Peach fuzz

My hair started to come back during the radiation.  For me it never fell out like it did the first time, but I did go get my head shaved because I knew what the chemo would do and didn't want to deal with trying to fight it under the wig.   

I didn't have sandwich treatment, just 6 straight rounds of chemo before radiation. My hair fell out a little on the later side - wasn't entirely gone until around the 5th treatment - and I started getting peach fuzz w/new hair a couple of weeks later. I had a few straggly strands I never lost entirely (I looked gawd-awful, like Gollum's mother), so I think it depends on where your hair is at during the growth cycle vis a vis the chemo schedule. My chemo ended on April 10th of last year and by mid-June had a nice little crop thing going, based on hair that had started coming in before the chemo ended. I found the whole thing strange, and unpredictable. 

Mine is strange so far. I'm on neoadjuvant treatment ... 3 chemos, surgery and rest break (if you call recovering from surgery a rest!) for about a month, back to 3 chemos. I just had #5 two days ago. So my case will be different.

First chemos, the hair started shedding with a vengeance at the very start of the second treatment. There was only one really thin spot during the first treatment period, but it didn't look too bad. About a week into the the second treatment, though, I was pretty much bald. Very, very light peach fuzz at the end of the cycle, but you'd have to squint at the mirror to see it. Nasty itching during the first treatment, and folliculitis during the second. 

Third treatment, more noticeable peach fuzz (you didn't have to squint into a mirror). and nasty folliculitis/acne. I had acne on my face that extended into my scalp. Lovely. Hair growing in really slowly but darn it ... it was hair!

Rest period, the folliculitis went away, and the pimples from those were going down. The acne persistsed through about half the rest period, but it went down by the end of it. You could obviously see the beginning of "chemo hair" ... darker mixed with white (well, I was quite graying before!), unruly if you put a chemo cap on it for five mintues. My scalp was still noticeable. But at this point, you can see that I had actual hair when you looked at me across the room! Hair! Yay!

Fourth treatment, post-surgery ... I thought I'd lose all the hair again by the end of it. It stopped growing. Some strands fell out, but not much more than normal strands falling out. It's coarser ... less fine than it was before. (My hair initially grew in finely, not coarsely like some here. I have very fine hair normally). I could see some strands fall out now and again. But it was still there! No obviously bald spots ... pretty uniform. No folliculitis. Acne gone.

Fifth treatment ... none of the massive falling-out I experienced the first time ... yet. No itching. No folliculitis ... yet. Hair is still stopped in its growth cycle. Some thinning, but I expected that. Still pretty obviously on my head. We'll see what happens at this point.

Eyebrows ... pretty much there during the first three treatments. They REALLY thinned during the rest period, of all times. Still thinnish, but there now. I expect I might see more thinning, though. I'm getting better with the brow pencil.

I asked my care team if hair loss meant anything concerning prognosis. My nurse emphatically told me, 'NO!"