew that sort of thing. So it’s that sort of level of information. I learned. Oh, that’s interesting

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I didn’t even know about that. But then

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Here to support you the Cornwall Cancer Cafe podcast and now we’re going to turn to

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Mark Gaimer from cancer support UK. He’s the chief executive and

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We’re going to be looking back on that interview with Sarah Emerson

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So so mark welcome and just tell me what you have taken away from what she’s been saying

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Yeah, I thought it was a really

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interesting

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Interview Matthew because you know what it clearly brought to light is that

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Obviously with many cases of cancer there are

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Physical physical side effects there is going to be visible

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Impact on people because of the the treatment because of the cancer what one thing that people often don’t realize

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Is that the first or the most common form of treatment when somebody’s diagnosed with cancer is a physical?

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Operation so there is an assumption often by people that you go into chemotherapy or

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radiotherapy, but actually, you know as you can imagine that the

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The medical teams want to get to the cancer and remove the cancer if possible

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so

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The very nature of that being the the main form of treatment

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Obviously is going to physically impact somebody now

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Sometimes that isn’t always visible depending on on where they are operated on

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But it’s a physical change that that person will be very aware of and sometimes they can be very

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What we would describe as as high-impact life-changing physical

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Operations that people undergo and it’s about maintaining

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Normality, isn’t it? Yeah, and and I think you know when you’ve got so much going on and you’re dealing with

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You know, not only the physical side but all the emotional challenges that that come with a diagnosis and treatment

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You know it can become really important for people to have a sense of normality

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And to be doing something that really allows them to feel just a bit

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You know like themselves and to take them and remove them from you know

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Some of the experience that they’re having around cancer that can be for many people really beneficial

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But it you know it also and I think many people will will know this

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You know that the treatments that then follow the the operation will also

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Have a very often have a very significant visit physical impact on people and the ones people know about are

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Sometimes people have hair loss not always it’s important to say but sometimes people will have hair loss

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I thought it did remind me as

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Sarah was talking that you know, it’s not just hair on the head

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She really got the point across about the impact of losing eyelashes for example, and how that then affects the eyes

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Nasal hair how that can affect the nose and lead to increased soreness of the nose

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So yeah all these physical

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Changes will happen as people or for some people as they go through treatment

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and therefore

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again as Sarah talked she made it really clear how there’s a connection between that and

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How it can impact people emotionally how they feel

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And as you play the normality of you know being able to do the things that that you were doing before

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Become really important Mark Gaimer there from cancer support UK

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So Emma any sort of final thoughts about things that you want to share from your experience of look-good feel better

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I just wanted to sort of share the makeup side of it that so with the ladies group

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We did a full face makeup from oh

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I didn’t even know you put serums on before you put foundations in my day

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You just slapped a bit of foundation on you slapped a bit of our makeup on but a lippy and off you go

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Oh, no, no, no, no, it’s far more

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No, there’s there’s so many more steps and they take you through every single step

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I’m guessing it must be a more professional way of doing makeup

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But we all left fully made up and I can remember because we it was in the cove in the top

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Meeting room at the cove and as we were walking down the steps the chatter of the ladies and them all saying

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I’ve never done my makeup like this before all my husband’s not going to recognize me

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So we all felt like we’d had a professional makeover, but we’ve done it ourselves

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And also the chatter was I wonder if I remember how to do all of this because there’s so many bits and pieces

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And you actually go home with a little bag full of makeup bits and pieces that

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I think they must be donated from all sorts of different makeup providers, but

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Yes, I look good feel better is a lovely charity I didn’t realize they were international

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so I’ve learned something in this podcast and we will be talking about

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Cosmetics more and we have got an interview lined up with Amanda would win would from the made for life foundation and

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Maybe you look at the videos at the moment

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Maybe it’s not there yet

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But some point there will be a video about cosmetics and Emma you did have a makeup set

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Well, you had a massage session with some of these cosmetics, didn’t you? I did I would call it a well-being session

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Well beings a well-being session. So

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Yes, she used the cosmetics on my skin

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And they’re all organic

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And they’re all available at the well-being center at Trilisk or just behind Trilisk, isn’t it?

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And I have to admit I went home with a pot of one of them

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Which I use regularly now, but I I won’t say which one because when we’re not an advertising platform

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Are we we’re not to know and we’ll also have an interview with

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Carly who did that session? Yeah, so Carly delivered it which was very very nice of her

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And she tells us her story about why she does it and it’s a whole well heart-breaking story, isn’t it?

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It is so that is to come soon on this

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Cornwall Cancer Cafe podcast and thank you Emma for being with me and and

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Leading me through this because I make my cups quite often, don’t I?

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Yeah, and thank you Matthew for sharing your bits about losing your hair because it can’t have been easy

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it was

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Different put it that way different different. It was nasty wasn’t it?

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I think I have to say losing my hair was the least of my worries at the time

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I was in such a bad shape that the the hair losing the hair was not

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The most of my worries. No, but it wouldn’t have helped with it. It didn’t help. No

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anyway, look so make sure that a

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You tell people about this podcast and so everyone else can benefit who might need to benefit

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Send you know email someone send them a link on you know, Facebook or whatever social media, but there’s also

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Pass a hug on from us because we like to give hugs

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Don’t we we do we’d like to give a big hug because when you give a hug you get a hug

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Your catch line that you’ve got that so well practiced now and we’ll be back with more next week

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Until then bye. Bye. Bye

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Thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund for supporting this podcast