The continuing saga of my being old and ugly.

I believe that my hair is falling out.

You shouldn't read this entry if you, for some reason, find hair that isn't attached to a human head particularly repellent. Just sayin'.

When I last saw my doctor, he asked me some questions about the state of my hair. One, did I notice that the type on my body seemed to be more prominent? And two, did it seem like the type on my head was falling out?

At the time, I said no to both. Though to tell you the truth, I hadn't really been paying attention. Since then, I have. And alarmingly, I do think I'm hairier. Though I could be imagining it. It could be a paranoid delusion. I can't really tell.

However, I am definitely sure that my hair is shedding at a faster rate than is normal. As those of you who've heard me talk about my hair before might know, whilst I'm in the shower, I finger-comb my hair and prevent all the loose strands from going down the drain by adhering them to the shower wall. Fun! ... I remove it when I'm done. Anyway, back when my hair was insanely long, the wall would get very hairy indeed. It made me somewhat alarmed, but then I reasoned that while the amount of hair seemed large, it probably wasn't, since each strand was very ... great. Then when I cut all my hair off and was bald, the amount of hair in the shower decreased dramatically, and this seemed to prove my point.

My shower wall now acquires more hair than it did when my hair was 6 inches longer. The mass is such that swirling a single finger around no longer winds the hair up into a neat little ball for easy disposal. No, I now use three fingers. And I've been throwing enormous, near-palm-sized bundles of hair into the trash every day. And yet more hair comes out when I brush my hair, and when I blow-dry my hair, and then when I brush my hair again, and ... it's a lot of hair. Way more than approximately 100 strands per day, which is what I once heard was average.

What really tipped me off, though, is that when I make my bed these days, I'm picking at least 20 strands of hair off my pillows and sheets. ALARMING.

Today I asked my mother if she thought I seemed to be shedding abnormally. She said yes. (Side note: I know my mother loves me and doesn't want to criticize my appearance, but I really wish she'd point things like this out to me. Especially since they tend to have a medical significance with me.)

Today, my hair feels thin. Again, this could be a hallucination, because it didn't feel thin yesterday, but ... I've been losing many strands of hair. All my life my hair has been very thick. Remarkably thick, even, because any time I've gotten a haircut, the hair cutter has remarked on its thickness. As I've probably proved in the past, I'm rather emotionally and overly attached to my hair. I don't want anything to be wrong with my hair.

So, Monday I will call my doctor. Hopefully that will make my hair grow back.