Comments on: Hair loss drove me to suicide but now..I’m proud to have ditched my wig

By: jackie

jackie — Sun, 05 Jan 2020 17:01:08 +0000

I am crying reading this because it made me so happy for you! I usually hate blogs where people in the comments just write about their own problems….but i think i am crying so hard right now because for years i’ve been ignoring how much this hurts!

I am 28 years old and I don’t know if it is stress but my hair is falling out. I can see my skull and it is even more stressful because it isn’t like i can just shave it. my hair is a part of my identity. but i guess those years are passed.

It is just so insane how big of a deal hair is. it is like losing your nose or something.

By: Julie

Julie — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 12:51:16 +0000

You are so lucky finding a man like that, u deserve to be happy. I myself feel like i never will as the thought of showing a man myself without my wig on is scary. I have no eyebrows and about 4 or 5 lashes left and it has effected my confidence beyond repair. Its so good to hear that u have found true Love. Hope u have a happy life together ?

By: Louise

Louise — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 15:31:20 +0000

Thank you to all that shared your stories. It helped me to know that I am not alone. My hair had always been thin and by my 20’s, it just got worse. I put my hair up in a bun and gained weight. I looked much older than I am because of the lack of hair. I finally had the courage to try wigs at 35, and I loved it. Suddenly I looked young for my age. Some men claim not to care about my hair. I like to switch it up and over time when people at work or on my team in a sport I play in realize that something is off about my hair, their attitudes change. Some can’t look me in the eyes for fear of looking at my hair as if that’s somehow better. Some simply avoid talking to me. A few really lay on the sweetness and touch my hair and compliment it, trying to get at why I wear it. Some days I just want to stay home and avoid the world. Most people are assholes, I’ve learned this at a very early age. Some days like today, I contemplate on suicide and how’d I go about it. I have no family of my own. The family that I do have (father, aunts, uncles) are dysfunctional at best and I cannot see them for more than once a week. I feel drained and hopeless when I see them. I have friends that are sweet enough to include me in their family gatherings and such. While it’s nice and I enjoy myself, it’s just not my family. I am reminded of them, their incapability of celebrating life and feeling joy. My friends try to support me with my hair loss and again, I love them for trying. Sometimes it works. Other times their saying how unimportant it all is and how stupid society can be really doesn’t help. It minimizes my pain and I withdraw even further into my shell. I get tired of dealing with all this. So very damn tired.

By: Lizzy

Lizzy — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 00:06:26 +0000

Hi, I hope by sharing my hair loss story will be carthetic for me. I had the type of hair people would comment on ‘you have such beautiful hair’, I am not or ever was vain, but who doesn’t like a compliment. A few years back I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Two battles later, two rounds of chemo that caused entire body hair loss, a double mastectomy, weight gain, permanent shoulder pain and now hair thinning. Visits to two dermatologists an endocrinologist, my oncologist and three doctors, no one has a medical answer for my hair loss. My labs are fine, hormones are perportionately balanced, thyroid okay, scalp biopsy fine, the list goes on. My doctors tell me to ‘get over my hair loss’, my hair is ‘cosmetically acceptible’ or ‘I’ve had cancer, I should be grateful to be alive’, no one has taken the devastation of my hair loss seriously. Out of everything I have gone through, my hair loss has been the most emotionally painful experience I have ever felt. I have fallen into a clinical depression which I cannot come out of. Intense therapy isn’t working. I grieve everyday not for the loss of my breasts, the loss of my job, or the loss of my friends (the latter two a side effect of my cancer diagnosis) but for the loss of my hair. I fought so hard to beat cancer, now just wanting to die because of my hair. Loosing my hair to chemo is one thing… There’s the knowledge that the hair would grow back. Loosing my hair with no diagnostic reason or hope it will grow back is another. A reality my ‘beutiful hair’ may be permanently gone is a reality I cannot seem to face. I’m ashamed of my hair loss, I’m ashamed of the impact is has on me. I too feel isolated alone and very misunderstood. I just want to die in my sleep, have an end to the emotional suffering I endure every waking moment. No female can know or understand the impact of hair loss unless it happens to them.

