Q.

• Will I Keep My Hair?
• Why Does Hair Fall Out?
• What Can I Do Before My Hair Falls Out?
• What's It Like When Your Hair Falls Out?
• So I'm Bald, Now What?
• When Will My Hair Grow Back?

A.

Will I Keep My Hair?

When trying to ease the sting of diagnosis many doctors will tell patients they may lose their hair. But of the 11 drugs that make up the various Hodgkin’s disease chemotherapy cocktails all of them have hair loss as a side effect. While it never hurts to be hopeful, don’t count on keeping your hair. “At first I thought for sure I was going to be the exception,” Andy, a survivor for over 10 years, recalls. “One of the doctors said that something like 1 in 20 wouldn't have hair loss as a side effect, and I latched onto that idea like glue. Eventually I had to come to terms with it, but I think that in the back of my mind I expected it”. Most patients suspect from the beginning that they’ll go bald. Kate, a stage 2A survivor knew she was going to lose her hair at diagnosis. “It was the first thing I thought about,” she says “I kept picturing the sad women on Lifetime in the movies about cancer, all frail and bald…Good news though, I didn't lose my hair till March! And my doctor [had] said I'd need to have a wig by January”.