Momma Says, “I Want My Hair Back!!!!” Part Two

This is my mother’s continued story about finding a solution to her hair loss problem.

The Girl with the Pretty Hair
Throughout my school years, I was always proud of my golden-blonde hair. Now, I didn’t have a thick head of hair and was always green with envy for those girls that did. Since my hair wasn’t thick, I’d either wear it up in a ponytail or wear it loose with a hairband. In other words, I kept it simple in styling it.

Usually, I’d wash my hair every week using Prell shampoo. Sometimes, I’d wash my hair in the bathtub, but usually on a bright sunny day in Florida, I’d wash my hair using the hose outside and let it dry naturally. It wasn’t until after I had started college was when I decided I’d didn’t like the way my hair looked. Instead, of it being a golden-blonde, my hair was described as being a dirty-blonde color. Now, I certainly didn’t like that description!

So, I went to a childhood friend of mine, named Anthony. He had opened up a beauty salon and many of his clients were contestants entering various beauty pageants in the local area. Anthony definitely knew how to style hair and it wasn’t easy to get an appointment with him over the phone. But I was determined to get my hair done by Anthony and one day I just showed up in his salon. Of course, he remembered me. He had been a childhood friend of mine and when I had asked him to be my date to the junior prom, he didn’t hesitate.

As I stood standing in the door of his salon, I knew I was not supposed to go pass the receptionist desk, but I did anyway. I saw Anthony and walked right up to him as he was conferencing with a client about her hair. Anthony’s eyes lit up, followed by a smile. He asked me to sit in the waiting area and he’d be right with me.

We spoke for a few minutes and Anthony gave me an early morning appointment on the following Saturday. It was the weekend before college began. I would be attending the local city college and live at home. So, that made it quite easy to keep this appointment.

Anthony trimmed my hair before giving me a perm and then followed it up with a Farah hairstyle (Farah Fawcett.) I absolutely loved this hair cut! Two weeks later, I would return to have my hair colored lightened. I felt beautiful! I managed to snag my first love, Richard, on the first day of Freshman English. I know I’d never had attracted him if it hadn’t been for my hair and the fact, I was rather slim back then. I had worked at a restaurant over the summer to earn some spending money which required a lot of running around. Once when college started, I had to quit. I wanted a job where I didn’t have to work in the late evenings and I found a part-time job serving pizza, which wouldn’t interfere with my college schedule.
I was truly smitten with Richard. He treated me with a lot of respect. Richard would take me places in the afternoons, like to lunch and show me scenic routes around the area. However, he never tried to kiss me. He was the perfect gentleman. After the first semester, I never heard from him, but I wanted to, so badly. I knew he worked at a disco lounge as a bartender and talked one of my girlfriends in going with me to pay him a surprise visit. As it turned out, there was a girl working behind the counter and she was quite pregnant. It was Richard’s baby she carried.

I was devastated! My first real experience of losing some hair happened right after that day. It had been quite a shock! I began parting my hair down the middle, instead of wearing it the usual way. Once when it was time to see Anthony again, I didn’t. I took a pair of hair scissors and cut my own hair. Eventually the style grew out and I just wore it long or tied back like I had in high school.
I didn’t recover from my first-love, until after I graduated from college and had my first teaching job. I taught in Hardee County, Florida. Back then, it was a very small county having only three elementary schools, one middle school and one high school. Since I needed to look the part as a teacher, I decided to get my hair-styled. I didn’t need to schedule an appointment at a local beauty parlor. A math teacher, who lived below my small apartment, offered to do it for a nominal cost. She had been a beautician before becoming a teacher. She cut my hair, gave me a perm and used a lightener on my hair.
For three years, it had been easy in getting my hair styled, until the day I met Ron and got married. I met him at a dance club where he was showing off his John Travolta dance moves. Watching him, I never thought in a million years he would want to date me. It was my hair that caught his attention. He mentioned I had pretty hair.

So, despite the perms and lightener, my hair still had some kind of glow to it. Up to this day, I don’t know what caused it to shine the way it did. Noticed, I stated the way it did.

After having three children and having to move numerous due to Ron being the military, I went back to wearing my hair long and kept in a pony tail. I started to notice my hair thinning when I began menopause. Unlike most women, I started having signs of menopause when I hit forty. I began to have irregular periods with less and less blood, until the day came when there was hardly any blood shown on my feminine napkin.

Over that time period, I was quite busy being in charge of the household, raising three children and working as a full-time teacher and that was because Ron was always on deployment. So, I never really had to time to think about my hair. It was only when I began to see a few gray hairs, I decided to start dying it myself.

It wasn’t until my last few years of teaching leading up to my formal retirement was when I noticed how thin my hair had become. I know I had lost at least half of the amount I normally had in my twenties. To make matters worse, I dreamed about going bald, and before starting to write this primer, it looked like I would have a large bald patch on the side of my head.

****And what was one of the things she did, switch to a hard-to-find shampoo (a shampoo without sneaky chemicals and fragrance-free) which she found at
https://lddy.no/uwqa

DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical professional. Only an avid reader. Check with your healthcare provider before starting something new.