The Art of Getting Stared At (9 page)

“Alopecia causes no pain, although there can be some irritation when the hair falls out. You've already experienced that with the tingling you've described.”

I cannot believe this. “So you're saying I'm sick?”

“Not sick in the classic sense of the word,” he says. “Patients with alopecia are generally quite healthy. Other than the disease, of course.”

It doesn't make sense. None of this does. “So how do we treat it? How can I get my hair to grow back?”

A weighty silence hangs in the air. The doctor clears his throat. “That's a difficult question to answer.”

My heart skips a beat. “What do you mean, difficult?”

“There are things you can try,” Mom interjects. “Drugs. Injections. Ointments.” She looks at the doctor for confirmation. “Am I right?”

“Yes.” Dr. Thibodeau flashes her a brief smile before turning back to me. “My nurse will give you some literature. But I must be honest with you, Miss Kendrick. We don't know what causes alopecia, we don't know how to treat it, and we never know how the disease will progress.”

“What do you mean how it will progress?”

“Some sufferers have minimal hair loss, but in other cases, it's more severe. Your spots could grow over next week or you could lose all of your hair. We just don't know.”

Six

T
he closest medical lab is six blocks away; we go there right from the doctor's office. The long, skinny room smells like coffee and rubbing alcohol, and it's full of people.

“I want another opinion,” I tell Mom after pulling a number from the dispenser and taking the last seat near the door. We're number fifty-two. The automated number counter on the wall is at forty-seven.

Mom stands beside me checking her BlackBerry; she doesn't answer.

“That guy's old,” I mutter. The woman across from me—a wrinkled, grandmotherly type wearing support hose and a pink sweater—scowls. She can scowl all she wants; this is my life we're talking about. “He hasn't been to medical school in, like, forever,” I add.

Mom is still preoccupied with her email.

The doctor said I have another spot, but as we took the elevator up to the lab, I checked my head and I couldn't find it. Plus, I haven't even had the blood work yet.

I flip through the papers his nurse gave me. There are several fact sheets on alopecia, information on alopecia
support groups, a page on recent progress in hair diseases. And there are ads. Ads for Rogaine and bandanas and wigs. As I skim them, my fury grows. How
bogus.

I nudge Mom. “That doctor said he
believes
I have alopecia.” The lady across from us is staring; I lower my voice. “Believing isn't a diagnosis. What kind of doctor says
believe
? Either I have it or I don't. Plus, I'll bet the guy hasn't read a medical journal this
century
.”

Mom slips her BlackBerry into her purse before looking at me. “Age has nothing to do with it, Sloane. Dr. Thibodeau is a respected and skilled dermatologist even though he is a little cool. But I warned you about that.”

Cool? The guy's colder than a block of dry ice.

“I'm not taking one guy's word for this. Not when it's obvious he's not a hundred percent sure. There must be a test I can take?”

“As far as I know, there's nothing definitive.” She glances at my hair and then back at my face. “Although we can get a scalp biopsy to rule out anything fungal.”

“Fine. Let's do it.”

“Dr. Thibodeau is requesting one,” Mom says. “We talked about it when you were getting the material from his nurse. He's sending you to another dermatologist who handles scalp biopsies. You'll get the second opinion you want, and the woman specializes in alopecia.”

“That's a waste of time because I don't
have
alopecia.” If I had a disease, I'd know. Somewhere in my core there'd be a click, a kind of knowing, and I'm not feeling it. “I still think it's that new shampoo.”

Mom slides down the wall until she's crouched beside me. “Oh, Sloanie, if this was an allergy, you'd have itching or
swelling. You'd see pimples or a rash,” she whispers. “But you have none of those things.”

“I have itching.”

“But it's mostly gone now, right?”

I don't answer.

“Let's get the blood work done and go from there.” She stands back up and digs for her BlackBerry.

Forty minutes and four vials of blood later, we're back in the car and fighting downtown traffic. “You hungry?” Mom asks. The light ahead flashes amber; she coasts to a stop. “We could stop at Nick's for tacos.”

“No, thanks. I'm fine.”

Mom adjusts the rear-view mirror. “I'll order Vietnamese for later.”

She's trying to be nice. Vietnamese is my favourite. “Don't bother. I'll have soup.”

A cluster of people steps off the curb and heads for the other side of the street. “I don't want soup for dinner,” she says. I'm so mired in my own personal hell that I don't get what she's saying until she adds, “I'm not working tonight.”

“You aren't?”

She flashes me a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. “I thought you might want to talk.”

There's nothing to talk about. On the sidewalk, a little girl wearing a bright yellow windbreaker laughs when a leaf flies off a nearby tree and lands at her feet. That shot, framed by the blue sky and the swell of people in the crosswalk, would
have been perfect for our video on laughter. “You said this wasn't serious.”

“It's not serious, Sloane. But I'm leaving at the end of the week and I feel bad that I'll be gone for eight weeks now instead of two. It would be nice to ...” She pauses. “To sort things out before I go.”

“There's nothing to sort out,” I say as the light changes. “That doctor is wrong.”

Mom steps on the gas. Silence stretches out between us, taut and uncomfortable. Finally, Mom says in a too casual voice, “I borrowed some books this morning. From the Health Sciences Library over at the medical centre. They're waiting for you at home.”

