I realize I haven’t been on here in a long time. I think the last time I added a blog was mid July. I seemed to have lost track of everything, so I’ve spent the last few minutes catching up with all the posts by people on here for the most part.

As for me, the rest of my summer was spent pretty much working. I finished coaching the summer soccer season with a dozen girls, all under 12, who all became little sisters to me. Even if I seemed like I didn’t I really enjoyed it. It was worth volunteering and giving up the average of 10 hours a week to coach them. The parents collected money for a small gift and I had to laugh at the note one of the parents wrote on the thank you card: “Congratulations, You now have your very own set of U-12 groupies” The note went on to say how lucky they were to have me as a coach. In reality I was the lucky one. Coaching these girls provided normalcy for me, and they were also very accepting of me so I couldn’t ask for more.

With the summer fading to fall came the time from me to return to college. I am taking one more semester at community college. The main reason for this is to coach soccer again for my old high school. I made a promise with the players from my team from last year that if they came back next year so would I. Its also a decent salary for a college kid. But I applied to four year colleges for the spring and just waiting for them to reply. The classes I’m taking now should (I hope) transfer, and if not its fine for me. I made enough money to pay off community college this fall and save some, and going to college keeps my parents health insurance if I should get hurt or sick at any time.

As for coaching, I love it. The kids are accepting for the most part of my bald head, only a few comments here and there but never that negative, more out of curiosity of why I shaved it. I didn’t sit down the team and explain to them all anything, but if they ask I tell them everything. Most are concerned until I tell them its not contagious and then life goes back to normal.

As far as the disease goes, I don’t really know if it’s slowed at all. If I had to guess 80-90% of the hair on my head is gone. I will once in a while not shave for a day or two to measure how much it’s spread and was surprised at first. All of my facial hair is gone… I had a “soul patch” growing beneath my lower lip and I held on to that as long as I could. It got to the point that it looked horrible but I tried to keep it because of the principle that it was hair and it seemed as though I would lose my whole identity if I lost that. I soon ‘sucked it up’ and shaved it.

I’ve woken up to find a few eye brow hairs on my pillow and have ran my hand over them to have a few hairs fall out, but for the most part they are still just as thick. I’m hopeful that I will be able to keep them. I also have a few spots on my thigh, but these don’t seem to get better and the numbers aren’t growing anymore.

I try to handle it as best as I can. I have my down days, I’ve broken down once in a while and questioned everything, but for the most part I try to just ‘keep truckin.’ I haven’t gotten used to seeing a picture of my bald head, and I still find that I wear hats as a security blanket but it’s getting less and less frequent.

A lot of the time I’m just too busy to think about the disease. But there are always reminders. Just a few minutes ago I got a text message from a friend who moved to NYC to pursue a modeling career and he sent me a message just to make sure everything was ok. And today I had a teacher come up to me in the college fitness center and ask if everything was alright, and after explaining to her and the girl next to me on the elliptical they both agreed that I looked alright bald, “You look like Lex Luther from Superman.”

Oh and I stopped going to the acupuncturist. It didn’t work, and she felt bad for charging me for it and seeing no results. I currently don’t take any treatments. I’m just living life and working on treating my self confidence rather than this disease that is a part of me.

Sorry this is so long, if you read it thanks, I promise they wont be as long in the future.