I am not a regular blogger. In fact, I have never blogged about anything. When I started losing my hair I looked to other people's stories for comfort, guidance and to help prepare me for what was still yet to come. I wanted to see real pictures - not text book pics. I write this so maybe someone like me can get the information I was looking for. Some of the pictures will not be pretty but I always try to remember it could be so much worse.

May 2008 - "pre" alopecia

I was in my last semester of nursing school, a very stressful time in my life as an over achiever. Mid-semester I lost a quarter sized chunk of hair out of the left side of my head. I was devastated! I went to the first dermatologist I could get in with. They told me it was probably stress related. They also told me it was autoimmune in nature and were surprised because of all the Rheumatoid Arthritis medication I was on. They treated the area with topical and injectable steroids. It grew back, fell out in another area of my scalp, on and on. This went on until 2010 when I started to notice more and more hair in my shower drain. Clumps fell out when I combed it. Hair all over my bathroom. I kept telling my family but no one really seemed to notice. They used excuses like this happens as you get older .... happens after you have a baby ... etc. At this point I wished it was just a little spot.

Here is a progression of my pictures until I finally realized it was so thin that I wanted a wig:

December 2010 - still looks pretty good but started to notice my hairline is higher

February 2011 - decided I wanted to see how the loss was progressing and started taking pics - took them myself so that's part of why they aren't great and they are weird angles

March 2011

October 2011 - still managing to cover the bald spots pretty well

So I guess I can only do so many pics at once. Will post the rest in
"Part 2".