The first thought that comes to mind as a woman with hair loss is devastating. Fortunately, or maybe not mine came at a time when I was still young enough not to care, but old enough to know that people found it funny, and made jokes about me and had nicknames to make them feel better about it i suppose.

When I was 12 I was a generally happy almost teenage girl, living in Toronto with my parents, my Dad a military man and my mother a housewife who was battling cancer. School was tough, I was enrolled in a Catholic one for the first time in my life, and lived in a predominantly Italian Community but none of this I ever thought would cause my hair to fall out.

I started to notice that I was loosing my hair, and in the oddest place, a strip right down the top center of my head. Embarrassed, I didn’t say anything to my parents at first but instead, took to combing my hair over, just a little more than normal in the hopes of covering it up and making it go away. It got wider…and I got scared and brought it to the attention of my parents, who in turn wisked me off to the doctors.

After a battery of blood tests and all kinds of other appointments it was apparent that I was suffering from  an autoimmune disease known as Alopecia Areata. Huh? We were told that my body was attacking my own hair folicles and stopping my hair from growing. Also, it could lead to complete baldness, and loss of other hair on various parts of my body. We decided at that point to see if it would grow back rather than try painful cortizone shots into my scalp.

After a few months of dealing with this bald strip, it started to grow back. My Dad put in for a transfer and we were to be moving back to our home province of British Columbia. The only problem now was, a brand new school, and the hair that was regrowing down the top middle of my head, was coming in curly and I have very streight hair. No combover was going to flatten this curly strip of hair, and everyone could see it. So now not only was i the new girl…but I was a freak, one that didn’t have the joy of living in a time where ceramic streightening irons were readily availible, eeesh…I don’t even think they had been invented then.

What were my options? My Mom took me to a few different hair stylists to find out what could be done and although most of them were helpful, nothing was what I wanted to hear. It had taken me a really long time to grow out the “normal” hair that I now had, and I wanted to keep it, but the hairdressers all suggested cutting it all really short to “blend” the new curly hair in with the old hair that didn’t fall out. Okay. Lets do it.

Mullet. To my advantage, this was the 80’s and mullets were cool, even on me a girl! The hairdresser figured that since I wanted to keep my hair long, the short on the top, long in the back would work just fine.

Fortunately for me the curls went away, my hair grew back totally normal and has never fallen out since. I am now in my early 30’s and have a full head of healthy hair, that will hopefully not be too affected by me currently being pregnant. That may be another post…