#Bald

It's been a week now, and some of you may have noticed that I shaved my head. I know that because you have said something, wondering what was up. I've tried some different excuses:

• I spent a week with my kids, and it all fell out.
• I'm having a midlife crisis.
• It's been hot this summer, and I wanted to be cooler.
• I'm hoping to be more like my idol, Jason Mitchell (our bald sports editor).
• The razor slipped.

The truth is, I always knew this was how it was going to end. The hair will all be gone some day, more than likely, or at least enough of it that I might as well be bald. Here's why.

The story starts in 2009. Early that year, I took my clippers to the apartment bathroom and buzzed my hair, as I did every month. But this time was different. There were small patches of hair missing in more than a dozen different spots, and my scalp was red and angry. The spots weren't very big, but they were there. I waited a couple of months to see what would happen, and nothing changed. So I saw my doctor. He said it was alopecia areata.

So what's that? Well, alopecia is an autoimmune disease that affects hair follicles. To put it simply, my body attacks my hair and causes it to fall out. What's worse, it scars. So once the hair falls out, the spot it leaves is permanent. Over time, the dozens of spots have turned into many dozen spots all over my head.

The doctor said I had options for treatment, but there was no guarantee anything would help. I could try a steroid cream or have steroid shots into each bald spot, and the hair may regrow. I could try other drugs, and it may slow down or possible stop the progression of the hair loss.

As fate would have it, shortly after being diagnosed, Gretchen found out she was pregnant with Augie. Money was tight. Having a baby is expensive. So I tried some steroid cream for awhile and put the problem on the back burner. About a year later, I went back to the doctor and got recommended to a dermatologist at the University of Wisconsin. She concurred with the diagnosis, and took a biopsy of my scalp. She wasn't sure what caused the alopecia to start, but started me on some drugs to try and slow it down and hopefully cause it to go dormant. They weren't light-duty drugs. One of them, she said, is commonly given to cancer patients as an immuno-suppressant.

I stayed on them for awhile, but eventually stopped when we wanted to start trying for a second kid (at least one of the drugs could cause birth defects). Did the drugs slow down the progression? Maybe a little, but it didn't seem like they were stopping it. So I saved my money and never restarted my regimen. For all I know the doctors would have had me on them forever, and I'd still have large patches of hair loss.

So here we are in 2018, the bald spots have gradually gotten bigger over the years. Clearly the disease never stopped. I've been threatening to just shave my head for years. And I finally just did it. I probably should have done it before my summer tan took over my forehead and neck, but that's another story.

For what it's worth, you all have been very kind over the years. Very few of you have asked about my hair. You've just accepted me for who I am, and not as the weird-looking guy with the unpatterned male baldness. Now that my head is shaved, you can see all the spots, especially if I haven't shaved that day.

That's what you are seeing. It's not that I missed a spot shaving. It's not that I have a sunburn on my head. It's that I have about half of my hair left. That's all. It's embarrassing, but I've come to accept it. I thought I'd give bald a chance for awhile. It's a lot of shaving, but it beats the alternative: Looking like a cancer patient for a month while the hair grows back out -- and trust me, that's what I would look like.

Who knows, maybe I'll just keep the look. If nothing else, I bet it'll make me look extra hipster-y when it's time for my winter beard.