Living with Alopecia Areota

Today I am going to write about a topic that is a little sensitive for me, and not many people even know that I am going through something like this. When I was about to turn 21 years old all of my hair started falling out like crazy and I had no idea why. I was mortified of course. Well, I started self diagnosing on the internet and holy crap, I must have some incurable disease! This was the year I was supposed to finally start living my life and having fun but I ended up freaking out and going to the doctor to get every test imaginable done, I thought I was literally dying. When all of my test results came back normal I was so happy but at the same time I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed because now I was back to square one, I knew nothing. A friend told me about her dermatologist, she highly recommended I set up an appointment as soon as possible. I was willing to try anything at that point so I had to wait about two months for my chance to see the doctor and as you can imagine a BUNCH more hair fell out to where I now had tiny bald spots! I could not handle it, I fell into a weird funk and I did not want to go anywhere or see anybody. Finally, I was able to see the doctor, Dr. Newton, and he was so great! He was so understanding and he seemed to know exactly what was going on. He called my situation Alopecia Areata and there are many cases similar to mine but sadly there is no cure for it. Dr. Newton started me on a treatment where I would go every few months and get injections in my scalp, they are called corticosteroid injections and they are supposed to accelerate the hair growth in the areas that need it the most. Unfortunately, nobody really knows what causes this to happen. Some people say stress brings about flareups but I mean, how can someone NOT stress? From what I understand its my own immune system attacking my hair follicles for whatever reason. Anyway, this continued on to present day and thank God my hair did grow back but it has never been the same as what it used to be. In the past three years I met my husband, got married, and had two kids so I guess it’s safe to say my body has been going through some changes and because of the pregnancies I was not able to continue my treatments. I have recently experienced significant hair loss and I am about nine months postpartum with my baby boy so I set up an appointment with the dermatologist again. Now, there is a pandemic going on and the last place I would like to be is in a doctor’s office but believe me, it was getting crucial the spots came back! Anyway, my husband and I went to the dermatologist on Friday and I was thankfully able to restart my treatments again and hopefully things begin to get back on track. Dr. Newton said its absolutely normal and the hair should definitely start coming back…Now, this whole experience has really changed me as a person. I don’t know, I feel like its caused my anxiety to go up a lot because I don’t always feel as confident as other girls. I am very grateful that I found a man as wonderful as my husband. He always goes out of his way to make sure I feel beautiful and he has always been so supportive. He always keeps me from letting myself fall into some sort of mini depression. My next appointment is in October so I will definitely be updating everyone on how that is going. I never opened up about this before because I would always feel embarrassed but if I can help someone like me get through a similar situation, I’m all for it. This has been a tough journey, but its my journey… until next time!