Lamenting my Hair

The hair is still falling out in handfuls. I left today's mini-wig of hair in the toilet so J would see it when he comes home tonight. Not to freak him out, but because he seldom believes my despair over things of this nature. He thinks I exaggerate.

The lady doth protest too much.

While I do tend to sometimes get passionate about things in conversation, this sort of thing just has to be seen to be understood. I want him to SEE, understand why this is disturbing me so much.

So today I lost another huge handful of hair. When I run my fingers through my hair it feels different. I can tell hair is missing in significant quantities. Yesterday a girlfriend returned an old hair clip to me that even though it is huge, it used to not be able to hold the weight and volume of my hair. Yesterday, it held it ALL. With room to spare.

sob

DB's nurse said to me: "I lose that much hair everyday." She is Turkish and has a headfull of thick wavy dark hair. Yes, I know that there are some women that can actually lose that much hair without it being noticeable. But not me.

One girl from the Yahoo Immunology Support board wrote to me in a private email,

Do not worry as I said the hair thing looks worse than what it is and it is reversable.

I measured my hair today from crown to end. It's long. Nearly to my waist. Twenty four inches in length. Dr. Google says that hair grows about 1/2 an inch a month. Do the math. Reversible? It will take me four fucking years to regrow what I have lost. If I cut off half of my hair, to 12", it will still take me two years to get it to the same health that it was just a month ago. Even if I dump miracle grow on my head and it doubles in growth rate we're still looking at two years. And no, my hair doesn't grow THAT fast.

A quick glance in the mirror reveals yet more scalp showing through today. What's even weirder is that my normally dry hair and scalp now feels greasy, oily. My hair is normally so dry that I can make do washing it every 3 or 4 days, but now it looks rather untidy after just two days. It just feels WEIRD. It's almost as if I've lost the hair that was soft, and all that remains is wiry coarse hair and, of course, the grays. The gray hair shows up even more so now that the others are falling out in droves.

I can only wonder this:

What will grow back once this hellish episode is over? Will the hairs that died be replaced with gray hairs?

If so, I will be probably 1/3 gray. That is if it stops falling out immediately. If it continues, I'll likely be 1/2 gray.

Although I understand the science behind why this is happening to me, I just don't understand the why me.