The Colon Club

It's been almost three weeks since my final chemo treatment and my hair is still falling out. Probably more now than during my final round of chemo! I'm so ready for it to stop. Can anyone tell me how long the shedding normally lasts after finishing chemo?

It took about 3 months for my hair to stop shedding after I stopped the Folfox. It's frustrating, I know. But it does stop eventually!

I finished 3 weeks ago, and my hair I notice is falling out in strands, not clumps. My eyebrows are thin and I lost all the dark eyelashes I have. Hopefully that will come back. I am concerned about the continual loss of hair. We are lucky that our cocktails dont make us lose our hair completely, but someone like me cant color it, and that has been making me crazy. They said I could resume color after 6 weeks off to be safe.

ONWARD!

Joanne

Joanne 814 wrote: My eyebrows are thin and I lost all the dark eyelashes I have. Hopefully that will come back.

They may come back longer and curly.

I lost most of my eyelashes too. What's left is short limp little eyelashes that are just kind of sad looking! ha. I am relieved that I still have most of my hair, but I really look forward to the morning that I don't spend ten minutes disposing of and/or cleaning up hair in the bathroom while I'm getting ready for work. I have an appointment to get a few highlights in a couple of weeks, which will put me a little over 4 weeks out. Kind of nervous about that but I've read that highlights are not as damaging as all over color.

I lost about half of my hair on FOLFORI. However, eyelashes and eyebrows were a different story entirely. I trimmed my eyelashes three times...no joke...as they kept getting in my eyes in spite of digging out my old eyelash curler and using it. I think I trimmed a total of at least 1/4" from my eyelashes. My eyebrows got bushy and very, very dark. I even trimmed them once too! All in all, it looked pretty dorky because I couldn't color my hair and it was gray. My hair is finally starting to come back in and I colored it last week. IMHO losing your hair strand by strand is like slow torture. There were times when I actually wished it would all fall out so I wouldn't have to inspect the shower drain every time I washed it to see how much I had lost. It's a bummer, but it does come back.

I understand that hair grows on a 3 month cycle - so it depends where your 3 month cycle was compared to the chemo - it might keep falling out for a few weeks, go dormate for a few weeks and then come back.

I finished Chemo November, by the following March my hair was back to "normal". Only problem is it came back in grey,I didn't have grey hair when I started Chemo, I was a blonde................................only my hairdresser knew for sure, now damn it the whole world knows

I haven't colored my hair since the end of chemo . In the words of my hairdresser "leave it alone, people pay me money to have that silver streak done!!"

My hair is healthy looking and does have a nice shine.

Be assured your hair will grow back.

Joy
NED 32 months
Stage III rectal 2 nodes

I finished chemo exactly one year ago and after fighting my thinning hair for the rest of the year, I finally cut it VERY SHORT in January. The old hair was stringy and gross and the new hair that was coming in was sticking up all over the place. I had thick and pretty straight hair before and now it is still thick but curly. That chemo is some crazy stuff!

Not having much hair on my head to begin with, I would scarcely have known the difference. I have had a short beard since 1980 and was a bit vain about the absence of grey in the red growth. I thought it might go grey on me during chemo but nothing happened.