20 Second round of hair loss

Pictures from 4/26/2006

I meant to send an e-mail to my friends and family about this one and forgot to follow through. On April 26, the day before my 3rd chemo treatment, my hair went through a second round of attrition.

During a bath the night before, I ran my hand over my head and counted the number of hairs on my fingers and palm. 34. I was 34 years old so I thought 34 was a good number. Then I rinsed off my hand and ran it over my head again, pressing slightly harder. This time I got 80 hairs and decided to stop counting.

The morning of the 26th I took a shower and repeated my experiment. I got over 200 hairs on the first try. I got at least that many and more with successive tries. I rubbed over and over and rinsed my hand off between each rub. It was wild!

Then I looked at the bottom of the shower and realized that I hadn't done such a smart thing. I spent the next five minutes aiming the water and washing away the thousands of little tiny hairs that were cluttering the last six inches or so of the bottom of the shower stall.

My mother was staying with us because it was time for chemo the next day, so I had her take pictures of me in my new state of hair loss.

Like the first time, the roots of my little hairs (which had started to grow between the second and third rounds of AC) had turned black. And, like the first time, by mid-afternoon those little hair follicles started to hurt!

At one point I went into the back yard (where I wouldn't have to clean up little hairs again) and rubbed my hands over my head repeatedly to make as many hairs come out as were willing to fall.

In the evening my husband shaved my head and rubbed lotion on it for me. As with the first time, once the hair was shaved it stopped hurting.

I continued to have little stubborn patches of hair that fell out over time. Eventually I became completely bald. It was nice being able to take quick showers like my husband once shampooing and shaving became non-issues. Some days I would look in the mirror at my baldness and want to cry... Once in a while I did cry.

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