July 31 Update 3: Going Bald? Or Getting Younger?

I started this yesterday, but ran out of time, so I finished it this morning.

I mentioned that Jerry had told me that a nurse--two nurses, actually--had told him that the success of chemo was tied to how much hair you lose.

I mentioned that to Dr. Strickland at the end of the biopsy, and he asked who told me that. I withheld the name of my source, though of course I'd already written it on the internet for the whole world to know. Dr. Strickland knows about my blog, and my wife's, so he'll know about it.

He and Dr. Lammers laughed at the suggestion, and then they told me, "Give it time. You could lose your hair, and probably will, any time over the next two weeks."

The next morning, Christina--one more young, very sweet, very pretty, extremely competent nurse--looked at my shoulder and said, "You have a couple hairs on your shirt." Then she smiled this coy smile.

I was trying to figure out why a couple hairs on my shirt was a problem, when my wife said, "Are you losing your hair, dear?"

I reached up, ran my fingers through my hair, and drew out at least twenty hairs.

Apparently.

What's interesting is that it turns out I'm only losing white hair!

It only took a few hours for my hair to be noticeably thinner, and noticeably blacker. It took even less for my goatee to look patchy, so I shaved it off.

The end result is that I look ten years younger!

So, what's going to happen? Will I eventually lose the dark hair, too?

That was Friday. All weekend I lost only white hair. It's amazing how much hair I lost over a day or two, how much darker my hair looked, and yet I could still always reach up and pull out 10 or 20 gray hairs.

The day before the hair loss; too much gray to keep the beard

So this morning I pulled two black hairs among the gray ones.

We'll see.