Tamworth: Women with cancer talk survival at the Look Good Feel Better Workshop

Dark colours help to protect the nail from sunlight after a cocktail of chemotherapy drugs are pumped into their bodies, sometimes causing breakage, discoloration and beau’s lines to the nail.

Shari O’Neill is a single mother, an avid horse rider and incredibly frank. As she contours her cheekbones, she stops to show me the scar on her chest where her breast was removed.

“Cancer will not discriminate: it’ll get given to a hooker and a saint on the same day,” she says.

“You don’t have a choice. Everyone tells me I’m so strong and so brave, but I don’t have a choice.”

Diagnosed with three different types of breast tumour on her birthday, including one triple negative – an aggressive type – Shari first cut her long hair to a bob, then a pixie cut, before she lost it all.

“The boob-off thing is different, because you look in the mirror and you don’t recognise yourself,” she says.

“You find out who your friends are. I got dropped from a wedding where I was maid of honour because she said I was a bit self-absorbed at the moment, a bit distracted.”

Rows of bald and delicately wrapped heads line the table as women apply makeup like war paint, lipsticks, bronzer and eyeshadow their weapons.

The women have come to learn the tricks of the trade, how to hide the dark circles caused by chemotherapy and expertly tie a head wrap, at the Look Good Feel Better workshop.

Battling cancer is hard, but facing the dreaded mirror can be, too.

It’s how Shari caught her cancer: a small dint in her breast was the only indication something sinister was happening to her body.

“It was probably as big as my fingernail; it was only when I went on holidays that I put my arm up and noticed it,” she says.

“If I hadn’t gone on holidays I’d be dead, because it doubled in six weeks.

“Crying wasn’t going to make a difference, it wasn’t going to change it. I’m a single mum, so you still have to be functional.”

Jane McConnell is Shari’s friend and confidant. She understands what it’s like to spend days in bed with consuming bone pain and the inability to even walk to the end of the driveway.

“Shari handled it better than me. I broke down in the office when the doctor called me. Before I got to reception I broke down again; by the time I was at reception I’d had another meltdown,” she says.

“I rang my husband, ran to the car and I bawled my eyes out for two hours.

“I rang my sister and she got on a plane and came up. I was in the car and couldn’t drive for two hours because I was covered in snot.”

A pain down her right side, just below the underarm, was the only indication Jane had that something was wrong.

By the time her cancer was discovered, it had already spread to her lymph nodes, meaning she would have to undergo chemotherapy as well as having her cancer surgically removed.

“I asked the doctor when she knew. It was after the mammogram when she called and said, ‘You need a biopsy in two days’ and called it whatever the cancer was – I just didn’t find out until days later,” she says.

A rounded mirror sits in front of each lady. From behind them, a hand intermittently reaches in to gently guide them.

With each brush stroke, it becomes clear how intrinsically linked physical appearance and self-confidence are.

Opposite Shari is Mary Little, who has one of those names that’s also personally descriptive. Mary has been diagnosed with cancer and muscular dystrophy, so she can’t apply her makeup herself.

Instead, a volunteer helps her move through the steps. Her smile is sunny and childlike. Next to her, Elizabeth Turner struggles against nausea to drink her coffee.

The women have been strategically seated by age, volunteer Margaret Rock the world’s kindest commander.

Her list of selfless accolades is extensive and she knows every woman in the room by name. She’s held their hands, made cups of tea and been a guiding light in the dark for nearly all of them.

Margaret has lost three siblings to cancer and has fought the disease herself. She wiles away hours sewing head scarves to boost the confidence of women who’ve lost the traditional hallmarks of femininity.

“I absolutely notice a difference in these women after the Look Good Feel Better workshops,” she says, handing me a bag of love-heart-shaped chocolates and offering a cup of tea. For her, “How do you take it?” is second nature.

“A lot of these women have been very sick, but putting on a little bit of makeup and showing them how to put on wigs or tie a head scarf gives them the confidence they need to brave treatment,” Margaret says.

All nine of the women in the room are normal, but they’re also extraordinary. They are fighters and survivors, mothers, professionals, trialled by life in a way that’s impossible to understand until you’ve been there.

To sit surrounded by their wealth of bravery makes the rest of us look uncomfortably ordinary.

Cancer is a test and the result is a change in perspective on everything, Jane says.

“My husband and I were about to buy a house, we had good jobs. I lost my job, my husband’s lost his job, we’re rock bottom right in the middle of my cancer treatment, but what do you do?

“We’ve got each other and we’ve got the kids, so you just be there for each other.”

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