I had very thick curly hair until I was nine years old. I had ringlet curls all over. Around my 10th birthday, my hair got a lot straighter and it got thinner all over. It had been so thick that I didn't think much of it. Well, it continued to get thinner, but mostly on top, like pattern baldness. By the time I was 12, I looked like a balding man.

It came and went. My hair got progressively worse until I was 15, then at 16-17 it got better. Then suddenly it got worse again. And worse, and worse. Around 19, I started developing strange patterns of loss. At its worst, I had a weird bald "doughnut" on back of my head...a big bald circle with hair growing in the middle. That grew back, but I still have weird bald streaks, and some typical AA spots at the nape of my neck. My hair grows in a strange paisley pattern!

I couldn't get a doctor to say I had AA because I have such a strange pattern, and it was only recently that my doc said that I have diffuse AA, which is pretty rare, I suppose.

Does anyone else have unusual alopecia?