The most common question asked by people who are affected by alopecia, is “Why me!” well that’s the first thing that came into my mind anyway. I suppose the answer to that question right now is, there is no answer.

It is a strange condition which is a law unto itself. One minute you can have the wind blowing in your hair and the next minute your hair is blowing in the wind! Quite literally!

I remember the day when I discovered that my hair was falling out. I’d just got out of the local swimming pool and was drying myself off, when I looked down and saw a small pile of hair sitting on my left shoulder. I know that they say you get hair in strange places when you get older, but this was taking it to the extremes!

At this point, all sorts of random thoughts started racing through my head; Am I seriously ill? Is it due to stress? Will it all fall out? Will I make it out of the leisure centre alive! After my brief moment of hysteria, I tried to think a bit more rationally and decided that I should maybe take a trip to the doctors. I was sure to be given all the answers I required, right!

Wrong! Having booked my appointment with the doctor, the day of the appointment fast arrived. After a long and laborious wait in the waiting room, the doctor poked his head round the corner and called out my name. He led me down the corridor, ushered me into his office and offered me a seat before finally asking me what the problem was. I described my symptoms to him, even showing him my now fast growing bald patches on the side and back of my head. His reply astonished me!

He said to me “If you were the doctor and I was the patient, what would you suggest that we did”. I sat there open mouthed for a minute while I contemplated whether he was joking or not. I really didn’t know what to say, so I mumbled something about going for blood tests.  So by my own recommendation I did just that….thank you doctor, what would I have done without you!

Having a needle stuck in me and having my blood removed is not my idea of fun, so I managed to evade the visit to the hospital for a week until I decided that I really needed to find out what was going on. I arrived at the Haemoglobin Department hoping to be at the end of a very long queue, unfortunately it must have been a ‘Next Sale’ day, as I was the only one in there. I went into reception to confirm my arrival, where the receptionist gave me a number tag to hang on the wall when it was my turn to be used as a pin cushion. I wasn’t even given the chance to sit down and start sweating before name was called out! I went into a small room where I was greeted by a stern matron like looking woman. She told me to sit down rather than ask, and pointed to my left arm without saying a word, wagging her bony finger up and down, as if gesturing for me to roll up my sleeve. No sooner had I done so, she slapped an arm strap on me, tightened its grip and proceeded to make my forearm look like that of a compulsive erm, one armed weightlifter. Then she got out her needle of mass destruction. I don’t know about you, but when I get nervous my mouth tends to over rule my thoughts and all sorts of random conversation flows out, from Britain’s favourite topic ‘the weather’ to what I’ve got planned for the forth coming weekend, etc. Taking not the slightest bit of notice to what I was saying, she sank the needle deep into my arm, the pain resonated around my body….What? I’m a man! We have a low pain threshold don’t you know. After four vials and ten minutes in the recovery room, I was back on my feet and away home. But not before building up my blood resources once again and indulging in some extremely unhealthy snacks.

A week passed by and I’d still heard nothing, so I picked up the phone and called the surgery. I nervously asked for the results of my test, I guess I was expecting to hear that I had some kind of new and unknown disease, but the voice on the other end of the phone only confirmed that my tests had come back normal. How could this be! There was definitely something going on with my body and I was determined to find out what.

I decided that the best place to try and find some answers, was, as so many others had probably done so before me, to have a look on the internet. After typing the words ‘hair loss’ into the internet search bitch, it wasn’t long before I came across the term ‘alopecia’. For day’s I read up on all there was to know about this unique condition. The more I read the more convinced I became that I indeed had been, let’s say ‘genetically modified’ in some way or another. Yes, I now knew that I had alopecia, the patchy hair on my head, hair missing from my face and little pit marks in my nails, only pointed in one direction.

After further internet searches I stumbled across a website that was entirely geared towards alopecia, in fact, at the time it was probably the only website of its kind. Not only did it host a vast amount of information on the condition, but it also supported a forum where you could chat with other people who totally understood what you were going through. I made the effort and posted my first message, basically just telling people who I was, what I did and importantly that I had alopecia and needed to talk to someone. Later that day I went back to site to see if I’d had any response. I still find it difficult to explain the emotions that I had when people had actually replied to my message, I guess it was a sense of happiness and relief rolled into one.

Since that day, I’ve never looked back and for the last three (nearly four) years I’ve learned to cope with every stage of my changing appearance. I have made the transformation from a full body of hair in 2005 to having AA in 2006, then back to a full body of hair in 2007, before finally progressing to AU in 2008.

For me, talking to, and meeting other people with alopecia had a positive affect on my outlook. And I thought that if it had this affect on me, then it almost certainly would do for others. So, in January 2008 we established the East Anglia Support Group on behalf of Alopecia UK. The group has taken off well and is growing with every meet, but most importantly it is supporting people with alopecia!