"It's just some hair."
In the past 10 months, Tommy has no idea how many people have said this to him.
If he hadn't started Hair loss , he would not have realized how harmful such a simple sentence is.
30-year-old Tommy is an American and now lives in the UK. His troubles start in early November 2021.
One morning, when Tommy was taking a shower, he suddenly found that he had started to lose a lot of hair, which made him panic.
He immediately called his mother to talk about this. The mother and son discussed it for a while, and agreed that there must be something wrong with the shampoo that Tommy just changed. He also went to Google to search for comments on this shampoo. After
Tommy no longer uses this shampoo, but there is no sign of stopping hair loss.
Whether he was taking a shower or not, his hair kept falling off.
Obviously, the problem is not on the shampoo.
Tommy begins to understand hair loss. The more you understand, the more stress you are.
He went to see a general practitioner with a lot of problems.
Doctor told him that he was androgenic hair loss , but Tommy didn't believe it because this hair loss would not happen suddenly.
When he was in his twenties, Tommy had short and dense light brown short hair.
When he was almost thirty, his hair became slightly less and his hairline gradually moved backwards.
Tommy knows that as he gets older, he feels less hair, but this sudden and large-scale hair loss makes him a little overwhelmed.
When he wakes up in the morning, he will find that the bed sheets are full of hair,
The shower floor drain is often blocked by hair,
The hair volume changes every few days, making him feel like he has changed many hairstyles.
In the next three weeks, Tommy's hair disappeared.
He went to the doctor again and again and again, and he had checked whether there was iron deficiency, whether there was any abnormality in thyroid function, and how good is the level of leukocytes in , and the examination results were all normal.
The doctor also felt very strange and began to agree with Tommy's idea. This is indeed not ordinary androgenic hair loss.
Hair loss has taken a big blow to Tommy's confidence.
People around him should have seen that his hair is getting less and less. Whether the other party says "it's just some hair", or pretends to turn a blind eye and not mentioning "hair", it will make Tommy feel very uncomfortable.
He will feel that no one understands him, or that he has overreacted.
In order not to keep myself thinking about this, On December 6 last year, Tommy simply shaved her hair.
But the situation is still getting worse. Not only the hair, but other hair on Tommy's body has also begun to fall off.
At the end of December last year, his eyebrows, eyelashes and beard almost all fell out.
It is obvious that he is only 30 years old, but after losing his hair, it seems that he has grown 10 years old all of a sudden.
Tommy looked at this hairless face in the mirror, feeling strange and sad.
Finally, he looked forward to the day to see a private dermatologist.
took 10 minutes, and the doctor confirmed that Tommy was suffering from .
Alopecia Universalis is a serious disease of hair loss throughout the body.
Because the immune system mistakenly attacks the hair follicles, all hair from the face to the body falls off, and hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, , beard, sweat hair, armpit hair , and pubic hair are not spared.
Apart from this, the patient has no other symptoms, and is generally healthy and does not affect his lifespan.
Present baldness can occur in people of any age and any gender.
Currently, doctors believe that the occurrence of pseudogenic baldness is related to factors such as genetics, stress and environmental changes.
(French-Icelandic actor Tómas Lemarquis also suffers from general baldness)
What is distressing is that there is no complete cure general baldness at present, and only some treatments can promote hair regeneration.
Tommy consulted his general practitioner after diagnosis, hoping to find a way to re-grow hair.
Doctor said that the treatment of hair loss is classified as the " Medical Beauty " range, which is not within the scope of routine treatment of NHS. His medical insurance also has the same regulations.
In this way, there are few treatment items that can be reimbursed.
Tommy can’t understand why treatment of hair loss is considered to be a “medical beauty”. Although hair loss does not endanger life, it is also a disease that makes people suffer from no choice.
If you want to treat it, the only option is to see a private doctor, but it is very expensive.
However, in order to re-grow hair, Tommy still went.
treatment is divided into three stages -
The first round is steroid treatment, which can prevent the immune system from continuing to attack hair follicles;
The second round is to use more steroids for treatment;
The last round is JAK inhibitor treatment, which is a non-steroid treatment method used to treat severe hair loss.
Tommy was treated with steroids for four months, but he still couldn't grow his hair.
and 6 months after the onset of the disease, that is, in May this year, all the hair on his body fell out and he became a "hairless person".
Seeing that steroids were not effective, Tommy discussed with the doctor and decided to try JAK inhibitor treatment.
But in the UK, this drug is not an NHS-approved hair loss treatment drug. Tommy needs to pay for it at his own expense and spends 1,000 pounds a month, which is beyond his financial ability.
(JAK inhibitor treatment case, the previous and subsequent effects are very obvious)
Tommy began to think of other solutions, and he decided to ask for help through the Internet.
In three months, he contacted patients with general baldness around the world through social media and discussed treatment methods with his patients.
Finally, he found a pharmaceutical company that could help him and bought the medicine through the Internet, which was cheaper.
This time he did not disappoint. After
started a new round of treatment, Tommy really began to grow hair.
Hair starts to grow on the top of the head, and sweaty hairs begin to grow on the face and body, which makes Tommy ecstatic.
If everything goes well, it is expected that all the hair on his body will grow back in January next year.
When that time, he will consider stopping the medicine,
However, after stopping the medicine, his hair may fall off again, and this risk is always there.
Tommy has undergone these tormenting 10 months, and has undergone significant changes from appearance to personality and mentality.
Now, he has begun to like this "hairless person" in the mirror, and
has to start embracing this new version of himself.
Because he will not be able to get rid of the baldness in his life,
There is a long way to go before his eyes...
