Hair Loss Heartbreak

I had good hair.

Not in the ‘wake up looking perfect’ kind of way.
In fact most days when I woke up my hair looked more like a rat’s nest that had been through a hurricane rather than an effortlessly styled ‘do’.

Not in the ‘the dirtier it gets the easier it is to style’ kind of way.
You know how hair dressers always say they prefer to style dirty hair because it holds better? Not my hair, it didn’t get the memo. When it was dirty it was just that...dirty.

Not even in the ‘at least I can put it up in a ponytail’ kind of way.
For some reason that never seemed to work for me. My ponytail ended up looking more like a limp piece of frayed yarn rather than the cute-girl-next-door look I was going for.

But I had good hair.

My hair made me feel pretty. I knew that if I took a blow dryer to it, without too much effort I could work it into some sort of style appropriate for nights out on the town. I knew that if I was feeling a bit ‘blah’ about things I could go get a haircut for an instant pick me up. Even if said hair cut didn’t turn out quite the way I wanted, it was just hair and it would grow back. I was actually trying to let my hair grow out so that one day when I got married I could style my hair into the perfectly coiffed up-do that Pinterest had me so inspired to try. (And no, its not weird to think about how you want to do your hair on your wedding day when you’re not even engaged. It’s just a girl thing, I swear!)

My hair and I, we had worked out a system. I washed it every day (not great I know, but I was trying to avoid the hurricane rat’s nest fiasco). After conditioning I would brush it out with a wide tooth comb, use a towel to pat it dry, add a little bit of product and BAM! Hair done.

It was because of this routine that when one day when I was combing my hair in the shower and a small bunch of hair appeared on the comb, I didn’t think anything of it.

‘Must have been a knot’

When it happened again the second day I thought it was strange but I still wasn’t worried.

But by the end of the week, I started to panic. Suddenly these small bunches of hair had started to add up and when I went to part my hair one day, I saw it. A small little bald patch. But that wasn’t it. Because that small little bald patch was surrounded by visibly thinning hair.

I was losing my hair and I didn’t know why.

Nobody around me had seemed to notice. My concerns were met with sympathetic eyes and reassurances that this kind of thing happens all the time. Even when I showed friends that every time I touched my head at least 10 hairs would fall out, nobody seemed that concerned.

‘Have you been stressed?’

Definitely. This year had proven to be challenging in more ways than one.
Ok. This makes sense to me. I’m losing my hair because I’m stressed.
I’m stressed. This is normal. My hair will stop falling out.
It has to.

I started to look up ways to disguise my continuing hair fall. Lucky for me my curly hair made it easier to cover up my mini bald patches but it was still starting to make me feel self conscious. I never knew if one day I was going to wake up, have to go to work in the morning and not be able to hide my situation. I found a hair salon in the city that specialized in camouflaging all sorts of hair loss. Extensions, toppers, shake in hair fibers, you name it they had it. They even had a private room where I would be able to get my hair done and not worry about being embarrassed by what other people were thinking of my balding head. Jackpot I thought. So I booked an appointment for a consultation the following week.

In the meantime after many a teary eyed phone calls to my mom, it was decided that I should go see a doctor to make sure nothing serious was going on.

Two days later sitting in my doctor’s office, he confirmed what everyone else had been saying...

‘It’s probably just stress. I would try not to worry too much about it. I’lll send a referral to a dermatologist just to be sure and we will run some tests but you will be fine’

Reassured by his comments I asked him for a note for a week off of work. I thought if this really was stress related maybe a week off of work would do me some good. I would have time to relax, be able to stop worrying so much about trying to cover up my rapidly thinning mop and I could get myself a bit more organized.

Unfortunately for me my week off didn’t turn out quite the way I planned.