I decided to share my story since everyone on here is so brave in sharing theirs! I am grateful for finding this site because outside of my family and few close friends noone knows that I have AA.

I'm 43 now and started early menopause at 38. My AA started 18 months ago. About a week after getting my hair highlighted (as I had been doing for years). I ran my fingers through my hair and felt smooth skin in the lower back side of my head! I have long hair which covered the spot and didn't see any major clumps of hair over the past week. Since I work with preschoolers my first thought was "ring worm". I went to the dr and he said its DEF not ring worm but it is AA. It was a round spot 4 x 4. He suggested seeing a dermalogogist and told me not to google AA. I had never heard of it so of course I googled it when I got home.

FEAR swept through me when I saw the pictures of so many bald people. I had no idea that was what AA was. Auto Immune DISEASE???!!!! I have THAT???? I cried and cried all night. By the next day I was over it and ready to "fix" this. I have never been a person to feel sorry for myself and I can't waste time drowning in tears!

I made an appt with the dermatologist and after a few months of injections my hair was growing back. I completely moved on forgetting the bald spot that was now covered with an inch or more of new baby fine hair. That chapter in my life was fixed and over!

Until this past Jan....I was blow drying the back of my hair trying to flatten the new hair on my "spot" because it grew back super curly, and I saw another spot! It was small, the size of a quarter, but I knew what it was. Surprisingly I didn't panic, I had been here before, call Dr, get shots, hair grows back.

Well one small spot turned into a much larger spot in the middle of the back of my head and then two more popped out on the top back part of my head...then three, then four and five more spots! I began to crumble. Within two months I was up to 10 spots! I now call them my "polka dots". That's what my head looks like....a non symetrical polka dotted head. And I feel lucky to have enough hair to still cover these dots, and I'm also careful to use the word "lucky" lightly. I'm still getting injections which dent my head and give me horrible headaches but are working to some degree but at a much slower rate than last year. I'm also seeing new dots every so often but they are small and I'm getting used to using extensions and the colored powder to hide my dots. That has helped me alot.

I hope my dots will all grow back, I hope I don't lose all my hair, I hope I can one day look back and see this as another bump in the road that I over came with dignity and that it is all just another chapter in my life that made me stronger. I have hope and faith and hold onto it tightly because that is what life is all about! Pushing forward and living life to the fullest no matter what happens along the way. This website gives me hope and to every one of you I'm grateful for your stories and your strength!