Hello everyone,

I'm new here and wanted to introduce myself. I'm Rick Matthews and live in Virginia. By day I'm a computer technician, and when I'm not at my normal job or with my kids, I am a volunteer firefighter.

My fight with Alopecia started in February of 2012. I was at work and my manager pointed out that I was going bald; I shook it off as if he was messing with me, but he insisted that I had a bald spot on the back of my head. Well when I got home that evening I looked in the mirror and to my surprise, he was right. I was kind of freaking out, I never envisioned myself going bald. A few days later, I noticed more bald spots appearing. Thinking that something was seriously going on with me, I googled, "spot balding" and read about alopecia. I read that it could be hereditary or caused by stress and since I'm not really happy with my company I figured it to be stress since I couldn't remember anyone in my family with the disease. Well actually, I have a cousin who was my best friend growing up, he started to lose his hair at the age of 14 (27 years ago) but since his father had muscular dystrophy, the family all thought that was the cause of it. So I didn't relate my baldness to what David had since his father was not blood related to me, his mother is my side of the family.

Well in the months that passed, I have now lost 75% of the hair on my head, my eye lids and eye brows are gone and my mustache won't grow much. We had a family reunion this past October and as I was talking to my cousin David, I showed him my head, he was quite surprised... he said, "go show my mother", well as it turned out, he has alopecia (universalis), his started the same way mine is now with the patches on his head. The odd thing is that in our family history, there is no other record of anyone else that went bald, but here we have two in the same generation.

I'm finally coming to terms with it and realizing that it will probably never grow back, I keep praying that my head would go completely bald so I can get rid of these patch spots that look ridiculous. I shave my head, but the spots still stick out. Several months ago I found this really cool razor called the "HeadBlade" and it makes shaving your head quick and easy. I wear hats all the time when I go out to hide the spots; my kids like to rip my hat off when we are out in public because they know I hate it. I'm in the process of trying to find another job, but lose confidence in myself because during an interview I start wondering if the interviewer is looking at the spots and wondering what is wrong with me.

Well anyway, I didn't mean to turn this into a life story. I'm happy to be a part of this site and know that there are a lot of others out there going through the same thing that I am. Please friend me if you would like.

Thank you, its nice meeting all of you.

Rick