It's not perfectly combed in this photo, but I love the length and it looks so much better! Also, in this photo I am wearing the cute girls' size tee shirt I got at American Girl Place in Chicago last month! Yay me!
Showing posts with label hair loss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hair loss. Show all posts
Friday, November 4, 2011
New hair
Awhile back I posted about my thinning hair. I thought the hair loss had stopped by about six months out of surgery. I was wrong - it picked up again around the beginning of September and just kept on falling out. :( For most of the last 20 years, I have kept my hair pretty short and either wedged or layered. During the past year or so, I let it grow out a bit - no longer than chin length, but pretty much all the same length in a blunt cut. I really quite liked the new length. However, by mid-October I had lost so much of my original hair volume (truly about 75%!) and had enough new undergrowth (now about an inch or more long), that my remaining longer hair reminded me of a bald person with a bad comb-over! Once again I went to my friend and hairdresser asking for help. I told her I thought it was time to get rid of the old length and start trying to meet the new growth. She worked her magic, and this is the result:
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
A Good Week
I intended to get this written and posted on Sunday, but as they say,"The best laid plans...."
Last week was a good week. From Sunday to Sunday I lost 3 pounds. A few months ago that would have been a normal weight loss, but at six months out from surgery, 3 pounds in one week is quite a bit. Those 3 pounds dropped my weight loss enough that I now have less than 20 pounds left to lose before reaching my goal weight.
Tuesday last week was my monthly measuring day, and I found I had lost another 9-3/4 inches (along with a 10-pound weight loss) since mid-August. Those lost inches included a 2-1/2 inch loss around my waist! My waist is now smaller than my top and smaller than my bottom for the first time in years - woo-hoo!!! I tried on the clothes in my drawers and hanging in my closet and found that (drum roll, please) the size sixteen pants and few remaining XL shirts are just way too big and baggy now. I can fit easily into the size 14 zip-front designer jeans (Eddie Buaer, Ralph Lauren, and Style& Co.) and the size 12 zip up and pleated front dress slacks and the size small pull-on warm-up pants that were tucked away with the "not-quite-yet" clothes.
One day last week I went grocery shopping with my 39-year-old daughter and was asked if we were sisters. Goodness! I am 24 years older than she is and have gray hair! I guess if the flabby skin is covered and I am smiling, I don't look like I am in my sixties.
One more thing to report. I got my hair trimmed up on Friday, as I am leaving town tomorrow for three weeks to visit my children in Illinois and Wisconsin (and see my brand-new grandson!). As Linda was combing through and cutting my hair, she commented, "It looks like you have a little buzz cut going on here underneath your longer hair!" Yay! My hair is starting to grow back in - and it is all that nice silvery white!
Yes, it was a very good week.
Last week was a good week. From Sunday to Sunday I lost 3 pounds. A few months ago that would have been a normal weight loss, but at six months out from surgery, 3 pounds in one week is quite a bit. Those 3 pounds dropped my weight loss enough that I now have less than 20 pounds left to lose before reaching my goal weight.
Tuesday last week was my monthly measuring day, and I found I had lost another 9-3/4 inches (along with a 10-pound weight loss) since mid-August. Those lost inches included a 2-1/2 inch loss around my waist! My waist is now smaller than my top and smaller than my bottom for the first time in years - woo-hoo!!! I tried on the clothes in my drawers and hanging in my closet and found that (drum roll, please) the size sixteen pants and few remaining XL shirts are just way too big and baggy now. I can fit easily into the size 14 zip-front designer jeans (Eddie Buaer, Ralph Lauren, and Style& Co.) and the size 12 zip up and pleated front dress slacks and the size small pull-on warm-up pants that were tucked away with the "not-quite-yet" clothes.
One day last week I went grocery shopping with my 39-year-old daughter and was asked if we were sisters. Goodness! I am 24 years older than she is and have gray hair! I guess if the flabby skin is covered and I am smiling, I don't look like I am in my sixties.
One more thing to report. I got my hair trimmed up on Friday, as I am leaving town tomorrow for three weeks to visit my children in Illinois and Wisconsin (and see my brand-new grandson!). As Linda was combing through and cutting my hair, she commented, "It looks like you have a little buzz cut going on here underneath your longer hair!" Yay! My hair is starting to grow back in - and it is all that nice silvery white!
