Facial hair weirdness months after chemo

[Shambla]

Hey everyone - hope you're in good spirits and still fighting. I wrapped up one round of chemo at the end of October. Right at the end of that I basically lost my everything on my head except for my eyebrows. By mid-January I believe my facial hair had basically gone back to normal. I've always had really fast growing facial hair which covers pretty thoroughly. However, in the past month or two I've noticed that hair on my cheeks is barely growing at all and my mustache area is splotchy. So basically full facial hair->lost it in chemo->it all came back for a while->now is really uneven (5+ months later). I do use some prescription hydrocortisone on my face but doing some research it seems if anything it's supposed to promote growth. Has anyone else experienced this?

[evstar18]

TOTALLY normal, trust me lol. should be back normal soon, worst case scenario it will return to normal by 1 year post chemo or 1,5 years post chemo, but in your case I'm sure it will return much sooner than that

[zbot]

same here, and the hair on my head is still thin. Its a bummer i'm 6 months post chemo and you can still see my scalp through my thin hair, which sucks cause im about to go to college.

[S P]

Normal. Lots of us here have reported occasional post-chemo facial hair irregularities including some splotchiness.

[CW406]

16 months out for me, still weird, artificially induced male pattern thinning too, yay!

[Evtrai]

I agree with everyone I now shave because my beard has a bald spot and still has one year 3 months after chemo.

[Shambla]

Whew. Thanks for the response guys. If anything my head hair has gotten thicker which was weird but it's just now losing the last of the curliness I picked up after chemo. I'll just enjoy less frequent shaving for a few months.

[Davepet]

Whew. Thanks for the response guys. If anything my head hair has gotten thicker which was weird but it's just now losing the last of the curliness I picked up after chemo. I'll just enjoy less frequent shaving for a few months.

It took two years for my head hair to lose the curl (& I still think it still tends to be a bit more curly than pre-chemo, but no longer obnoxious). My facial hair mostly gets shaved, but doesn't seem to grow as fast as it used to & my mustache is "different" can't put a finger on it & I'm the only one who sees it, just seems harder to keep it shaped how I want it.

I'm also pretty sure my armpit hair has thinned, not that I really care, but wanted to be thorough.

Every time I get bugged by hair problems I try to remind myself that it's a small problem compared to (possibly) dying from TC. Seems to help me.

Dave

[zak0691]

I remember that after chemo my hair/beard began to grow back at a fairly normal pace. My head hair was curlier, darker, and thicker though. Then a few months later some time when I shaved my beard like normal it grew back much slower and thinner in spots. Around my chin was very thin and it wasn't growing much up the sides which was odd. I let it grow for a couple weeks to see if it would go back to normal but it didn't, then after I shaved again a couple of times it came back normally. It was kind of odd.

My hair still gets very curly if I let it grow out. I kind of like it though.