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Ugh my hair

Posted by Denise @denisestlouie, Dec 17, 2024

I feel like puking. I'm reading an article from Medical News Today on hair regrowth following chemotherapy. It's so discouraging. It's talks about slow growth, thinner growth, hair that even after the cancer growth is thinner than before and may not ever look or feel like it did before. I'm so glad I didn't see this article before I lost my hair

My bio hair is stick straight and very fine but full and I wear it blonde. I had plenty of fine hair that I was pretty good at working with. I mostly liked my hair.

I wore my hair permed though the 80s into the 90s. Sometimes really short other times shoulder length. I call that the poodle years.

My hair grows slow and has never been much longer than my shoulders. I consider myself a "short hair dog." I always envy the beautiful long "Farrah" like hair my cousin had, but I could style mine like Olivia Newton John. In 1996 I made a really hard decision to cut my hair short similar to Princesses Diana's. It was a hard decision because I knew it could be years to be shoulder length again. Over the last decade I wore it shoulder length.

I was sick about loosing my hair. I wanted to use cold capping while receiving chemotherapy. The care manager sent me a message that I felt was cold and uncaring when I requested the order for cold capping. She said the doctor will sign it but you be wasting your money it never works. I went to PubMed and I found an article discussing Carboplatin and TAXOL combo and cold capping. All patients stopped cold capping after the second cycle because it didn't stop the alopecia. So I decided to embrace wigs.

I'm in a hair loss sister community on Facebook. Most the women have hair loss do to hormonal disorders and autoimmune alopecia, but some women's hair didn't fully return after chemotherapy.

I've been really doing a great job taking care of my body through chemotherapy. Hopefully my hair will return better than before. I can only hope right?

Denise
Picture from 1999. Zoe and I in Guangzhou, China

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Denise | @denisestlouie | Feb 26 9:05am
In reply to @wheaton "Hi all, just want to add my experience with chemo and hair. I did chemo in..." + (show)
@wheaton

Hi all, just want to add my experience with chemo and hair. I did chemo in the fall of 2018. Believe or not, I miss the days when I lost my hair or was bald 👩‍🦲.
I could shower and do my make up in 20 minutes, no bad hair days!! I bought the most colorful and fun bandanas for $1 at Hobby Lobby. I had lost my straight naturally blonde hair and my eyelashes and eyebrows, but I made it through chemo and 35 radiation treatments (with peach fuzz) and that was the most important thing. My hair grew back extremely curly and grey but it did grow back. Almost six years and many haircuts later, I still have the curls, the texture has changed, but I’m still here 5 years cancer free. To make a long story short, you are NOT your hair, you’re very strong women going through a journey. Have fun with wigs, hats, scarves or nothing at all but don’t forget to celebrate the strong women you are. All the best 🙂

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Great post! Thank you!
I have actually been very scientific about my hair or at least I was going to call myself. I did not shave it so that I could see how long it would take for it to all fall out. It was somewhere between the 4th and 5th treatment when I noticed that my eyebrows were gone and my eyelashes were gone. And I still had struggling hair until after the sixth treatment. Then 4 weeks after my last therapy session I could feel hair coming out of my head. It was barely visible. Within 3 days I could see it. I thought it was going to be white but now we are nearly 3 months out. It's somewhere between an 8th and 1/4 in Long. It's fawn color is too short to know if it's curly. It's full. Every part of my head has hair, even the temples. My eyebrows came back within weeks. It made it so that I couldn't wear my tattoo stickers of eyebrows anymore. And as of this week, I feel my eyelashes are long enough that I no longer want to wear false eyelashes. Mascara does a great job making my natural eyelashes look great.

I'm thinking about my exit plan for when I stop wearing the wigs. I used to wear my hair very short almost all my life. It's only been in the last 6 or 7 years that I've worn it shoulder length. So I'm trying to be patient and not look at hairstyle shit because there really nothing there to style. But I have a great hairdresser who's been with me through this entire process. She's She went with me to pick out my wigs. She cut them for me. We've gone out to eat because we don't get to see each other anymore. I can't wait to get back to the beauty shop color my hair and have it styled. I love messing with my hair. I don't have great hair. I'm just really good at taking care of it

REPLY
Trisher | @wheaton | Feb 26 11:50am

You’ll be getting your hair cut, colored and styled before you know it. Funny thing is, we know we most likely loose our hair, but I had no idea about eyebrows and lashes, until I tried to apply mascara one day. Then I realized I had lost my eyelashes! I still laugh at myself for not knowing! Another life lesson. Hang in there and be well.

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