But ... I am a smooth man!
(Genesis 27:11)
(For latest news about Paul's hair - follow this link!)
Jane started teasing me about my bald spot in June
1998. I didn't take it seriously at first, but in July I
noticed my hairline was receding, too, and by the end of
July, the rate of hair-loss was starting to seem a bit
unnatural, not least because I was also losing my
eyebrows! In August I went to a doctor, who sent me to a
specialist, but by then my hairdresser had already made a
diagnosis about my increasingly patchy hair - and the
specialist didn't really tell me anything more than I
already knew. It was Alopecia. In October I shaved off
what was left, and a few weeks later I was more or less
totally bald - all over. It took about four months...
What is Alopecia Areata?
(This definition is taken from the excellent web-site
on KERATIN.COM)
"Alopecia areata (AA) is a non-scarring,
inflammatory, hair loss disease that can affect men,
women and children. The factors that activate the onset
of alopecia areata and the mechanisms of its development
are not fully understood. Circumstantial evidence
suggests alopecia areata is an autoimmune disease where
cells of an individual's own immune system prevent hair
follicles from producing hair fiber."
It may not sound like a terrible disease - but just
look at what it did to me between june and october 1998:
Hair today...Gone
tomorrow...
Yes, in four months all my hair fell out. And not just
on my head, the same thing happened all over (yes: there
too!). All that was left was a couple of wisps in my
armpits - and pretty soon they were gone, too..
This has some social side-effects, too. People
suddenly started talking to me in hushed voices, asking
"How are you?" in the reverent tone normally
reserved for the terminally ill. When I repled "I'm
fine", they looked at me as if to say "How
brave..." A very odd feeling. And then the other day
someone saw me with Jonathan and Marcus and asked if they
were my grandchildren! Uh... well... Perhaps he had bad
eyesight.
Of course it's made an impression on the children,
too. As Jonathan remarked on a windy day: "We have
to go inside quickly, so my hair doesn't blow off, like
Daddy's!" Jonathan has had nightmares, too:
"The bad dreams won't stay in my head, they climb on
top of my head and eat my hair up!" Nothing wrong
with his imagination, anyway...
The question is: Will it ever come back? If it does -
you'll see the pictures here!
UPDATE! 07.01.2000
Wow:
I've got hair! At least a little bit: Little patches have
been developing on my head and face (if you look very
closely at the picture you can see a few wisps...). The
hair seems to be growing at a normal kind of rate, and
the patches also seem to be getting bigger. But they are
still only small patches, and to avoid looking like
something from a horror movie, I have to keep shaving
them off again. So no great hope. Ah well. We'll see what
happens in the Spring.
Update! 22.10.2000
Well, not much happened in the Spring, except for the
mysterious patches of hair getting slightly bigger. But
as Summer and Autumn progressed, the rate of change
appeared to pick up a bit. Now I've got hair over most
of my head, although it's still pretty thin. There are a
couple og hairs where my eyebrows and eyelashes used to
be, and there is a little bit of facial hair, too. That's
about it - but I'm letting the hair on my head grow for a
while to see whether there's enough for it to be any use.
Jonathan, having now got used to having a bald (and
smooth) Dad, has now complained that I'm too prickly.
Just can't win!
Also in the course of the Spring, I discovered The
National Association for Alopecia, so if you're
Norwegian, you can have a look at their web-site HERE.
Update! 19.01.2001
Here it
is - my new head of hair. Almost all over, at
any rate. Still not much on the face - and still nothing
anywhere else. The funny thing is - it's only taken me a
couple of months to get used to seeing that little fringe
of hair again, so all the old pictures with no hair are
already starting to look a bit weird. Was that really
me??
Update! 18.01.02
Well, another year has gone, and through the year my hair kept growing, and I even had to start shaving again. But now it seems the process has gone into reverse again. There is still a fair bit of hair around the back and sides, but the top is reverting to baldness. Now this could be a coincidence - but I'm also on sick-leave, suffering from "work-related stress". Will the hair come back again when everything's back to normal?
Update! 21.01.04
People are asking me how it's going now. Well - I seem to have settled into a pattern where my hair grows doing the spring and summer, and then gets thinner again during the winter. The good news is that I seem to grow more hair in the summer than I lose in the winter, so I'm looking more and more normal as time goes on. I've also developed some more facial hair and even some body hair, mostly on the arms. So the long term prognosis seems fairly good. On the other hand I've developed a rash on my face that won't go away, so maybe I should have a web-site about that next!
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