Hair: The Sequel. And no, not THAT one. Damn it now I have “this is the dawning of the age of Aquarius” in my head!
A little hippie at heart
If you read my ‘Hair Today Gone Tomorrow‘ blog you will recall my situation. My hair shedding, the mysteries of hair, the feeling the of distance from my youth.
Well now here I am, sitting in the dermatologist’s office. My hair is wild and free, recently washed and glowing. My skin is carefully prepped with just the touch of ‘natural’ make up. Whenever I go to the dermatologist, I want to make myself look nice, so she can see what a great job I am doing at looking after myself.
Watching the people in the waiting room is always quite entertaining. My dermatology office is also a “cosmetic surgery” office. I love seeing the girls wearing the dark glasses and hoodies. Honey, this is not Desperate Housewifes, we live in Delaware for goodness sake.
As I look around the room I often hear the words “boob job”, “nose job”, “whack job” going through my head. Why am I so judgemental?
“Suki,” calls the nurse and I am led back through the hallway to my doctor’s office.
“Telogen Effluvium.” That’s what the doctor said to me. I looked at her as if she were speaking about a type of dinosaur.
She pulled and tugged at my hair while asking me a battery of questions:
- Have I experienced recent trauma?
- Have I recently had a chronic illness?
- Is there female pattern baldness in my family?
- Have I recently undergone surgery with general anesthetic?
I answered her questions as best I knew how.
When the questions were done she wrote down “Telogen Effluvium” on her notepad. I swallowed hard as I imagined the outcomes. Would I go bald? Was it curable? It didn’t sound pretty.
“Suki, based on your answers I believe the hair loss may be due to three things,” said Doctor Stephanie. I got temporarily blinded and simultaneously distracted by her enormous wedding ring. Dear God, this woman must be married to a middle eastern king with that kind of rock.
“The first factor is stress. Not that we want you to be stressed but if it is stress we can expect to see your hair begin to stop shedding in about 6 months from the incident of stress.”
6 months, that sounds do-able.
“The second factor could be your recent digestive problems,” she said. “It might be that your lower intestine is not absorbing the right nutrients. I would like to do some additional tests.”
Tests. Blood. Yuck. Ahhh.
“The third factor could be your birth control. Now usually, the birth control pill affecting your hair is not very common. However, not everyone is a textbook case, and you might be one of those people that doesn’t fit the mold. Perhaps the Seasonique, or even one of the pills you were on before it, has affected your hair growth. I’d like to run some additional tests for that too.”
So there it was. The three answers. Stress, tummy, Seasonique. All quite possible factors. I felt like the detective work was finally beginning, and it was all in my blood.
In the meantime she gave me Zinc Sulphate, 250 mg once a day. She also gave me a cortisone cream to put on my scalp.
If stress is the cause I really need to learn to deal with it better.
If my digestive troubles are the cause, maybe I can finally get to the bottom of why my digestive system is such an epic failure.
And if Seasonique is the problem….MAN do I want to sue the shit out of them.
I’ll keep you posted.
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