Day 135 (month 4)

Still a normal amount of hair
10/10/2015

Fun fact! I recently celebrated my two-year anniversary of having braces. I can't believe that I've had them for this long. My poor teeth. And what's ridiculous is that I'll probably have a retainer for the rest of my life. (But who actually wears their retainer, right?)


Anyhoo, the prognosis continues to be 4-6 more months of braces. I feel like it's going to be 6 months because I've been hearing this 4-6 month range since August and I know that my bite is not great. My teeth can close, but they're not lined up right. It's just a tedious waiting game now. I'm crossing my fingers for anytime earlier than April.

Moving on, I recently became aware that I was experiencing an unfortunate side-effect from surgery, which I didn't realize could be related to surgery. The more you know!

Here's the story: in September I got my hair cut. That was around 3 months post-op. And so after that haircut I noticed I was losing more hair than normal. I thought it was some combination of body stress from waking up unnaturally early everyday for my job in addition to some nutritional deficit.

But this "hair loss" eventually got to such an unusual level for me that I googled "why am I losing so much hair?" I really wasn't too concerned, especially considering it took me about a month to google the issue. I have pretty thick hair and it was just that more hair was coming off my head than I'd ever experienced before on a continual, almost daily, basis.

Let me try to put this in perspective. To a casual observer, to my friends, to my family, to me, my hair looks the same. It's not like I have bald spots or anything.

So, I googled reasons for hair loss and I found something totally unexpected but which actually made complete sense: Telogen Effluvium. 

Basically the surgery shocked my system and my hair stopped growing, but they've been jolted back to life and now I'm stuck in this awkward phase of hair loss as new hairs grow out or something like that. It usually happens about 3-5 months post-physiological-stress-inducing-event and resolves itself in about 6 months. Another waiting game.

Considering jaw surgery is a pretty violent and stressful surgery, it fits. 

So now I'm just sitting here, wondering if there are any other fun surprises I'm not aware of.