Gary's Story
My name is Gary, and while I don’t have Alopecia Areata I am as affected by it as my daughter is. She is 16 now but was 12 when she first got it and here’s an insight to how I did or didn’t cope.
In our case the first sign was small amounts of hair falling out around the edges of her head and the comb filling up with hair which you instinctively know isn’t right but you just think it’s a thing you cant answer at the time, so like so many fathers you just kind of put it to the side and let your wife work with it. She of course looks into it a bit and comes up with all kinds of things it could be. Off to the Doctor we go, all the time trying to convince myself it will be OK, there has to be an answer here we have just overlooked, and perfect the Doc says its tension Alopecia and her pony tail is to tight and not to be to concerned. Like a smart ass I go home and say “I told ya there was an answer” and back to life I go.
You know what happens next, the lot starts falling out and then the guilt starts to take over. I could have done better, and there must be a cure, what a hopeless dad I am. I think this was the saddest time for me. I became distant and didn’t face things the way I should have. I’m just truly thankful my wife, while she was losing her mind over all sorts of outcomes, worked over time on keeping the family together and collecting all kinds of support to help us through this ordeal that was forced on us.
I believe there are three stages to this condition:
1. The panic and mayhem of losing the hair and the how the hell are we ever going to cope with this, let alone our daughter.
2. The support, information gathering, talking and crying with as many people as possible.
3. The acceptance of what is out there and how you can cope, this is not to say you will ever get over it but you will learn to live with it.
Stage 2 - I truly think that if you get this wrong you can blow it completely. Keep searching for the answers that you are comfortable with as there are all different sides and you need to look at things from all the angles, like trying to find a cure or at least educating yourself as to what treatments are available and the side effects they can have, going bald and being proud of it, to all kinds of wig advice. We guided our daughter in the direction of a wig, as she was only 12 and if we got it wrong she could change this decision when she was older. We went with the theory that there is no real cure at the moment and therefore we would get her the best wig in the world and that would take the edge off the fact she had no hair. This wasn’t a matter of hiding it from the world, it just gave her the choice of walking amongst us and telling people she trusted when she was ready.
So now we are at stage 3 we are more inclined to have normal teenager arguments about bed time, boys and cell phones, than panic attacks on whether her eyebrows are on straight or can you see my head. They do come up from time to time but I think you can understand how normal this is for a teenager with alopecia areata.
I feel that this is like a report but if I didn’t write it like this I would find it to hard. Advise to anyone reading this for the first time, well-done for finding it, you are doing all the right things already, keep it up and keep talking to people, listening to people and do what’s right for your child in the long term with whatever choices that need to be made.
Gary
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