BRAVE Cwmbran teenager Emily Clark took the decision to shave her head again after it had just grown back from the first chemotherapy treatment earlier this year.

Emily, 17, wrote an emotional blog post after asking her mum, Donna Dunn, to shave her hair off as it had started falling out following chemotherapy treatment.

Emily needs a bone marrow transplant after she was dealt the terrible news that her cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, had returned last month and she began an Argus-backed campaign to find a donor.

In her post, Emily writes: “The attachment so so many of us have (myself included) to our hair sometimes seems just as much as the attachment we have to limbs or facial features.

“Baldness is obviously an issue when your hair is loved this much.

“Generally speaking, most people who have cancer treatment lose their hair – myself included. And it is hard.”

Within the post she writes that losing your hair is a “physical reminder of the cancer” adding “the hardest thing about losing your hair is the effort of it all”.

She describes the slow process of losing your hair and how messy it is, saying “it falls out everywhere, and seems to have a static power that just won’t allow you to wipe it off a pillow”.

Emily goes on to describe how it’s hard to work out a way to cover your head and to find makeup, adding that she hates being bald again.

Her hair had just grown to a wearable style after she was given the all clear on April 17, following her first diagnosis on December 20 last year after which four courses of chemotherapy followed.

In her post she said: “I was finally feeling like it looked good. It took a whole six months to get to that length and just five days to have fallen out to the extent I had to shave it.”

An incident that prompted her to have her head shaved was when a lock of hair fell out in public and she had to discreetly pick it up in hope no one had noticed.

She is currently at her Llantarnam family home, and her mum said she is “in good spirits” despite suffering from fatigue, adding that cutting her hair was “Emily’s way of taking control of the situation”.

She said the ordeal of having to shave off her daughter’s hair was traumatic, but the family are hoping that Emily will remain well enough to be home for Christmas as they await news in early January of how her treatment has gone.

The South Wales Argus is helping to raise awareness of donating bone marrow and stem cells to help Emily and the 1,800 other people searching for a match in the UK.

The Welsh Blood Service announced that 161 people have joined the register since the start of the campaign, while Anthony Nolan have announced that 320 people living within the NP postcode area have applied to join the Anthony Nolan register since November 24.

Of those, 186 came direct from the South Wales Argus website.

All you have to do initially is join online, then provide a saliva sample by post.

To help Emily, if you are aged between 16 and 30 you can join the Anthony Nolan bone marrow register, and if you sign up, please tick Emily’s campaign ‘Remission Possible’.

If you are aged between 17 and 55, you can join the Delete Blood Cancer bone marrow register.

If you register as a donor, tweet that to @RemissionPos using the hashtag #RemissionPossible.