Yes, it was a very good week.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Hair today, gone tomorrow....
Or should I say,"Hair yesterday, gone today"? One of the side effects of this surgery, is hair loss. The surgeons' guidebook/instruction manual says that a recovering patient will usually start losing hair at about three months after surgery. It states further that the hair loss should continue for a couple of months, with total hair loss reaching about one-third of the original hair volume. Regrowth would then begin at about the six-month post-surgery mark. I had read this and, intellectually, I knew that it would happen to me. But I've gotta' tell ya' that I wasn't prepared.
All my life, my hair has been very,very fine; but I have always had a lot of that very fine hair. I guess I was even a bit vain about my thick head of hair. Even when I started wearing it short all the time, and even when it went gray, I loved my hair. My gray hair was silvery white, and I loved it when so many people would tell me that I had beautiful platinum hair. It had thinned a bit with age, but there was still plenty of it. When I started losing hair by the handful about two-and-a-half months after surgery, I was a bit shocked. For almost three months my hair kept falling out. I would blow it dry after gently washing it, and a whole little cloud of silver would float down to the floor. At the end of every shower I would pull a wad of white hair from the drain grate. I was continually brushing hair from my clothes. I thought it would never stop falling out!
Finally, about two weeks ago, the hair loss began to slow down and I started losing less and less every day. I have been assessing the total damage. For one thing, instead of losing about one-third of my original hair volume, I have no more than about one-third of that beginning volume left on my head. For another thing, the hair that has fallen out has been my most beautiful platimum hair, and I am left with very fine and very thin medium blond hair shot through with darker gun-metal gray. My friend and hairdresser came up with a cut and style that will allow me to create a bit of fullness with little stress on my hair, and introduced me to hair products formulated to strengthen and help rebuild very thin hair.
In another twelve days I will reach my six-month mark, and I am waiting for the regrowth to begin. I guess I'll have to just wait and see what happens. I am hoping to have a full head of hair again by my one year "surgiversary" next March, and hoping against hope that what grows back will be that nice silvery white color that I have lost. I must admit, though, that even if my hair stays very thin and dark gray-blond, I am so happy with all the positive changes in my body that it will take a lot more than thin, non-platinum hair to get me down. It's a small price to pay for finding myself again.
All my life, my hair has been very,very fine; but I have always had a lot of that very fine hair. I guess I was even a bit vain about my thick head of hair. Even when I started wearing it short all the time, and even when it went gray, I loved my hair. My gray hair was silvery white, and I loved it when so many people would tell me that I had beautiful platinum hair. It had thinned a bit with age, but there was still plenty of it. When I started losing hair by the handful about two-and-a-half months after surgery, I was a bit shocked. For almost three months my hair kept falling out. I would blow it dry after gently washing it, and a whole little cloud of silver would float down to the floor. At the end of every shower I would pull a wad of white hair from the drain grate. I was continually brushing hair from my clothes. I thought it would never stop falling out!
Finally, about two weeks ago, the hair loss began to slow down and I started losing less and less every day. I have been assessing the total damage. For one thing, instead of losing about one-third of my original hair volume, I have no more than about one-third of that beginning volume left on my head. For another thing, the hair that has fallen out has been my most beautiful platimum hair, and I am left with very fine and very thin medium blond hair shot through with darker gun-metal gray. My friend and hairdresser came up with a cut and style that will allow me to create a bit of fullness with little stress on my hair, and introduced me to hair products formulated to strengthen and help rebuild very thin hair.
In another twelve days I will reach my six-month mark, and I am waiting for the regrowth to begin. I guess I'll have to just wait and see what happens. I am hoping to have a full head of hair again by my one year "surgiversary" next March, and hoping against hope that what grows back will be that nice silvery white color that I have lost. I must admit, though, that even if my hair stays very thin and dark gray-blond, I am so happy with all the positive changes in my body that it will take a lot more than thin, non-platinum hair to get me down. It's a small price to pay for finding myself again.
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