By: Lainie

Lainie — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 06:25:53 +0000

Hi to all of you: i started seeing lots of loose hairs in the comb after shampooing about Feb. or March of this year. I tried to ignore it, but since I have fine (highlighted) hair, it wasn’t long before I could see my scalp. My family doctor isn’t interested in my problem and to see a dermatologist (in Canada) will be an 8 month wait, but by then, I will be totally bald. My hair is thinning all over, from what I can determine. I requested blood, thyroid and hormone tests – the first two were done. My iron levels and thyroid were fine. I am 74 and she sort of shrugged her shoulders re the hormones saying “you don’t need that test, as what’s the point” …. I feel she was thinking that I’m too old so why bother. She has lovely thick coarse hair – enough for six of us gals suffering with hair loss.

I have had chronic back/leg pain for 20 years and take pills for it every day, then my knees needed replacing, my feet now hurt (all spine structural issues) – all of this makes walking very painful. (I loved walking.) I also have arthritis in my neck, fingers, elbows, etc. plus fibromyalgia – I basically hurt everywhere. I lost three front teeth (a drunk driver hit us headon) my head went right through the windshield and my teeth broke off in the dash (seatbelts weren’t in vehicles in those days). I’m legally blind in one eye (age 39) due to a disease which left weakened areas in the remaining one. Last October, I was told I now have macular degeneration in the remaining eye! That really shook me up, I’m so scared of losing my other eye! I know it’s (M.D.) common as we age, but most people who get it, have at least two eyes, not one!

Now to see the hair falling out like mad 5 months after the vision news has left me devastated. I identify with so many of you; I find myself nodding in agreement when reading your letters. I find I keep feeling it to determine how much I have left, dread washing it, as I see more hairs fall out and find I look at other women’s head to see if I can find a fellow “sufferer”. Due to many pills I take, I find I get hot easily especially on my scalp and neck, and just can’t imagine how I will ever bear wearing a hot wig and wear my regular eyeglasses and my other darker wrap around glasses (for outside) on top of that!! I think I will go nuts in the humid summer months. I now start to think that if there really is a God, why does He have to take so much away from me all the time and keep piling all these physical hurdles on me.

I am nearing the stage of buying a wig as I just can’t spread my hairs around the scalp much more, and I am very aware of my scalp showing when out in the sunlight. I’m short so most people will easily see the top of my head.

I take eye vitamins for the macular degeneration and I have a sneaky feeling that, perhaps, my hair loss is due to that (just a hunch) but if I stop taking them, I’m afraid my eyesight will get worse! No one understands how hard it is to be a woman with skimpy, or no, hair!! It frames our face and can hide forehead wrinkles as we age, and when it looks great, we feel better about ourselves. I guess I will finally be going to a wig salon in the very near future. Thanks again to all of you for listening. By the way, I totally understand suicidal thoughts! Lainie

Lainie

By: Vesna

Vesna — Sun, 05 May 2013 10:20:58 +0000

I started loosing my hair suddenly about 6 weeks ago and now I estimate that I have only about 40% still left. I have been hiding from the “world”, except for visiting doctors, and the diagnosis so far is that my problem is probably telogen effluvium triggered by severe physical and psychological stress. But I am still going for (yet another!) blood test to check if there could be some other unerlying medial problem, and biopsy to see if the dermatologist’s diagnosis is correct.
I just got myself a wig, which my very understanding (and a lot younger boyfriend) helped me to select. Contrary to everything I found on the net, like you should go for similar style and colour, I got something completely different. It feels a bit strange, I only got it yesterday, but I hope to get used to it and use it as long as I need it, or for ever if my hair does not grow back. I am still struggling with the fact that I will need to see people who knew me with my ‘old’ hair but, unless someone picks up the fact that it is a wig, I will just lie through my teeth and claim I needed a ‘change’! I have no idea how I will explain the fact that it will not grow any longer over time, but that’s something for another day, I can’t afford to stress any more than I already do.

By: madmeggy

madmeggy — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:50:50 +0000

p.s. I’m a medical student and unfortunately I have seen a few women get a cancer diagnosis. When they received the diagnosis and found out they needed chemotherapy, every single one of them cried and asked if they were going to lose their hair. That should say something to those people who sit high on their thrones and have the nerve to judge us.

