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Kayla Martell was diagnosed with alopecia areata at age 10. That didn’t stop her from becoming Miss Delaware, or from using the disease as her platform. She’s helped many in the process.
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For years, it was a tradition in the Martell home in Milford to gather before the television and watch the Miss America Pageant, and when Kayla Martell was 7, she and her parents, Rhonda and Ron, watched a ballet performance by Heather Whitestone that was so breathtaking, it turned the audience’s approval into thunder.
Many in the audience did not know that Whitestone could not hear them. She had lost her ability to hear at 18 months old, but later that evening, the Martells watched Whitestone crowned with the title that would inspire millions of people to pursue their dreams in spite of barriers.
Over the past few years, Kayla, 22, has also become an inspiration to many, a story that reached a high point in June, when she was named Miss Delaware 2010. When she appeared on stage Jan. 15 at the Miss America Pageant, she represented not only Delaware, but 2 percent of the world’s population, including 4.7 million Americans who, like her, have been diagnosed with alopecia areata.
At age 10, Martell awoke one morning to discover a silver dollar-sized bald spot on the top of her head, a condition that was soon diagnosed as alopecia areata, an autoimmune skin disease that results in the loss of hair on the scalp and elsewhere on the body. The condition is neither contagious nor life threatening, and those with alopecia areata live otherwise healthy lives.
What started as one patch eventually progressed to total scalp hair loss, and at an age when most young girls are first experimenting with hair coloring, perms and new hairstyles, Martell was walking the hallways of her middle school with only peach fuzz on her head. Her parents asked her if she wanted to be fitted for a wig, but when she tried one on, it felt like a cosmetic covering that looked detached from who she was.
“My parents asked me, ‘Do you want a wig?’” Martell says. “I told them ‘No, it feels like I’m wearing a winter hat. I don’t mind that I’m bald, and neither should anyone else.’ Then we all moved on with our lives.”
Although alopecia areata is considered a physical disease, its cosmetic appearance is similar to one of a patient undergoing chemotherapy, and therefore wrongly assumed to be life-threatening like cancer.
“In truth, however, it has no impact on your overall health and ability to think cognitively,” says Lisa Butler, vice president of communications for the National Alopecia Areata Foundation (NAAF). “The biggest component of alopecia areata is in its emotional impact, based on the stigma of looking different, and not everyone is accepting of someone who looks different.”
Confidence may be cultivated by the individual but its source is usually planted by others, and in Martell’s case, “My parents never let me shed a tear, and they never let me sit and sulk and say, ‘Oh, woe is me,’” she says. When she was 11, she delivered a presentation to her sixth-grade class, “Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow,” where she spoke matter-of-factly about her condition.
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