Cancer survivor makes wigs for others with hair loss battling the disease

Cancer survivor has passion for making wigs for others fighting the disease

Micah Allison spends hours at her sewing machine at her home in Harper Woods - the 22-year-old is making wigs - a passion that grew out of a devastating diagnosis three years ago.

HARPER WOODS, Mich. (FOX 2) - Micah Allison spends hours at her sewing machine at her home in Harper Woods - the 22-year-old is making wigs - a passion that grew out of a devastating diagnosis three years ago.

"She said, 'You have lymphoma' - and I'm just looking at her like, I don't know what that means," Micah said. "She's like - 'Well it's a form of cancer' and I was just like - cancer - that's the last thing I expected."

Stage two Hodgkins lymphoma. She would need chemo - and lose her hair - and when that happened, she needed a wig.

"The wig was like $700 and I was like - wow," she said.

That's when Micah turned to YouTube to learn how to do it herself.

"It took me about two to three days to make that first wig - but I did it," she said.

Since then she's taken classes, purchased a sewing machine and now - in addition to being a nanny - she's started her own business, House of Eternal Beauty Wig Shop.

"She's amazing - she continues to blow us away and impress us with how resourceful she is, how she's able to take a difficult situation and turn it into something so positive and so successful," said Melissa Antoncic.

Antoncic is the director of Patient Support for the Blood Cancer Foundation of Michigan. It is a statewide nonprofit supporting blood cancer patients and their families.

"In the state of Michigan in fact - nearly 6,000 people each year are diagnosed with blood cancer," Antonic said.

A scary, expensive, time-consuming disease - and the foundation is there to help.

"Our goal is really to provide comprehensive support," she said. "We want to provide emotional assistance, financial support - social support - all of those things that are affected when somebody's diagnosed with a blood cancer."

It's support that has inspired Micah to hopefully open her own foundation someday.

"To take a difficult situation like having been diagnosed and saying, wow, wigs for cancer patients are so expensive - what can I do to ease that burden - not only for herself but now for others," Antoncic said.

Between the hair, the materials, and the time it takes to make a wig - now Micah understands why it's so expensive - still she wants to make them more accessible for everyone.

"I know how hard it was for myself to find a wig," she said. "I want to make it accessible to everybody and even like cancer patients and things like that. I want to make it easy."

Micah has been in remission for three years.

You can find her and House of Eternal Beauty on Instagram or Facebook HERE.