DETROIT — When Micah Allison started feeling off as a daycare worker, she said she didn’t think much of it. "I was just drained at work every day. Like, I was just tired," she said.
But then, at 19, came a diagnosis she never expected.
"She's like, 'Well, the results just came back, and it's lymphoma.' And I'm like, 'OK.' I'm just looking at her like, 'I don't know what that is,'" said Allison.
For months, the Harper Woods resident went through rounds of chemo as she tried hard to keep a positive outlook.
"I'm pretty tough, I would say. So I just tried to, you know, be ... resilient when it comes to things in situations like that," she said.
But Allison said it was after she was in remission from a blood cancer that everything she had gone through took a toll.
"Afterwards, I would say was when ... I fell into a depression," she said.
Allison said the steroids made her gain weight, and she lost her hair. She said she didn’t feel like herself.
"Post chemo and post-treatment, it was just like, yeah, this is going to take a little while to ... get myself back to me," said Allison.
When she started looking at wigs, Allison said they were out of her price range, so she decided to make one.
"I just woke up, and I was like, 'I'm going to learn how to make a leap,'" she said. "I can watch YouTube and teach myself how to do it ... just to cut costs and everything, and I did it."
And that was the catalyst for the now 22-year-old’s House of Eternal Beauty business.
"It just kind of kept growing and growing," she said.
Allison now makes wigs out of her house to sell online.
"It is something that I really enjoy, and I'm just like, 'why not?' You know?" said Allison.
She credits her success to the support she received during and after treatment from her family and The Blood Cancer Foundation of Michigan.
"Our goal really is to provide comprehensive, kind of holistic support to blood cancer patients and their families. Because we know when you're diagnosed with blood cancer, your life is turned upside down," said Melissa Antoncic, director of patient support at The Blood Cancer Foundation of Michigan.
Allison added, "I was surrounded by a lot of love, of course. And, you know, I just didn't feel any worry in my heart."
The foundation aims to be there for people no matter where they are in their cancer journey.
"That makes us feel so great, too, to know that somebody that we're connected with is succeeding in so many ways beyond what we could have ever imagined," said Antoncic.
For Allison, now she’s set her sights on growing her business with the hope of one day helping others.
"I want to eventually be able to help people that were in the same or are in the same shoes that I was in," she said.
Allison's business, House of Eternal Beauty, is online — you can check out her work on Instagram.
