Forum Discussion
Hair Growing Back
Hi All,
I am on my last paclitaxel chemo next week and staring to look beyond the chemo bad ass.
I am just completing 8 courses of dose dense chemo - 4 xAC, 4x Paclitaxel and am wondering how long it took for others to grow their hair back. I know this is assuming it has grown back sufficiently, as some women are unlucky with hair regrowth.
Just hoping you can share you experiences of when your hair grew back enough to actually feel like you had enough to do something with and any changes in your hair regrowth from before chemo.
Many thanks,
Jo
I am on my last paclitaxel chemo next week and staring to look beyond the chemo bad ass.
I am just completing 8 courses of dose dense chemo - 4 xAC, 4x Paclitaxel and am wondering how long it took for others to grow their hair back. I know this is assuming it has grown back sufficiently, as some women are unlucky with hair regrowth.
Just hoping you can share you experiences of when your hair grew back enough to actually feel like you had enough to do something with and any changes in your hair regrowth from before chemo.
Many thanks,
Jo
459 Replies
- I agree @Afraser. We should be grateful to have any hair at all. Personally, I like my grey hair. I have just had my eyebrows and eyelashes tinted. What a difference!
- Don't you just love the bad perm look? I went from a stylish brunette wig (and lots of people didn't know it was a wig) to grey frizz. Not curls, frizz. Like a really bad home perm gone wrong. People were relatively polite but you could see them thinking "What the hell has she done that for??". I wasn't game to risk shaving it off and growing back again, possibly only to find it was the same (good chance I think) but I also really liked having hair of my own back, so I put up with it. Every trim knocks out a bit of the frizz, once it got to soft curls it was easier to like - I too had poker straight hair originally. It took quite a long time for my hair to change colour, texture and unkink, but it was a constant progression towards better. I still have (5 years on from regrowth) a little bit more wave in my hair than I had originally but I like the colour (much less grey and at 73 that's a big plus!) and it's easier to style. Don't be alarmed if you find some changes to your normal shedding pattern - more or less - over time. Chemo really does knock your head hair around. As you will see from some threads on this site,a very small percentage of people don't find their hair grows back at all well. So however much you hate the bad perm at the moment, be heartened that it's growing back well and healthy and that it will get to a style that can you can embrace again. Best wishes.
- @survivor2017 Mine's growing back in a kind of mohawk style! I'm just pleased to have eyebrows again.
- @survivor2017
My hair looked like the grey grannie perm.... >:) >:) but it has now got its normal straight hair look I have always had took about a year for mine to lose the curls completely
a few ladies keep their hair in the cropped style for about 6mths before allowing it to grow a bit longer. - @survivor2017 It hasn't happened to me but anecdotally I've heard people say they've had some success doing that. If I remember correctly @primek didn't like her regrowth much. What did you end up doing K?
- I am 6 months post chemo and I have the complete opposite hair. It looks like a bad granny perm and I absolutely hate it. Can anyone tell me if it will ever go back to straight and if so, how long will that take. Is it worthwhile shaving it off again and hoping it will come back "not so bad perm style"?
