Hi, my name is Emma, and I was diagnosed with Alopecia Areata just before my 14th birthday.
My hair had always been perfect until one morning I woke up and got in the car to drive to school and mum asked me what I had done with my hair. At this stage, it was no more than about 5mm of hair missing from the front of my hairline. The next day it was even bigger, about the size of a 20-cent coin. This is when we decided to book an appointment with the dermatologists. We were extremely lucky, and it turned out they had a cancelation that week.
It was 5 days after the initial piece of hair fell out when I was diagnosed with Alopecia Areata. By this point, I had already lost about a 1/8th of my hair.
We instantly started steroid injections into my scalp, and they started to work. Over the course of about two weeks, I continued to lose hair rapidly until over a quarter of my head was bald and my hair had thinned drastically. At this point, we were told that I was most likely going to lose all my hair and that we should start looking into wigs.
One week later, I shaved what was left of my hair and donated it to help others with alopecia.
My hair loss slowed right down, and it eventually stopped. After a few months, I had some hair regrowth on my head. When things finally looked like they were getting better I suddenly lost all my eyebrows over a period of 3 days. This was exceptionally traumatic. We turned to henna to create the illusions of eyebrows for a few months before they eventually began to grow back. While I still have bald patches on both my head and my eyebrows, I have hope that one day they might grow back.
Emma is a very talented dancer that has been training for most of her life. She also is one of our recipients of the AAAF gold level Sponsorship Program which has allowed her to pursue her dancing. For more information about the sponsorship program click here.
Love, Alopecia 
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