I don't know if anybody has given you this piece of advice yet. To thicken your hair, make it stronger and keep your scalp well nourished you can actually use
Henna shampoo. It has wonderful healing properties that have been known by most African cultures for millennia and it doesn't necessarily contain colouring additives. In fact, the purer you can find it, the better it is. I found the link above but I'm sure there are many different companies that deal with natural products that can provide it. I have tried it myself since my hair is naturally very thin and I wanted more body, and it works. My hair looks shiny and healthy and it feels better.
I am definitely going to try that shampoo. It'll be good for when my hair starts growing back, too, because I want to grow it long again. That's another thing that makes this whole situation more frustrating -- just a few weeks ago I decided to grow my hair long again, for the first time in years. Now I may have to wait.
Randy, there certainly are some useless people in this world, aren't there? Reading through this thread, though, the people here -- with one exception -- have reminded me that the kind and thoughtful really do outnumber the useless -- even if they are sometimes harder to see.
I'm still not sure how I feel about all of this. Sometimes I'm really upset, sometimes not so much. If this is indeed telogen effluvium, then what's happening is this: Hair goes through a growing phase, a resting phase, and then it falls out and is replaced by a new follicle. When an extreme illness causes the hair to fall out it is because it sends the hair into the resting phase prematurely - it rests for a few weeks and then falls out, but is still replaced by a new follicle. At first I thought it was odd that there was such a delay after I was sick before this started happening, but apparently 4-6 weeks after the event is the exact time this is expected to occur. Of course, I'll have to wait till Thursday to have a doctor confirm all of this, but I feel pretty confident that I'm right. The comforting thing is knowing that each hair that falls out has another growing in its place. My hair isn't all that long, and it grows quickly. The not-so-comforting thought is that I could lose up to 70% of my hair. It could be an opportunity to try out a funky new short style, though.
J., I think you're right that the hardest thing to deal with is the loss of control. A lot of horrible things have happened in my life, but I always seem to view them from a distance. I can almost enjoy some of these things for the sake of novelty, or because they're interesting, or entertaining even, like a TV drama. I remember that this was how I felt when I was initially diagnosed, even though I was so young: it was almost as if I was watching some other little girl being poked and prodded. I felt the same way when other traumas happened as well, including this most recent one. As a result, I don't think the weight of what happened really hit me. They told me I would have died within hours, I was in the ICU for three days. But it never felt too serious. Now, with my hair falling out, there is a constant reminder that it was real. It also feels like a punishment for not taking as care of myself as well as I should have.
