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Comment by Classical Anne in NC mountains on August 28, 2017 at 11:38am

A CAUTIONARY tale: I know we all have complex morning rituals with our eyebrows, but I'd like to earnestly recommend an addition to your nighttime ritual. Oh, great!

Like many of you, my brows had been thinning for 3 or 4 years before diagnosis with FFA. Thnning, but still there to some degree from side to side. After FFA research, I began using minoxidil foam [Rogaine for MEN] on my brows, nowhere else, just before bed. It soaks in quickly, and is easily and neatly applied by spraying into the plastic lid and applying with q-tips. Be sure to shake the can well before gently spraying into the inner lip of the lid. Within a couple weeks they were looking so much better!

After a while, I cut back to every other night or so. Seemed OK at the time. Eventually, without realizing they were gradually thinning again, I used the foam only a couple times a week. And then, on vacation without the foam, and too ill when we got home to follow thru, I somehow let more than 2 weeks go by without it. When I finally realized how much gain I had lost, I panicked and went back to at least every other night. But it was TOO LATE! Every night I studied before applying, and it simply wasn't working any more.

Then one morning, before applying makeup, I looked really closely at my brow line and noticed for the first time that there was an entire 'stripe' along the top of each brow that was SCARRED just like the top of my forehead. There were no longer any visible pores, closed tight like the skin where FFA had retreated on my forehead and scalp. That's why the foam was no longer working there.

And then it dawned on me, that's why my eyes had looked so old and tired and sad lately. I'd been applying brow makeup where the few remaining hairs were -- several millimeters below where my former natural brow line had been. No wonder it looked so sad and droopy! So now, I'm having to apply makeup on totally bare skin above the remaining/dwindling set of very pale brow hairs. It is MUCH more difficult to achieve anything even remotely natural looking that way.

For various reasons, I cannot have them microbladed. I am stuck with a situation I could have avoided, and there's nothing sadder than regrets.

So, even if some form of tattoo may be in your future, I urge you to work now to retain what brows you have and even supplement them with minoxidal foam applied EVERY NIGHT. After a few months you might cut back to every other night, but please do not make the mistake of letting any more time than that go by.

For those of you who are fairly new to this struggle, I hope this will be helpful.

Comment by Minter on August 28, 2017 at 9:52am

Leni & Nina, she has a ton of before & after photo's and reviews- also the consultation was over an hour long and she was very thorough and professional- she took lots of photos of my face & eyebrows.  She is also booked months in advance so that says a lot about her too, I think!  

Nina, I am sorry you have to go through laser treatment for bad work, that must be very painful.  I will update on the hairline tattooing that she is getting trained on as soon as I hear more about it :-) 

Leni, I was looking at all my eyebrow products the other day, I have so, so many pencils and powders and gels, thinking this will be the one that will make my brows look natural and normal.  

I still have brows, very thin but they are still there- they are also blonde, I was tinting them but stopped as I have been tinting them brown for so long I had forgotten what they looked like being just blonde!  I use pencil, then powder then eyebrow gel, usually wunderbrow or sometimes clear mascara to set it, so they don not end up disappearing. Sometimes they come out looking really good, sometimes one looks good and the other not so good or they both look weird.  

I am also using Revolution hair powder on my sides in front of my ears, it stays on all day and blends in really good to help disguise the hair loss so I can almost not panic if the wind blows my hair back! I blend the dark and the red together and it looks pretty good.

I know almost all of us are going through the same ritual every morning and it sucks that we have to do this.    

Comment by Nina Jones on August 27, 2017 at 12:45pm

Hi all just to say that my tattoo round my hairline was done by a chap in India who was a bog standard tattoo artist. If I had gone to someone who was properly trained in cosmetic tattoos I wouldn't be having to endure laser treatment to get rid of the permanent ink - a procedure that's costing me hundreds of pounds. It was my mistake. So dont be put off by other types of tattoing to improve your appeatancrs. Once i get rid of my ones i will go back to the drawing board. I havent xperienced bleeding as being more obvious just because I have ffa and trust me the colour takes. At the moment I have red tattooed eyebrows - which I actually didn't need as my eyebrows were fine - as the brown ink has turned rusty, a common occurrence following laser. Good make up thank god covers it...
I would be really interested to hear more about the tattooist who is taking a masterclass in learning how to do hairlines so please let me know when you have more info.
Take care all of you...we're doing OK x

Comment by Leni on August 27, 2017 at 12:03pm

If you do plan to get your brows done, research the artist and make sure they have worked on Alopecia patients before. Ask to see before and after photos. They all take them and even do videos. Worth spending more for a better outcome. Also start out safe with your color choice. Usually you get a touch up a few weeks after the first session and then you can adjust the color.