“Books on alopecia?”

“Yes.”

My shoulders tighten as the truth dawns with startling clarity. “You agree with him. You think I have alopecia too.”

Her hesitation tells me everything I need to know. “I'm not a specialist,” she finally says. “But no matter what you think of Dr. Thibodeau personally, his credentials are impeccable.”

“Credentials don't stop people from making mistakes!” I slump down in my seat and stare out the window. “Even doctors screw up sometimes.”

And this one has.

After an hour at home sprawled on my bed reading the books Mom got from the medical library, it happens. I get that click
deep inside, that terrible inner knowing that I can't ignore. The doctor was right. My symptoms are classic alopecia.

I fall back on my pillow and stare up at the ceiling. Nothing's changed. Yet everything has.

How am I supposed to live like this? What will people say? The questions tumble through my mind, a series of dominoes falling one on top of another. But I have no answers, and one question only raises three more, so I force myself to focus on the facts.

Most people develop two or three small coin-shaped patches of hair loss, and that's all. Most cases are mild. Suddenly cold, I reach for the spare blanket at the end of the bed and pull it to my shoulders. I do have a third spot. The doctor was right about that. It's just above my neck and the size of a garbanzo bean. And maybe a fourth on the top of my head too.

My teeth start to chatter. I'm lying right on it. What if it gets bigger because I accidentally rub it? I flip onto my side, pulling the blanket along with me. But I have spots on both sides of my head. Bigger ones. And I don't want to make them worse or stop the hair there from growing back. Except, the books say those spots probably won't produce hair for a while. Maybe even forever. There's no way of knowing. Just as there's no way of knowing how much hair I'll lose.

An image from the last book I looked at flashes through my mind. The woman was completely bald. Shivering, I tug the blanket to the tip of my nose. She was thin and unsmiling too. She looked like a concentration camp survivor.

After a while I sit up and start googling. It's a good thing Lexi isn't around to read some of the horror stories I find in one of the chat rooms. She'd be disgusted. Eventually, I smell
garlic and meat and noodles. My appetite is shaky, but I'm desperate for a distraction, so I go downstairs.

“I hope you're hungry,” Mom says when I walk into the kitchen. She's opening a takeout box of BBQ pork and rice vermicelli. Four more takeout cartons march along the breakfast bar like boxy white ants: eggplant with shrimp, scallion pancakes, lemongrass beef, crab spring rolls. My favourites.

“Not really.”

She licks a smear of sauce from her thumb and looks up. When her eyes lock with mine, her mouth softens. “You read the books.”

“Yeah.” Tears ball in the back of my throat. “He was right.”

Mom opens her arms. I launch myself across the room. “I could lose every single hair on my body.” I sob into her shoulder, making so much noise Button comes to investigate, curling and mewling around my ankles.

“You're getting ahead of yourself,” Mom murmurs as she strokes my back. “You don't know that.”

When my crying slows, she hands me a box of tissues from the top of the fridge. I blow my nose and wipe my eyes while she pulls plates from the cupboard and sets them on the breakfast bar.

“You okay now?” she asks after a minute.

How can she ask that? “No, I'm not
okay
.” More tears well up behind my lids. I slide onto a stool. “I take care of myself. I'm a good person. This isn't fair.”

“You think you'll have a totally fair life? That you'll never be challenged?” She looks up from the cutlery she's setting out. “Come on, Sloane. A life without challenges doesn't exist.”

She's right. Inexplicably I think of Jessica Cox, the star of the inspirational film
Rightfooted
who was born without arms but went on to become the world's first armless licensed pilot. Shame unfurls in my belly. I have it easy. But still ... “Losing my hair sucks.”

“Yes, it sucks.” She shakes a spring roll onto each of our plates and opens the small round container of sweet chili sauce. “But you haven't lost a limb. You don't have a degenerative disease. You aren't going to be confined to a bed, locked in your house, or forced to learn to walk again. You can still function in the world. Completely and fully.” She dips her roll into the sauce, bites into it. “It's hair, Sloane. That's all.”

That's all
. My gaze travels to her hair—thick and long and out of her normal twist. It spills down her back ... a river of black flecked with silver.

“There are worse things in life than alopecia.” She glances at the boxes in the corner. They're stacked three deep with books, shoes, and clothes destined for Sudan. “I know it doesn't feel that way, but trust me on that.”

At Mom's urging, I manage to eat a full plate of food, even having seconds of scallion pancakes. When we're finished, she brews a pot of chai tea and pours us each a mug.

“You aren't in this alone,” she reminds me. “The specialist will help you.”

It's like I'm out of control, on a raft rushing down a river and there's no way to stop it. “How soon can I get in?”

“I don't know. Dr. Thibodeau's office is making the referral. We need to wait for a phone call.”

“I can't wait!” I clutch the spicy tea like it's a lifeline. “I need to get treated!”

“Relax, Sloane. Stress could make things worse.”

The jury's still out on that. According to the books, some studies say stress can cause alopecia but others point to autoimmune or genetic factors.

“Right now you have three spots and they're easily hidden,” Mom adds. “No one can see them unless you point them out.”