Pulling my hair out: an alopecia story
When I named my content writing company Hairy Cow Copywriting, a few people asked, in the nicest possible way, if I was the hairy cow. And while I hoped that my beautiful Highland cattle logo* would clear up any doubts around the inspiration for my business name, I had to laugh at the irony of people thinking I was the hairy one.
And here’s why.
The 10p patch
Three years ago, in October 2020, a routine visit to the hairdresser turned my life upside down for a few months. (What am I saying? It was 2020. All our lives had been turned upside down already!) Joanne had paused while trimming the back of my hair and was taking a closer look at my head. I don’t remember exactly what she said next, but it was something along the lines of…
“Jen, now, I’ve found a patch of hair loss about the size of a 10p coin. It’s probably nothing to worry about, but I just wouldn’t touch it loads to allow it to grow back.”
A bald patch the size of a 10p coin. What the hell was happening?
My lovely, knowledgeable hairdresser was quick to reassure me that hair loss is more common than I might have thought (50% of women experience hair loss in their lifetime) and more often than not it just grows back after a few weeks. She told me one of her other clients has a small patch of baldness that comes and goes like early morning dew. I tried to stay calm, but couldn’t.
The £20 note patches
Skip forward five months and there was no sign of the ‘early morning dew’ reappearing any time soon. The total area of baldness was no longer coin size either. More like several £20 notes.
I’d lost between half and two-thirds of my hair. Mostly from the back…
But from the top and sides as well…
I also now had a hair consultant who had told me I was in the throes of a kind of hair loss called alopecia areata or ‘patchy hair loss’. I now had topical creams that my darling husband would carefully apply to my bald patches every night. Growing bald together was definitely not something either of us had imagined when we said our wedding vows!
The million-dollar questions
Being a bit of a worry wart and a fan of being in control, I really struggled with the fact that nobody could give me answers to the many questions I had about my ever-balding bonce. Not the hair consultant, not the GP, not the Googles.
While the condition itself is understood – the immune system soldiers mistake hair follicles for the enemy and stage an all-out war – the causes of this autoimmune attack are unknown for each individual case. That is, there is no test for the cause of alopecia. All the medical professionals can do is take an educated guess from a long list of possible causes in the following categories: genetic, environmental, hormonal and emotional.
There is also no cure. While alopecia areata leaves the hair follicles unharmed, allowing hair to grow back once the misinformed autoimmune system rights itself, there are no guarantees that it will. All you can do is encourage the inflammation caused by the immune system attack to subside with anti-inflammatory creams and stay topped up on hair-loving vitamins and positivity.
The jackpot
As I’m sure you can imagine, trying to stay positive while your hair is dropping out is a bit of a struggle. I did, however, have many things to be grateful for, so I clung to them like a bee to a flower in a hurricane.
For starters, I didn’t have the trauma of my hair falling out in clumps on my pillow, in the shower tray, on the floor. It detached fairly slowly, leaving only slightly distressing small nests here and there. I had recently started growing my hair out from a pixie cut, so that, coupled with the fact that the majority of my hair that stayed on my head was around the front, meant that I could do
**A MAGNIFICENT COMB-OVER!!**
into a thin tufty ponytail that served to hide most of my scalp. A well-placed headband also provided a good mask for those forward-facing patches and brought a flash of colour to Zoom calls.
Ah yes, Zoom calls. It was 2020/21. This next positive came from an unexpected place. The pandemic. While all the vanity and confidence issues around looking like a mangey cat plagued me somewhat every day, they would’ve been amplified had I not been mostly housebound for those 6 months and only able to see people on Zoom. Except for the new colourful accessory on my head, I looked the same as ever to those who saw me on screen. Only my close family knew I had stopped washing my hair regularly because I couldn’t stand to touch so much scalp. Only they knew I tweaked and fussed with my ponytail every morning until as much of the larger areas of skin were covered.
Another positive: a new-found respect and appreciation for things I once took for granted. I now felt so appreciative of my hair. I’d never felt that before! Even in its broken, distressed, untenable state, I thanked it.
When it started to grow back, it grew like soft blond baby hair at first. Then wavy, coarse and white in places as the adult hair pushed through. I went from mangey cat to sprouting badger.
Three years on, the only whites I have are from age, not trauma. The waviness has gone and my stubbornly straight hair is back. And even though my hair loss seems like a thing rooted in the past, the thought that it might come back at any time still haunts me a bit. But, even if it does, at least I know I’ll still have a lot to be thankful for.
September is Alopecia Awareness Month. If you’d like to know more about this condition or find support and advice for those going through it, visit Alopecia UK.
* Created by the wonderful Eleanor Tomlinson, now famous for her painting of the Queen and Paddington.