You are a great sister for trying to take care of your big sister. I am in the advanced stages of hair loss. My hair was always thin but became even more thin as I got older (I am 46 years old). I am SO devastated by this. I’m trying to stay as positive as I can but it is sooo amazingly hard to do when I comb my hair and see so much of it coming out. But as I said, I’m trying tos tay positive. I’m not going down without a fight and tell your sister to do the same. Ihave scarring alopecia. That for me means, that once the hair falls out, it doesn’t grow back because the hair follicles are scarring. I was told that my immune system (a virus) somehow thinks that the oils and stuff that makes the hair follicles healthy and grown is bad and it kills them off. Ugh! So she has given me and antibiotic (100mg) that take twice a day and a oil for my scalp which is peanut oil and steroids. I must say in the front of my head, there is actually hair starting to grow back. I can see the bald spots starting to fill in a little. I’m hoping that this antibiotic will kill off the virus and I can save what little hair I have left. If you are in the New York area, the doctor that I am seeing is at Columbia Presbyterian Hospial in Manhattan. She is a specialist in this area and is highly recommended. Her name is Dr. Michelle Hanjani and she has an office on East 60th Street and she’s also at the hospital itself. Tell your sister she ahs to pull it together so she can try and at least save what hair she has left. At least if nothing works she knows that she didn’t go down without a fight. It is very devastating. I think I cried for three days and then I realized if I wanted to at least save my hair I had to somehow pull it together and get proactive. Also, for her sake tell her to pray. Pray long and hard and ask God to help her through this. I wish her all the luck!

Take care.

i have a couple of questions… do you know about anyone trying eastern or natural medicine or visiting an acupuncturist or eastern healer? also, she wasn’t given a prescription for spiro or the pill… is this something we should be looking into?

i know i keep saying this, but thank you so much for everything. since my sister doesn’t want to visit the site i feel like i should be her voice just so we get all the information we can. thanks again.

I’m so sorry to hear that your sister is having such a hard time right now. I think every woman on this blog can relate to the feelings she is going through. I know she is feeling that her fate is sealed and she will end up being a bald woman. Not true. I’ve lived with my hair loss for 8 years and while it has been a struggle I’ve learned to accept a lot more than I ever thought I was capable of. I do have very thin hair now that has rapidly progressed due to what I feel was a totally separate issue causing the excess telogen effluvium these last 2 years. But still with some effort on my part I go out into the world even with the very thin hair I have now and get by. Your sister has so much more hair now than she even realizes, a diagnosis of androgenetic alopecia doesn’t mean your hair will all fall out tomorrow. It is for the most part a slow process that takes place over time. Like Dr. Price mentioned, the hair grows back after it has been shed but just grows in thinner. Hair loss treatments are aimed at slowing and even reversing this miniturization process down even further and keeping more of the hairs in an anagen phase for a long period of time. I understand where your sister is emotionally and honestly you are already doing everything you can for you.

It takes a long time to gain what I call “hair loss maturity” where it just becomes part of your daily routine and you learn to accept your current state of hair. Of course it still bothers me, and I still cry about it at times but I am able to deal with it a whole lot better than I did when I first started losing my hair, even through I have tremendously thinner hair. If you would have shown me a picture of myself today, 8 years ago and said this is what you will look like after 8 years of hair loss I would have totally freaked out and probably locked myself away. But that is only because I was use to having so much hair and wasn’t willing to give up or accept myself any other way. I didn’t realize that you can get by with thinner hair, plenty of women have naturally thin hair and have never lost a hair in their life. I had to learn to not hold on so tight and to be willing to let go… let go of the image and pictures of me with ridiculously thick hair and accept the new me with thin hair. I wrote this in a past post titled “At What Point Do We Let Go?” :

“When I first started losing my hair 8 years ago, I used to pray and pray that I would recover completely from whatever ailment or messed up hormone was causing me to lose my hair and that it would all grow back. As the years went by my attitude changed and I started pray that I could just keep what I had and have it stop falling out. More years past, and I started pray that I could be given strength to mentally deal with my hair loss and move on. That is where I am today. Oh course I want my hair back, I always keep hope that things may turn around, but ultimately I really want to learn how to accept myself as I am, today.”

I think that pretty much sums of the evolution of the way my attitude changed after living with hair loss for so many years. I want your sister to know that her diagnosis of having androgenetic alopecia, is just that a diagnosis. It doesn’t imply that she will be a bald woman, it doesn’t imply that she’ll lose all her hair this week, next month or next year. It is a condition a lot of women life with. Some women are naturally more optimistic and better at dealing than others, that wouldn’t have been me. I took it HARD and I missed out on a lot of my 20’s (I’m 29) because of it. It was needless too, looking back I had so much more hair than I ever realized even when I was in the deepest throws of shedding. I don’t want your sister to be like I was. I want her to enjoy the hair she has TODAY. Hair loss is something we have to life with and deal with, but we get a vote in our attitude and how we view our situation. We can be bitter, which I was for many years, or we can realize that all we can do is the best we can with what we have today, and when that is no longer enough we can choose to add hair to our own or wear a very natural undetectable human hair wig.

Life isn’t over. It’s only beginning. There is no doubt that having hair loss has made me a better person. I’m more understanding, more compassionate and more accepting, I work on trying to appreciate the things I am very fortunate to have today, things other people don’t. I am more patient as well, waiting for your hair get some regrowth after a shed is a slow process. I realize none of this will be of real help to your sister now because it probably all seems so sudden and definite for her. But she’ll get better, she has a wonderful sister by her side 🙂

Give your sister a big hug, hold her tight. Let her cry on your shoulder. Just be there. Unfortunately I don’t think there is anything you can really say to make her feel better. Just listen. I also understand your sister not wanting to visit the site, sometimes it just too overwhelming. The site will be here when your sister is ready and I look forward to hearing from her and having the opportunity to write to her directly.

~Y

p.s.– admin, i sent an email to the address listed in the contact form… don’t know whether it worked or not but i wanted to share my story because i recently got a huge breakthrough in my hair battle…

i was really hoping that her visit to dr. price would confirm what dr. lewis had told her. she was like her old self again last week. now she’s dealing with the reality of dr. price’s diagnosis of aga and she’s saying, “it is what is and there’s nothing i can do. i just have to deal.” i really want to believe dr. lewis’s diagnosis, but my sister said dr. price was right and that her hair has been thinning for years. she’s now been to 4 dermos who have pretty much told her a variety of things.

i was trying to encourage her to go to this website, but she’s telling me it is too hard to visit hairloss sites. i told her to let me know if and when she is ready because i think this is a great source of strength for so many women.

i really want to help her and make everything ok, but i know this is her own struggle and that i can only be there to support her or pick her up when she’s down. hopefully she’ll be ready to visit this site and find strength and support from it.

again, thank you for all your kind words and advice and for letting me participate in the forum.