Hair Loss :( ....How did U handle it??

Being Bald
I had radiation for brain cancer. Since the tumor was in the front, I lost the front half of my hair so I shaved my head. As strange as it sounds to a lot of people, chemo did not make my hair fall out. I was tired of wearing wigs at times but I also found it to be much easier than having to brush, blow dry, then spray junk in every single day. There are so many celebrities that wear wigs. There are so many people in general that wear wigs. I notice it now a lot more. A lot of older women wear wigs, my grandmas both wore wigs.I had a wig that I was completely in love with and didn't mind wearing. Actually, I had the best hair of my life for the time I wore them. As for when I decided to let the world know my secret, it wasn't until I went to a hair dresser and had my hair professionally cut, styled, and colored. I had a lot of white and gray hair coming in; my hair dresser was mortified by that so she fixed me up. My hair dresser cut my hair as best she could - it was the thickest hair I could ever have imagined having. I still can't believe I have this much hair. I think I had about 2 inches of hair when I went for a cut so I had some kind of style. I went back every 2 months to get it trimmed up because we were waiting for the hair on the top of my head to catch up with the bottom part. It wasn't until I was comfortable styling my own hair and having my own hair that I quit wearing the wig. I actually miss having long hair at times. Right now my hair isn't quite finger length. People love the short hair though and I do too, if it looks great. Having your own styled hair will make you feel fantastic, I promise. I always hated when anyone would say that bald is beautiful because you don't feel beautiful, it was humiliating for me because being bald is a dead giveaway that you're sick.
I was more embarrassed about having gained almost 100lbs from taking steroids. I still have huge stretch marks (people actually stare at me, can you believe that?) and extra skin. My doctor has said I will need reconstructive surgery to fix that. That was my huge stumbling block and still is currently.

Mannie said:

Being Bald
I had radiation for brain cancer. Since the tumor was in the front, I lost the front half of my hair so I shaved my head. As strange as it sounds to a lot of people, chemo did not make my hair fall out. I was tired of wearing wigs at times but I also found it to be much easier than having to brush, blow dry, then spray junk in every single day. There are so many celebrities that wear wigs. There are so many people in general that wear wigs. I notice it now a lot more. A lot of older women wear wigs, my grandmas both wore wigs.I had a wig that I was completely in love with and didn't mind wearing. Actually, I had the best hair of my life for the time I wore them. As for when I decided to let the world know my secret, it wasn't until I went to a hair dresser and had my hair professionally cut, styled, and colored. I had a lot of white and gray hair coming in; my hair dresser was mortified by that so she fixed me up. My hair dresser cut my hair as best she could - it was the thickest hair I could ever have imagined having. I still can't believe I have this much hair. I think I had about 2 inches of hair when I went for a cut so I had some kind of style. I went back every 2 months to get it trimmed up because we were waiting for the hair on the top of my head to catch up with the bottom part. It wasn't until I was comfortable styling my own hair and having my own hair that I quit wearing the wig. I actually miss having long hair at times. Right now my hair isn't quite finger length. People love the short hair though and I do too, if it looks great. Having your own styled hair will make you feel fantastic, I promise. I always hated when anyone would say that bald is beautiful because you don't feel beautiful, it was humiliating for me because being bald is a dead giveaway that you're sick.
I was more embarrassed about having gained almost 100lbs from taking steroids. I still have huge stretch marks (people actually stare at me, can you believe that?) and extra skin. My doctor has said I will need reconstructive surgery to fix that. That was my huge stumbling block and still is currently.

Bald
I finished my chemo June 30 last year. I went on vacation two weeks later. It was way too hot for the wig so I wore a pink or white ball cap. I'm not really the ball cap type of person, and they are way too hot as well. The bandana's also got to me with the heat. That's when I decided to say !@#$%^& and went bald in public. I never thought I would be comfortable with it, and it was hard at first. I think the easier part was that I was away on vacation where nobody knew who I was and this gave me time to get comfortable with it. After all, you did battle cancer and you did have chemo and you did lose your hair due to the whole process. The worst that can happen is people will look at you or be afraid to look at you. I actually found that most people were nicer to me and would go out of their way to help me. I was told by some people that it really hit them when they seen me bald, it just made things seem that much more real to them.
I have to add that when my hair did come back it did not come back very thick for me. It was very thin in the beginning and you could see through it for many months. It was very sparse on top and did not grow very quickly at first. Once it did start growing, look out!
Good luck, only you can decide what to do, you have to be comfortable with it. Maybe starting with little steps may help

