MORGAN HILL
– She battled leukemia and won, but lost her hair in the
process.
MORGAN HILL – She battled leukemia and won, but lost her hair in the process.
Now Malory Welchman will lose it again, but this time by choice and for a good cause. The 16-year-old Morgan Hill resident will give her hair to Locks for Love.
After seeing Locks for Love on television, Welchman decided to donate her hair to make a wig for someone with cancer.
Locks of Love is a charity organization that makes wigs out of donated hair for cancer patients who lost their hair.
“A while ago, I decided to grow my hair out, cut it off and make a wig for someone who needed hair,” Welchman said. “I was watching TV one day and heard about the Locks of Love Foundation, and I was, like, I want to do that.”
During her ordeal, Locks of Love had offered to make a wig, but Welchman declined.
Welchman made the decision to grow her hair until the five-year anniversary of her remission, which will occur May 5, 2004. In all, she has been growing it for three years.
The story does not stop there.
While working as a teacher’s aide for a kindergarten class at the Shadow Mountain Baptist School in Morgan Hill, Welchman met a young girl named Ashely Clifford. At first Clifford only knew that Welchman was growing her hair out, and decided to grow her hair out as well in a race to see whose hair could grow the fastest.
Welchman would later tell Clifford why she was growing her hair. Clifford had some doubts about cutting her hair, until a trip to Disneyland.
While waiting in line for a ride, she saw a young girl whose hair was gone. Clifford looked up at her mother, Lori, and said “I want to give my hair to that girl.”
All the girls need now is to grow their hair long enough to have 10 inches available for cutting, which is the length required to make a wig.
Welchman’s story begins long before her decision to give her hair to Locks for Love. It goes back to the diagnosis, when she first learned she had leukemia.
The diagnosis never seemed to drag her down; it only made her stronger, said Welchman’s mother, Cindy.
“She’s a trooper,” Cindy said. “She’s strong-willed and has a high pain tolerance. I wouldn’t want to wish for any one of your children to have it, but out of all my children, if any were to have it, I’m glad it was Malory. She’s a survivor.”
While she battled the disease, Welchman faced numerous medical problems aside from the cancer.
“It was never the cancer, but the other things that happened because of it,” Cindy said.
Welchman had platelet transfusions and eventually developed hepatitis. She didn’t eat for nearly a month. Her mother would try everything to get her to eat, but to no avail. To add to the troubles, Welchman also developed a blood disease and would get nasty headaches that would last 20 minutes.
But despite it all, Welchman tried to keep her spirits up, and tried to make sure that those around her would not be dragged down with her.
“She wanted everyone to feel good, even at her worst,” Cindy said.
Welchman went through the normal rounds of chemotherapy, which caused her hair to fall out. Her hair didn’t fall out all at once, something that Welchman says was one of the harder things for her to deal with.
Eventually, Welchman decided that she no longer wanted to deal with her hair and shaved it all off.
“I remember her father calling me at work,” Cindy said. “He said ‘Malory is begging me to shave her head. She wants it done, but I thing it will be one of the hardest things that I’ll ever have to do.’ ”
Welchman had the opportunity to have wigs made for her, but she decided to wear hats instead. During this time, Welchman still went to school, and, knowing how cruel kids can be, she decided to put an end to any ridicule before it started.
“Malory stood up in class and said I have no hair, but that’s okay,” Cindy said. “And I wear a hat not because I don’t like my head, but because it’s cold.”
Welchman was in and out of Stanford Hospital for more than a year, making schooling difficult. But she was able to stay on top of her studies thanks to a program at Stanford that allowed her to continue school at the hospital.
When she wasn’t in the hospital, she attended Barrett Elementary, where, according to her mother, the school was very accommodating. The principal, Lisa Atlas, went to bat for them to allowed Welchman to do her chemotherapy treatment on the premises.
When Welchman left Barrett, she was unable to find the same accommodation elsewhere and began looking for a change.
Around the same time, the family was undergoing some internal problems due to the fact that they had to care for a near-terminal child, along with other children.
The answer for them was found in Shadow Mountain Baptist Church.
Shadow Mountain offers school for kindergarten through sixth grade that is open to the public and a junior high and high school program exclusive to church members.
The church opened its doors to the family and provided much-needed relief for the parents. Not long thereafter, Welchman was enrolled in the Shadow Mountain school, where she came in contact with Clifford while acting as a teacher’s assistant for Bethany Maricle’s kindergarten class.
“Malory Welchman was a huge blessing in my classroom” Maricle said. “She not only gave of her time, but she also gave of her heart. Every day that she would come to assist me, the children would get very excited as soon as she walked into the class. They would call her name and run over to give her a hug.
“She definitely contributed a strong, positive aspect to the atmosphere in the room.”
Malory’s cancer remains in remission and her hair is nearly ready to be cut. In May, Welchman will go to Cherisse’s Day Spa to have her hair cut to be made into a wig.
For more information about Locks of Love, visit www.locksoflove.org.
