I was going to write about something else this week but then I discovered that a close, old friend has had a mastectomy. Single. She had totally downplayed it - this is typical - and advertised it as merely a small section being excised. She hates a fuss.
But at the last moment, a terrible fuss. The whole thing has gone, plus some lymph node. She was presented, late-doors, with a choice: either a small section goes now, then radiotherapy, then a 30% chance of a mastectomy down the line anyway - or do the mastectomy now. So she did. She had no symptoms and it was just a faintly hypochondriac urge that drove her to the mammogram. She is okay about it. When you are presented with a rapidly-spreading cancer or a breast removal, she told me, it’s really no contest.
I booked myself in for a mammogram and then went to walk her dog for her. It’s been a bit unsettling all week. Not that this is about me.
New subject.
A reader messages me: hair loss! What do you do about it? God, I don’t know, I said. But, I do know that the active ingredient of Regaine is something called Minoxidil, which you can buy neat on Amazon for about £20.
It got me to thinking that I don’t really know anything about female hair loss. Do you? Do you have any experience with this or any effective treatments for it?
I’ve just got to stand over here by this window, staring into the distance for a bit.
The French pharmacy suggestion for hair loss is the vitamin supplement Forcapil - anti-chute. It is available online in the UK and was recommended to me for my peri-menopausal hair loss (handfuls every hair wash), by my hairdresser who took it for her post-baby hair loss. It does seem to be helping, although it has only been a couple of weeks so far. It may be a placebo effect, but I also feel a bit less tired since starting to take it!
Yes, I have frontal fibrosing alopecia which presents as a scarring on the scalp (which my dermatologist could see but I couldn’t). Started off with what looked like the start of male pattern baldness, which has now got to the stage of baldness going all the way back and I now have sparse hair at the back only. I don’t know if I will end up completely bald, but in any case I now wear a really good/expensive wig and am reconciled to it all. Could be worse🤪.