#36 - Some minor changes

Terry and I have made some minor changes in the last few months.  First and foremost, I cut my hair. Here's what it looked like before the illness..... hell, here is what I looked like before the illness......You will see that I have always been a little bit overweight. No matter how much I worked out, how little I ate or how well I ate, I couldn't shake those extra pounds.

When my thyroid went haywire and I got the FSGS diagnosis and had to go on all the medications like Prednisone and Cyclosporine, my hair began falling out in clumps. I had these huge bald spots in my scalp. To go out in public, I'd comb it and layer it so it would cover the baldness. Right before I cut it all off, it looked like straw, hard and course and it was very wavy.

I put on so much weight, it was actually hard to breathe. In this next photo, I weighed about 200 lbs. It was actually embarrassing to go out in public looking like this.....no one realizes it's because of medications and illness and not just being fat and lazy. Terry says I shouldn't care about what other people think, but I do.

Terry always told me that to cut my hair was grounds for divorce. He loved my long hair. So much so that we had an agreement that he would help maintain it. I'd wash and blow dry it, but he helped brush it. Even he had to admit it was time to cut out the old, dead hair so it would grow back anew, especially since every time he brushed my hair he had to clean out the brush.

This is the first picture I've taken since I cut it off last fall. You can see in the picture, based on the before above, how different the texture of it is since the medication. I had even dropped a few pounds and gotten under 150lbs in more than 2 years. I am still gradually losing weight as the months pass.

Ironically, my father's hair did the same thing after he went through the chemotherapy for cancer. He lost all of his hair and when it came back, it grew in kinky curly, and salt and pepper in color. It was very course and dry.

And here's the newest addition to our family.... Boudreaux, the french bulldog mix. We got him on Thanksgiving Day.

He's our heart and joy these days. He keeps us very busy.