Starting a relationship with hair loss

Over the next two days, the rest of my hair wafted onto lecture notes, cafeteria food, pub floors, and bathroom drain. In desperation I took myself off to the student doctor, who opined that I had stress-related telogen effluvium caused by two recent devastating bereavements. He couldn’t tell me if it would come back and gave me a prescription for a wig. These were supplied by an elderly male technician in the basement of the local hospital, in a department called ‘medical appliances’. Surrounded by bedpans, walking aids and commodes, he took my script and asked me if I would like ‘brown, black, yellow or red’ with a sub choice of curly or straight. With the offending (brown, straight) item in a white paper bag, I was dispatched hairless and distraught into that cold February night.

When I dared finally to look in the bag at the coarse rat-like object, I took a razor and removed the few remaining strands, whacked on some black lipstick and a velvet Annie Hall style hat, and tried to prove that it was all just fine.

‘I swore there and then that I would never wear a wig’

My hair did eventually grow back, thinner, weaker, coarser, with a hugely depleted hairline, but for the next 30 years, it was a constant cycle of remission and relapse. I had a pretty decent head of hair for my wedding photos, but 6 months later it was nearly all gone again. I tried every potion and lotion sold by hairdressers who always for a moment convinced me that THIS was the magic elixir. I took supplements, my kind doctor did every blood test I asked for. I saw trichologists and dermatologists. I massaged smelly ointments bought online into my scalp and faithfully painted root thickeners that did nothing for my hair but gave me filthy nails, collars and pillowcases. I brazened out the bald and had a fine line in hats.

‘No snake oil was too bizarre for me to try’

Ten years ago, I got chatting to someone online, who casually mentioned that she was ordering herself a new wig. She assured me that ‘wigs had changed’. Tentatively, I started to explore, and at 55 my scalp had another massive shred, this time it appears probably permanently.

‘I now have a fine selection of wigs‘

None like rats, I’m glad to say. My current favourites are an Ellen Wille French in Rooted Silver, a Jon Renau Kristen in Martini, and an Amore Erika in Marble Brown. I’m completely ‘out’ about my baldness, so I’m free to have a different look every day if I want. My husband frequently loses me in supermarkets, as he can’t remember what I look like on any given day. I do still rock the bald some days, although my jawline doesn’t cope as well with such nakedness as it used to, and I do tend to wear a fair bit of makeup and change my contacts for glasses on bald days.

Online ordering has become easy and safe, with stores like Simply Wigs offering a fast personal service and easy returns (although I do try to avoid this).

I’m happier with my head now than I have ever been. I can always look polished, I never have to bother with expensive styling, colouring, or hair products. A wig can be bought for the same price as a cut and colour and lasts a lot longer.

‘If I had one wish . . .’

. . . it would be to go back to that 19-year-old, standing barefoot in her PJs on a cold bedroom floor in University halls, trying to work out what had happened to her hair overnight, and tell her it was all going to work out just fine. There is a great life still out there after hair loss.

love from,

Joyce

x x x