This is the beginning; the start of baldness, insecurities, and who knows what else... Shall we begin? (As if you have a choice! Mwah ha ha ha ha!)
Sorry. Here goes...
Before.
(My two twin friends that have stuck with me through thick and thin, literally!)
The entire rest of the day, I worried about it. We had a little dance festival going on that day at school and I remember that as I was running out onto the field with the rest of my class, I wondered if anyone else could see that little spot. (The insecurities were just starting to set in.) My concerns were still premature, but it also didn't help that we were having family pictures later that day and I had to worry about covering up a little bald spot so that no one could see it in the years to come.
Well, needless to say, that bald spot turned into a bald patch... which turned into several bald patches... which then turned into complete baldness... which eventually turned into no hair at all, anywhere. I even have the pictures to prove it! (Scroll down quickly as to protect your eyes from the awful sight!)
*Just as a side note, I've always been able to joke around about my situation, so I will probably be prone to making fun of myself at one time or another during this story. :-)
Anyway... where was I? Oh yeah.
In a matter of months, my hair was gone. It started to go during my last month of 5th grade, and by the beginning of 6th, I was completely bald. I was the only kid in school that got to wear hats. (I don't know why it never occurred to me or my parents that there were probably kids' wigs out there, but it was before "Locks of Love" and things like that, so I guess we figured hats were my only option.) I was lucky that all the kids in my 5th grade class moved with me into the same 6th grade class. Even our teacher was the same. I think that was a blessing I've never really thought about until now.
I still had some of the same friends, and also made some new ones. One of my best friends at the time really helped me when it came to making light of my situation. There were three, third-grade boys that liked to tease us, so in turn, we teased them right back. I recall a couple of times telling them to leave us alone OR ELSE! We teased that if I touched them, their hair would fall out, too. (Kinda twisted, I know.) I also remember working in the food line during lunch, and as I was handing out who-knows-what, kids told me I wasn't allowed to wear hats at school. I always enjoyed telling them, "Well, I can!" Sometimes my friend would even respond before me, "Well, she can!"
During this whole time, I tried a myriad of treatments to get my hair to grow back. I had started seeing a dermatologist by the name of Dr. Parkinson. To this day, I am so grateful for him because he really cared, and would find anything he could that might make even the slightest improvement. We tried cortisone injections, Rogaine (and at the time it was very new, so there was just prescription-strength men's treatments), various topical treatments, and I even tried tanning beds in hopes that the UV rays would stimulate hair growth. (Tanning beds have come a long ways, since those days, let me tell ya.)
I was very shy about my baldness, so I never left the house without a hat on. Even going to the swimming pool during the summer, I wore my little baseball caps in the pool and put up with the stares and pointing from all the other kids. What else was a girl to do?
My sister and my cousin stayin' by my side.
Amazingly enough, my hair started to grow back during the summer before 7th grade. But that's a story for another time.
To be continued...
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