i know exactly how you are
i know exactly how you are feeling with the no hair thing. i am a senior in high school and i recently was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. i lost all of my hair, right now it is about 1/2 inch long. when i first lost my hair i was kinda depressed. i felt like poeple was always staring at me. i have a low self esteem also, i am just now starting to feel comfortable about putting my hood down. i think that you should start doing little things to make your self more comfortable, like at first i made sure everyone knew i didnt have hair and like i only let my close friends see it. then after a while i just started feeling better about it. if you think about it if you didnt wear your wig, do you think anyone is really going to say anythign about it? and if they are your friends they will have nothing to say, and if they are not your friends then you shouldnt care what they think anyways. tomorow is the first day i am going to go to school with out my hood on. i am scared of how people are gonna look at me but i need to get over it. wearing a hood or wig all the time is very stressful to me. im sure you agree. believe me it is very hard. and im sur you can get thru it just take little steps and you will become more comfortable. i hope i helped a little.

Beautiful
Hiya Grape!

I can relate to your baldness issue ~ except more from my 5 year old's perspective. I am very comfortable with my naked head and walk about with out any coverage, but my little one is very nervous about it - this whole process is about HER, too. (I am currently in treatment for agressive B-cell NHL)

So, I have taken to buying LOTS of fun hats. I bought some really cool ones at Newbury Comics and Icing as well as finding a few nice ones in an ACS catalog. I also invested in a set of "bangs" which go on the head with an elastic under the hat (in a similar idea to the halo wig another person mentioned). It makes it look like I have hair under my hat, but short hair that I just keep pretty tight in the back. My friends all commented on how good they looked when we went out to dinner the other night and it helps my little one's anxiety so they were totally worth the $15 I spent on them (plus only $12 for the hat!).

A friend of mine is bald and beautiful right now due to breast cancer treatments and she claims we should all wear our heads naked because there isn't enough awareness and there is too much ignorance to the plights of treatment.

Brave on, bald beauty.

Jennygirl84 said:

I hated wearing my wig! lol
I hated wearing my wig! lol As much as I wanted hair so badly, the wig was so uncomfortable for me and I ended up just wrapping my head in a bandanna. It's not easy losing hair especially when your young. I was 17 and although it was the least of my worries at the time recieving treatments, still it was very traumatic. I started cutting my hair very short so that way it would be easier for me when I lost it... I lost it pretty quickly when I started treatments. I ended up giving in and just shaving my head because it was unbearable for me to sleep when I was rolling around in my own bed of hair at night. It also made my scalp extremely sore when it started falling out and was very sensitive. In the beginning, it can be very depressing watching yourself transform in sch a way (esp for a girl) but eventually you'll get used to your new look and plan on what you'll do with it when it grows back. Thats the only thing that got me through, I was looking forward to all the funky hair fazes I would be going through. And when it did grow back (which it will) it was kinda fun going through all the hairstyles I had, it also makes you emotionally stronger and little issues are easy to face in the future.

Dealing with Hair Loss and a Wig
I lost my hair a month after I started chemo back in 2001. I had really long hair a month before I was diagnosed but I cut it for my boyfriend at the time because he didn't like my long hair. Who knew that even though I hated cutting it, it was actually a small blessing in disguise. My doctor actually told me that my hair would fall out slowly over a matter of months, if it fell out at all. But barely a month after I started chemo I was sitting at the computer talking to a friend telling him about what was going to happen to me and that I was planning on dumping my boyfriend because we had a falling out where he told me that the doctors were stupid and that I wasn't sick and that was just one fiasco that I wish I never went through. I was talking to my friend and my neck started to itch, and when I went and rubbed my neck I came away with a hand full of hair. I looked at my lap and I was covered in hair. I started freaking out, I think it was one of the most traumatic things I went through during treatments. The next day, a family friend came over and shaved what was left off and even then she would just barely touch my scalp with the razor and the hair just fell out. I cried the whole time.

In 2002 I finally consented to a wig because I was asked to escort a good friend to his graduation because if I didn't take him he would have had to take his sister. His mother was embarrassed that I would be going with a bald head even though she was the one that had shaved my head for me. So I went and bought a wig just for that graduation. The moment it came, and I had it styled and everything I instantly hated it. I was on radiation at that time for preventive treatment. Despite the fact that I spent over $300 on that wig, I only wore it for that graduation and I hated it so much I refused to wear it. When I looked in the mirror in that wig it wasn't me that I was looking at and I didn't like what I saw.

