Fragments of the Fragmented.

I've gone through 6 blood tests to find something, anything wrong with me. Turns out, I'm completely healthy. It's deflating to not have anything underlying to treat, but I realize it's also good that I'm not secretly dying.

Every doctor I visited said the same thing after giving me their results, "has anything traumatic happened to you a few weeks before you started losing your hair?"

Yes, of course something happened. However I'm not willing to give credit for my disease to a man I worked years to get away from. But I have concluded, privately to myself, that his desire to give up his paternal rights to his three daughters was the "traumatic" event. I spent weeks, possibly months...maybe still currently (if I'm being honest) in distress over this. The pain he had caused me by dismissing his children as if they've never existed, a mother's pain and guilt, immeasurable. It's as if he had hit me with one last (lasting) blow. I was KO'ed, he won. To give him credit for my Alopecia Areate (AA) disgusts my deepest self....yet, I feel it must be true. 

I've watched my scalp try to replace my lost hairs...and then lose them again shortly afterwards. I've watched the progression of my AA expand its boundaries weekly. What was once a bald spot the size of a nickle early this spring is now just coverable by the palm of my hand. April to November. It feels like I've been stressed for longer than 7 months. 

AA has a sense of humor. When doctors tell you there's no underlying condition to treat, they like to tell you to relax and not stress to prevent further loss...but then they tell you that AA isn't predictable. It can recover and possibly come back 5 years from now, or it can lead to complete hair loss over the entire body. How can one relax when a good chunk of their scalp is bare...and expanding with "unpredictable" as the statistic for the disease? I fretted over this for months before I decided last month to not focus on the hair I was losing, but to love the hair I have while I have it. I've also taken up sleeping, something I didn't have the time to do routinely. The combination of the two has resulted in a calmer mind in addition to more hair regrowth than I've seen in the 6 months before that. I can almost measure the regrowth with a ruler, 3 millimeter sprouts of hair litter the bare parts of my scalp. I've decided to disregard the new loss I incurred this weekend, though...a quarter inch loss...it looks like a lot when you hold those hairs between your fingers and find the fresh white spot on your scalp to measure 1/4 inch... I'm optimistic though. I figure if I can keep my new growth, in 6 months time it'll be long enough to cover the new loss and by then I may have new growth starting there too.

I probably seem neurotic measuring growth and loss. But I feel I must so I know what direction my AA is going, even though I'm aware I can wake up tomorrow without any hair attached to my head. It goes back to the sense of humor AA has, twisted and challenging.