I'm Going Bald

Seriously. Every time I run my hands through my hair I come back with clumps of hair woven through my fingers. In the shower new clumps come out when I wet my hair, when I shampoo my hair, when I rinse my hair, when I condition my hair and when I rinse my hair. You'd think it would all come out with the first shampoo/rinse but no. Every. Single. Time. there are clumps of hair.

This happened to me once before. A few weeks after I stopped breastfeeding Lucas my hair started falling out. After several days of freaking out, I realized that my hair had been incredibly thick and luxurious during my pregnancy. Now that I had stopped breastfeeding my hormones must be returning to normal and thus all that extra hair was coming out. The clumps of hair still freaked me out but I knew there was a reason and I convinced myself that I wasn't really going to go bald.

This time when it started falling out the first thing that crossed my mind was that I was pregnant. Then I realized that if I was pregnant my hair would be getting thicker not thinner. So my next thought was that I had miscarried. About 10 seconds later I realized that was a pretty irrational conclusion as well and that it must be the steriods.

Ah, yes. The steriods. All the yucky side effects of prednisone did come with the semi-positive side effect of making my hair grow longer and faster. I say semi-positive because ALL my hair was growing. Including two wiry chin hairs which I had to pluck on an every-other-day-basis and which made me feel like an old lady. (I am happy to report no more incidences of chin hairs since going off the prednisone.)

So I understand that what is falling out is the extra hair that grew due to the steroids. But, hello, it has now been weeks--weeks!--of no prednisone and it is coming out in an alarming rate and in alarming quantities.

I hope you'll still be my friend when I'm bald.