Lastly and most importantly follow all the instructions trey give you before and after. A lot could go wrong if you don't. FFA sufferers bleed more and if you bleed a lot they may have to stop right then. Also if you bleed a lot, in interferes with the color settling in the skin.

I highly recommend it. It is liberating!!! I have an extra 20 minutes a day to not stress about drawing in my brows or running out of my brow products which were costing me quite a bit.

Good luck!!!

Comment by Minter on August 27, 2017 at 9:37am

I've not posted for awhile but I have been following along with the discussions- Just wanted to add that I went for a consultation last month for microblading and am scheduled to get my eyebrows done in October- I can't wait as I am so over pencilling/powdering/gelling my thinning brows.

 I told her all about my FFA and she mentioned that she is going to a masterclass in tattooing the hairline and will have the class completed before I come in for my appointment-  she does a lot of work with people who have alopecia and have had chemo etc. so I feel confident in her abilities, but after reading some of the posts on how us FFA-ers reacted to tattooing, now not so confident in my body's ability to accept the microblading and I am also a redhead which adds to the probability of fading too, figures- double whammy! :-/

Comment by illustr8r on August 26, 2017 at 11:00pm

I'm sorry to hear that you two have had a bad reaction to your eyebrow tattoos. It's a word of caution for those of us who haven't gone in for a touch up yet. I have about a year yet till I'll need it. They are faded but at least provide a good base for the powder and pencil.

Comment by pauliegirl on August 26, 2017 at 10:58pm

Nina and Jacq, I am so sorry to hear about the tattoo issues. Hoping for resolution for you quickly. We just can't even make this stuff up, right?! Can you gals clarify...are these tattoos or microblading? I had my brows microbladed just over a year ago with the 4 week touch up. They still look better than nothing but have faded (as expected) and I am slated to get the 12-18 month touch up next week (would be 13 months). I am a little concerned now with what you are reporting.
Also, I just wanted to mention that my esthetician had experimentally done some microblade strokes in my temple areas to try to begin to achieve an effect like you had described, Nina. I didn't get anymore done upon touch-up of my brows because those temple area of microblading hurt REALLY BAD to do and heal. My gal says she has better technique for the brows a year later so will see what she has to say about the temple areas. I will say I am leery to try anything right in the hairline area presently because I worry that it could trigger a flare-up. Will keep you all posted!

Comment by Jacqui on August 26, 2017 at 10:21pm

On tattoo.... my person got it wrong too even though they were highly recommended by a alopecia support group.  Mine went orange. I hated them. I though they looked fake and everyone was looking at them.  To make things worse I am going through lazer tattoo removal which is VERY PAINFUL and expensive. It oxidised my orange eyebrows to black. I am 6 treatments in and they are still there and a dark grey.... When they are gone I am going to try eyebrow wigs or keep drawing them on. It will take me a long time to get over this to even think about tattoos again.... but having said that some love love love them.

Comment by Airam-FFA on August 26, 2017 at 8:17pm

Hi Anne Louise

Thank you for the info re Tattoos. Interesting and again another downside to this condition. :(

xOx

Comment by Anne Louise on August 26, 2017 at 3:47pm

I would like to add to the tattoo discussion, or is my lady that does my eyebrows calls it, permanent cosmetics. I had my eyebrows done two years ago and was thrilled with how they came out. I then had a touchup about a year later. This past May I went for another touch up, and was disappointed. For some weird reason the color did not take like it used to and my brown eyebrows returned to the ash colored faded state they had been in, with a few added red "hairs" that she had added to warm them up.

I had waited two weeks, hoping that the color would settle in. I then emailed my tattoo person and she replied that she occasionally has clients with FFA have this sort of response. She said they often need more frequent touchups then regular patients. So perhaps the problem wasn't your artist but rather this lousy condition...especially where you were pleased with his work the first time.

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