Sanitywarp.org:: Diary of a Trichster

Looking in the mirror and seeing the gray hair is awful, since I can’t NOT pull it out.  Even people that don’t suffer with trich are likely to remove the gray hairs, it just happens to be worse for people like me.  I noticed recently that more and more and MORE gray hairs have been appearing.   Rapidly.  This leads to more and more pulling, until every one is gone.

However, I recently read that the gray hairs are likely being caused, not by aging and growing old, but by the act of repeated pulling.  What happens is the color sac gets damaged, and thus the shaft will turn white.  The color sac DOES eventually heal itself, and the hair’s color will return to it’s normal state… but this apparently takes several months to happen, and if you keep pulling the hair out… well, it will never fix itself.

This info was obtained through one of <a href=”http://trich.org” target=”_blank”> TLC’s </a> seminars, which someone reported on in their own blog.  (Can’t remember who, I read this a little while ago)

so…  as hard as it is NOT to keep pulling the white hair… DON’T!!  I’ve decided to keep my roots dyed lessen the amount of pulling I do.  out of sight, out of mind… indeed.    I really hope that all of the hair I’ve turned white just recently.. .will start to mend itself… cuz there really is a good deal of it there now.  argh.

Tags: white hair, trauma caused by pulling, pulling from scalp, trichotillomania, ttm, trich by Isis
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not such a great day today for the hair pulling. I did it in a few various different spots on my head, each spot with enough damage to make the already filling-in spots just a little bit wider…

trying not to get too upset about it right now since I really have a lot that I’m juggling right now…
still sucks though. doesnt help that I’m obsessed with the follicles, either. there’s something so satisfying about that noise it makes when you bite into them… like a snap.. or a pop… they way it feels between your teeth. I don’t know why I like it so much. what a strange thing to be obsessed about. sometimes I think about it even when I’m not pulling… even if I don’t have any hair to pull.. or if I REALLY cant pull like if I’m out somewhere in public… I think about biting the follicles so much it drives me crazy… over and over again… biting into the nice thick follicle shaft…  *POP*…

arggghhhh.

maybe I should ask Arthur to help me with that part of it. make it seem less… incredibly awesome, for whatever reason.. hehh. what a weird disease =/

Tags: relapse, follicles, bald spots, pulling from scalp, ttm, trichotillomania, trich by Isis
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heh, well… on the way home, on the bus, I finished off the rest of my left eyebrow while I was trying to read a book. dammit. =/ I have a photo shoot on the 4th next month… guess I’ll have to be trying to do a decent job drawing them… arghhh. It actually kind of hurt doing it but once I got going again I couldn’t stop until every single hair was gone. I tried to stop several times but couldn’t. The left one usually is gone first, since I pull with my right hand. I tried squeezing one of the stress balls I had… it refused to stay in my hand for very long.

so now I get to look like a cancer patient in the mornings and whenever I rub my forehead during the day and my eyebrows come off. hooray.

I need to listen to my tapes again. I haven’t listened to any of them in over a month because I was afraid the tapes would get eaten.  (thanks to the faulty, piece of shit walkman from RADIO SHACK, that almost destroyed one of them!!  my god I was so fucking upset, even moreso when I had to deal with their shift supervisor “Bianny” who was a total fucking bitch to me about returning it the very next day!!). But, a friend of mine helped me find a way to get them onto the computer, now I just have to sit down and do that, which I plan on doing this week. I’ve been working so much that I barely have time or energy to do anything when I get home, but… this needed to be done weeks ago. I’m really starting to slip again without the meditation and practice.

*sigh* meh.

Tags: relapse, pulling eyebrows, trichotillomania, ttm, trich, eyebrows by Isis
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I suppose some stress is getting to me lately. There sure are a lot of stressful events and changes going on in my life at the moment. I’m a little dissapointed, but luckily my eyebrows had grown back thick enough that I didn’t do as much damage as I thought I did. Both are half missing, but I was expecting the left one to be almost completely gone. ugh. now it will be another 6 weeks or so until they grow back. feh.

still haven’t found an extensionist in my area (Boston). pretty lame. but, can’t really expect much… Boston as a pretty lame place in a lot of regards, if you ask me. I’ll be looking forward to the day when I am outta here =P

oh well. goodnight.

Tags: relapse, pulling eyebrows, trichotillomania, ttm, stress, trich, eyebrows by Isis
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nothing much new, although today and yesterday I was pulling more than I have been lately. maybe that’s because I got drunk the night before.. I dunno. I wish I could keep listening to my hypnotism tapes, but I’m so afraid of them getting destroyed/eaten by the players. I need to just…. get that stuff onto my computer so I don’t ever have to worry about it. hmm…. back when I lived with my parents, wayyy back in the day, I borrowed a tape deck from my dad and hooked it up, somehow. That’s how I used to record my vocals for my music back then. if I could just remember how I did that, now…. lol. *scratches head*….

so anyway, as I thought…. I’m definetely not doing as well now without the extensions in place to cover up the hair so I can’t get at it. =/ I STILL have not found anyone in Boston to take care of it for me, yet, although a co-worker of mine says she may know someone who’s dad owns a salon. At this point I’m willing to settle for something very basic, just in the interest of preserving the few spots that do have long hair right now. I’d say maybe around 30-35% is grown in at the moment…

the fuckin assistant from Dr. Doherty’s office called me today and left a message, guess she’s trying to check up on me? Gee, thanks, almost 2 weeks later. I was calling them repeatedly because I was very concerned about how awful I felt after I went off the cymbalta/duloxetine …. I was basically begging them to set me up with a blood test or something, just to make sure I was ok, because I was so sick for about 4 weeks I thought there was something seriously wrong with me.  They gave me a run-around about it and basically didn’t do anything to try and set that up even after I started getting angry and coming close to threatening legal action.  Thankfully at this point, thank GOD, I seem to be getting better. I was seriously worried about it… and they didn’t seem to care all that much. The doctor didn’t even call me back himself!! I’ll never be doing a med trial at MGH again. They don’t even care about their patients when its just an experiment, it seems. nice indeed.

anyways, that’s about it for now I guess. I’ve been thinking of adding some more content to this blog, like maybe a review list of products that I’ve used that seemed to help, or didn’t help… etc. I will also be expanding the links section when I have the time, to share some of the websites I have found useful.

Goodnight.

Tags: pulling, trichotillomania, pulling from scalp, bald spots, crown, hair extensions, ttm, cymbalta, medication, side effects, trich, duloxetine by Isis
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