Alopecia sucks.
Imagine every morning you receive a punch in the face. Every night you go to bed, knowing the next morning you are going to start your day with a punch in the face. It hurts, but you are prepared for it. You, "take it like a man." Most days, you just take the punch and move on with your day.
But somedays, punch after punch after punch, you snap and spend your day crying and grieving and yelling at the person punching you and wishing the punching would stop, and knowing that the next morning, the puncher will be there, waiting to give you another punch in the face.
That's what this Alopecia journey feels like. Every day, I wake up to Charlotte's jammies full of hair, handfuls of hair in her brush, hair all over her pillow and the couch. And it just never stops. How does she even have any hair on her head anymore? How can this keep going?
Stanford said that most kids lose all their hair in 2 weeks. Charlotte has been losing hair for 2 years. I don't know if that is gracious or torturous.
I used to hold onto the thought that it didn't look as noticeable to everyone else as it did to me. Not anymore. Now, I see people staring at her, wondering if she's sick. "What's wrong with that little girl?"
People too embarrassed to ask me about it, whisper when I step away.
I just want to make a shirt for her to wear:
I HAVE ALOPECIA
The last thing I want is for her to lose all her hair, but if that is inevitable for her, let's just end the torture already. We can excuse the punching man, my face is sufficiently broken.
As far as her treatment goes, there is a little bit of regrowth occurring on her large front spot. Encouraging? I don't know... are we just going to continue this cycle of growth and loss?
Every day she asks me, "Mom, is my hair long enough to braid yet?"
Alopecia sucks.
