I’m a hairy person, in respect to my head. All of my life I have garnered expressions of shock or, yes, even jealousy about the thickness of my mane. Mostly it is good, but it does mean I can’t have short hair because I look exactly like that wedge-shaped Alice character from Dilbert:

Alice, from Dilbert

Lately I have noticed more than my usual heaps of hair around the house and my desk. Hair is constantly twined into my fingers and getting on my keyboard. Sometime this weekend I realized that when I run my hand through my hair, five to seven pieces of hair come out, by the roots, each time. Yesterday I collected a bird nest next to my desk. I appear to be, at least to some extent, losing my hair.

I can’t decide how I feel about this. On one hand, I see it as an exercise in relinquishing concern over something I cannot control; on the other hand, if it’s the Remicade causing this, I am a bit bereft as there is no plans (unlike “traditional” chemo-like treatments) to stop the medication, like, ever. So far as I know.

This, coupled with my recent somewhat-unstoppable weight loss, has left me feeling a bit more fragile than I’d like. The side effects are starting to mount a bit: odd skin things, problems with my toes, and my appetite has absconded.

Shedding, part two, that would be my fleshy bits. At the end of my year-long steroid “habit” in December, I was something approaching 140 pounds (10 stone for my archaic readers). Sunday I teetered off the scale, shocked at my reading of only 114 pounds. I don’t look freakish, yet, but as I planned to stop at about 123 pounds, this has been an interesting ride. Panicked, I consumed, in the course of one day, a family-sized Hershey bar, several hundred jelly beans, coconut-based curry, banana cake “for two”, chiliquiles, blue corn pancakes with butter and maple syrup, nuts, a latte made with whole milk. You get the picture. Last night I was 117 pounds, which relieved me of the belief that I might just waste away into nothing.

Anyway, I thought y’all’s might want to know. Been getting a lot of the (completely reasonable) nag lately that I haven’t been blogging nearly enough.