Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Hair -- the first thing I think of when I hear the word chemo is bald people. Chemo makes people lose their hair. Since being diagnosed with cancer, I have learned that not everyone loses their hair. Some people don't lose their hair towards the end of their treatment. Some people don't lose it at all (and contribute their hair retention to ice packs). In the end, I think, in my all my pure and glowing ignorance of medicine, that the hair loss is dependent upon the drugs and an individual's body's reaction to the drugs.

The drugs that I am currently receiving, Adriamycin and Cytoxin, cause hair loss, or alopecia, as hair loss is medically-referred. Everytime I think of alopecia, I think of Stan Sitwell on "Arrested Development" whose eyebrows kept falling off of his face. With the AC drugs, first I'll begin to lose my hair in patches. Any hair that I don't lose with AC will be gone with when I begin Taxol (in mid-January), including eyebrows and eyelashes.

I am due to lose my hair sometime next week. I am not sure exactly when but it is soon. Yesterday I went to get my hair cut at a salon. My hair was very long, a little past my shoulders; the longest it had been in years. The stylist cut my hair fairly short, and thinned it out a bit. I have a lot of hair -- lots and lots of strands of hair. I'm not looking forward to cleaning up after the clumps as they fall out. I did purchase a silk pillowcase. Supposedly it well help me retain my hair for a little but longer; I don't really see how but am willing to give it a try.