The hair lose I came to terms with after a week, but I avoided mirrors because I hated my reflection. The wig I dealt with by not wearing it and hiding it.

chrissie1 said:

Hair Loss
Well, when I was undergoing cancer treatment in 2001 I wore a wig at ALL times, except when I was home.

I was only 14, and dealing with a lot of teen issues at the time, so I was very very self-conscious. I'm now 22, and if I were to have cancer again (I hope I never will) I think I would just wear scarves. Wigs are such a pain in the butt.

What I can say, though, is that once my hair started growing back in, it was really really short and I continued to wear my wig. It eventually got to be too long to put the wig over, so my mom forced me to walk into school with my buzz cut. I was mortified, but I still think that she did the right thing. It was tough love, but it worked. All my classmates stared at me when I walked into class, but you know what? They got over it in like 5 minutes. From then on, I never wore my wig, and my hair grew back fine.

Just recently, at 22, my hair has started to thin. I think it is a delayed side effect of the chemo. It's still not that bad, and I'm hoping it is just going through a phase and may regrow.

Hope this helps!

hair tranplant
Hair transplant is a surgical technique that involves moving skin containing hair follicles from one part of the body (the donor site) to bald or balding parts (the recipient site). It is primarily used to treat male pattern baldness, whereby grafts containing hair follicles that are genetically resistant to balding are transplanted to bald scalp.

I had a brain tumor removed
I had a brain tumor removed this summer. Luckily, it was benign, but likely due to previous radiation (for cancer and other things). My surgeon was really great and shaved as little hair as he could. Still, I have this obvious scar and I had staples so for the first few weeks it looked really gross (and I couldn't wash my hair in that area b/c I think the soap could irritate it, I'm not really sure why). My grandmother made me bandanna/head scarves things that I wore out in public.

I often find that the little things upset me more than the big things. My sister picked out some really cutesy patterns for the scarves, which I would've liked in a handbag or something. For example, she picked out a black fabric with stars instead of plain black, which is what I wanted. I had my first "adult" job this summer (I'm 20) at a hospital, and I wanted more grown-up looking scarves to match my work clothes. Add that to the fact that I'm very short and petite, and I was afraid this would add to people not taking me seriously. I got really, really upset about this. I had cried for like 30 seconds before going into surgery because it was in an area that could affect my comprehension and everyone I knew who had had this tumor had ended up in rehab (I'm studying abroad and I just really wanted to be able to do that and also continue to do well at school). I had a huge sob-fest about the scarves. My mom also made me wear them whenever people came over. This annoyed me because I didn't really care, especially since I was already in my pajamas and looking like a mess anyway. I knew all the people, and they knew I had brain surgery so, I figured they would expect I had a scar on my head... lol.

Luckily after I got the staples removed and was allowed to wash all of my hair, I was able to flip my part so you can't see the scar. I have to be careful putting my hair up, because if I don't brush it right you can see the scar. I'm also getting hair growing back around the scar, which sticks up really weirdly. I'm really happy that it's not obvious. My boss couldn't get over how I looked so "normal" lol (I got treated at the same hospital I was working at and she visited me in the ICU). I didn't have to lose my hair when I had cancer because I had thyroid cancer and had RAI and surgery. But from this I can understand why it's such a big deal. I'm a huge person for focusing on the big picture and having perspective, but sometimes when the "big picture" is what's going wrong, it's easier to focus on the little things and get upset about those because it's harder to deal with the reality of cancer. Plus for women I think hair can be a really defining part of who you are/how you present yourself to the world, so it's natural to grieve losing it even if you end up feeling comfortable with a wig or just being bald.

So... I guess the point is I would allow yourself to grieve losing your hair and let yourself be OK with getting upset about it. And then you can focus on how you would be most comfortable presenting yourself. Based on my experience, I think it could be really empowering to pick out a wig or scarves or bandannas that YOU really like and try to make it a fun experience, like you are shopping for jewelry or something (and get someone you trust to respect your tastes to help you!) The big thing for me was that on top of not having control about whether I had a glaring scar on my head, I also didn't have control over what I was wearing to cover it because I wasn't well enough to go shopping. In the midst of such a life-changing time it's nice to have control over SOMETHING even if it's something as small as the scarf you're wearing today.

Also maybe you could treat yourself to something else that can make you feel good about your body - like a spa treatment, mani-pedi or a makeup consultation