By: madmeggy

madmeggy — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:42:04 +0000

Hi all, I like all of you suffer from the nightmare of female pattern baldness. I remember 3 years ago when this all started happening. I started school and about a month in noticed a lot of hair in the shower. I have very fine hair and it was quite long so I just figured it was due for a haircut and that I should lay off the straightener. Then one day when I was home I bent down to pick up the laundry and my mother gasped and said ” what the hell happened to your hair.” The area was on the back side of my head to the left. I never saw it bc who really looks at the back of their head right? I started panicking and after what seemed like an eternity of blood work my PCP came up empty handed. I had also been extremely tired and a little sore (probably from sitting on my butt studying all day) so they sent me to rheumatology to look for an autoimmune disease. That wasted about a year of my precious time. Finally I was cleared from rheum and they sent me to derm who took one look at me and said- female pattern baldness mentioned something about women’s rogaine and walked out. I was stunned, absolutely stunned. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as female pattern hair loss. I was in denial for about another year but used the crappy women’s rogaine anyway. Whoever thought it was a good idea to invent a greasy product for thinning hair should be beaten. I didn’t believe the dermatologist bc I didn’t like her and didn’t feel she did any tests and didn’t prove that’s what I had. Then she started noticing hair loss that was not part of the “fpb pattern.” She flipped out and scared me into doing a biopsy. When the results were back she came in with a smirk and said “i was right, it’s FPB.” I remember the ride home with my mother as I tried to hold back the tears long enough to get into my apt and into a bathroom away from public eyes. She quietly said “its ok” and I screamed “no its not i’ll never be ok again.” It’s 4 years later and I wish I could say I wasn’t right but I am. Obviously I’m not ok since I’m on a site that I found by typing women’s hair loss + suicide. I’ve tried every bullshit product and probably spent 1000s of dollars of my student loan money. People have no idea what this is like. The worst part is that both my mom and dad are one of seven children and none of my 12 aunts and uncles or 30+ cousins have this. How can they honestly tell me it’s genetic? I live in an isolated world where I randomly have panic attacks and bouts of depression and scream at my family and friends. I finally told them I can’t see them all anymore. The worst part is, since I already have a history of depression they think this is just “stress and emotional issues.” My sister told me ” i was lucky in her eyes bc I don’t have something horrible like cancer.” She also told me I should go to a therapist and get antidepressants. After she said that to me it shoved me into a deeper depression and made me feel shallow and supperficial and ashamed. Worst of all it made me feel isolated and alone. I can’t even look at her the same anymore. They spend hours in the bathroom making their non-thinning hair look perfect every day before they go out the door but I’m vain bc I spend hours in the bathroom trying to cover thinning areas so that I can at least go to work and make it through the day with the tiny amount of dignifity I have left? I wish I could handle this better but I just can’t. I spent my whole life feeling ugly and unwanted and when I finally accepted and loved myself for the way I looked all my hair starts to fall out. It’s a cruel joke. Every morning I wake up angry bc I went to bed hoping I would die in my sleep. Every time I have to take a shower or do my hair I start crying. Every single second of every single day I stare at women’s hair and compare it to my own. Every day I curse the day I was put on this earth and pray that I leave it as soon as possible. Every day I get closer to ending my own suffering and pain. What we are experiencing is suffering. So how dare anybody ever tell us that FPB is “purely cosmetic.” It’s so much more than that.

By: Maria

Maria — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:51:33 +0000

I have suffered from hairloss for many years. But just maybe this year I noticed how thinning my hair has gotten. There is no way to hide it anymore. My older sister that has no hairloss says well at least you should be grateful that you dont have Cancer or a terrible disease. But what she does not understand that is killing me anyways. Everyday that I look in the mirror. I know and im sorry for all that people that have cancer but losing my hair it’s a terrible to me. I wish I did not care so much about my hair but this society is terrible. I get people asking me did you know that you are going bald? I dont answer because I dont want to cry in front of them. I noticed that I am going bald every single day, hour, minute etc.

By: mary

mary — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 07:45:18 +0000

I have been losing my hair too and I want to die everyday. I try to be positive, but I can’t take it anymore. I am so ugly I want to die.