HAIR WE GO AGAIN

As if all my other health problems weren’t enough to deal with, I’ve been experiencing rather severe hair loss AGAIN. This has now been going on, on and off, for 3 years. After a terrible time 3 years ago, when I was the US at my mom’s and lost what felt like nearly half of my hair volume, it has slowly gotten better. There are so many possible reasons for hair loss that it’s almost impossible to pin down a cause: aging, health issues, psoriasis, medicines, genetics, drastic weight loss, stress, thyroid, menopause, hormone imbalances, malnutrition, etc., etc., etc.

This bout started about 2-3 weeks ago. I noticed it quite early, because it’s often in the shower, or when I’m brushing my hair in the morning after washing it, that it’s most noticeable. And it’s been under control for over a year, about, so when I did start noticing, my reaction was NO NOT AGAIN. I contacted my doctor on Sunday night and he called me on Monday morning to discuss, which was nice to have him being so proactive.

I am on so many new medicines right now that I was pretty sure it must be one of them. I started all of them in June, for the colitis/Crohns, (2 of my medicines I’ve been on for about 2 years so I was pretty sure they weren’t the problem plus neither of them lists hair loss as a known/common side effect) so I figured one of them had to be the cause. I googled side effects for all of them and sure enough, 2 of them listed hair loss as a major/known side effect and the other 3 had it listed as a possible. UGH. I haven’t had ANY other side effects from any of them, and they are all, especially the drip, working so well that it was really upsetting to think that this particular side effect might be happening now because of one of them.

I also just finished the cortisone treatment which has been gradually ramping down from the super high dosage I started on in early June, so it’s been nearly 2 full months of cortisone, which also has hair loss listed as a side effect. Didn’t matter if the cortisone cleared up everything else (I could breathe! No sneezing or constant nose-blowing! No overproduction of mucus! No Tic-Tacs for 2 months!) But Dr Harald was pretty sure it was the drip that was the culprit.

My appointment for dose 3 was actually scheduled for this morning but because he was having a doctor conference on all the current patients and treatments this afternoon, he rescheduled me for Monday morning so that he could discuss my case with his colleagues and get advice. Today he called me back to let me know their conclusion: most likely scenario is that my body was finally responding to the severe inflammation that led to my UC diagnosis. It’s called telogen effluvium and is often caused by emotional or physiological stress, both of which I was certainly experiencing in May and June. Thankfully this excessive shedding is usually temporary. I’m to monitor the situation and message him in 2 weeks with a status update. He removed one of the pills I had just started on (he’ll make a decision about restarting it in 2 weeks pending my report), and he’ll swap one of the other ones for something different if I’m still seeing a severe amount of hair loss by the end of August.

If you looked at Barky you’d probably wonder what my problem is, because I certainly still have a full head of hair. But it’s noticeably thinner if you are familiar with it, and if you saw the clumps that I’m cleaning out of the bathtub drain AND my brush EVERY MORNING right now, you’d understand my anxiety.

UGH. D:

Mood: worried and bummed out
Music: Audrey Hobert—Wet Hair