Living with alopecia: Losing all my hair, eyebrows and all, was a huge blow to my confidence
YOUR LIFE: Every human being has a story to tell. In this series, Your Life features personal accounts by Singaporeans detailing their respective trials in life and their courage to face them.
I used to make the common mistake of making quick judgements about others based on their looks, thinking “those people probably don’t know how to take care of themselves”.
In mid-2014, I started losing hair from the top of my head, and within a year, I lost all my body hair due to alopecia [a condition where the immune system mistakenly attacks hair follicles].
It was a huge blow to my confidence, especially since I had just started my first job as a financial consultant, where I was required to meet a lot of clients face-to-face. I was also starting to plan for my marriage then.
At first, I only told my then-girlfriend (now my wife) about my hair loss. After awhile, my family, colleagues and clients took notice, but surprisingly, they didn’t have much drastic reactions. My clients also didn’t seem to care much about my change in appearance; they just said, “Oh, you got a haircut” and didn’t probe further.
I guess this was a reminder for me that it’s not good to judge people just based on their looks because they may also have a story to tell.
Maybe this was also a life lesson I had to learn, maybe this ordeal I went through is also telling me to ‘settle down and stop being childish’.
When I noticed a small bald patch at the top right of my forehead in mid-2014, I started worrying if I was balding prematurely. Gradually, I noticed that there were more bald patches. It seemed to be spreading like a virus. And it was really obvious, so I got pretty desperate to fix this.
My first reaction was to try and cover it up by changing up my hairstyle, and then I decided to just cut my hair shorter. But when I went to get my hair cut, I realised that there were more bald patches at the back of my head that I didn’t know about. After months of massive hair loss, I just decided to shave botak (bald) because I didn’t want to go out with huge patches in my hair.
By mid-2015, I didn’t have any eyebrows, eyelashes, nose hair or any hair on my body left. After doing research online, I realised that the complete hair loss is actually an advanced form of alopecia, called alopecia universalis.
I tried one session of steroid injections after visiting an aesthetic doctor, and [new] hair really grew out within two weeks. But I was worried about the side effects from receiving such injections in the long term, such as having a deformed skull. The injections were expensive too.
The aesthetic doctor who gave me the injections also recommended that I take oral medication for my hair loss, but she warned that I may suffer from impotence, which was a common side effect. There was no guarantee that it would work either. I couldn’t take the chance because I knew I wanted to have a family. I didn’t want to lose both my hair and manhood.
My friends in this support group for alopecia sufferers also advised me to try traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). After trying it once, I realised that I didn’t understand the treatment process. Additionally, I didn’t have much patience to continue the treatments in the long term, so I didn’t continue.
By that time, I was already seeking comfort in my baldness, and decided I would rather seek comfort in my current state than look for another solution.
I never considered wigs too, they were never a long-term solution for me. I would rather spend the money on something else.
I also visited a popular hair loss treatment centre for a consultation, but balked at the amount of money I had to fork out. And as with all hair treatments, nothing was guaranteed.
Would I want to have my hair back? Of course I would! But since I’m already bald, I’ll just be bold and go all out.
I can’t go back to how things were, but I’m happy with how things turned out. I think I look even better now!
Interview conducted by Elizabeth Tong
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