I hadn't realized so much time had passed since we were first struggling to understand and cope with Shannon's hair loss. It's interesting how people adapt and cope with changes in their lives, to the point you forget it was ever any other way.

Shannon's hair started falling out the summer before her 6th grade year, and was completely gone by Thanksgiving. It was a scary and confusing time - trying to figure out what was wrong, getting to the specialist, arguing with him when he tried…

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Well, nothing much has changed at our house... We hooked up with a fabulous guy in Carrollton who fitted Shannon with an Amy's Presence wig that fits her properly and is human hair, this was in the summer before school started. She looks fabulous. It's starting to thin at the part, so I imagine we'll have to send it in for some rehab after school lets out. He also said before summer camp NEXT year he can get us a synthetic that's not quite so expensive for swimming and messing around at camp,… Continue

... things have been super busy around our house. School for kids, school for hubby, school for me, volleyball for Shannon...



Shannon didn't respond to the steroid creams, and I wasn't willing to risk all the side effects of systemic steroids for the small chance of a response, so we stopped all treatment and we're going to just deal with what we have, and hope it resolves on its own when it's ready. Shannon's doing really well with all of this, I'm so proud of her.



So… Continue

The dermatologists’ office called, and thanks to the biopsy, we finally have a hard and fast, firm diagnosis. My mothers’ instinct and my medical digging were correct, Munchkin has Alopecia Areata. She does NOT have trichtotillomania, she is NOT pulling her own hair out. I no longer have to try to convince the dermatologist of that fact, and we can move on to other things.



In a way, I’m sad, because this is a bit more final. Last night she asked Dad to buzz off the remaining hair… Continue

Munchkin has now lost over 70% of her hair. She's not dealing well with it. She's coming to realize that she's probably going to be completely bald when it's all said and done, and is in the "it's not fair" stage. All I can say is, "no, it's not" and hug her. I have set up counseling for her, both to help her deal with this, and hopefully give her more tools to deal with all of her stress that I know is exacerbating the condition, if not triggering it to start with.



We see the… Continue

I had hung such hopes on today... not that I thought we'd walk away with a "cure" or anything, but I thought at least we'd have a definitive diagnosis and confirmation for all the research I've done. Or find something out that I'd not even heard of... I'm one of those people with just enough medical knowledge to be truly dangerous. ;-) But I know it, and I know I'm not a doctor...



We started off with the Nurse Practitioner, since we'd have had to wait another MONTH to see the… Continue