Joy and Gratefulness...Erlichia and Alopecia

Have you ever heard of Alopecia?
Madeline was diagnosed with Alopecia in October. In early October, Madeline started losing hair by multiple handfuls. She would wake up with a "blanket" of hair on her pajamas in the morning, it would constantly fall out throughout the day and we were pulling handfulls of hair out of the bathtub after bathtime every single day. I don't know if you'll remember that over the summer, while we were in the midst of moving and my dad was in the hospital with his cardiac emergency, Madeline was very sick. She had been diagnosed with Erlichia which is a tick borne illness. Her liver was compromised and she had fevers and rashes for a couple of weeks. Apparently, the physical stress to her body during that time caused the alopecia which in her case was diffuse (occurring all over the head). The Dr told us that we would have to wait and see whether the hair loss would be partial or total. Many children who develop alopecia end up completely bald. When her hair started getting really thin, we cut it short to give it more body and we had her start wearing some hats to get her used to them.

We were heartbroken and concerned for her...especially for her self esteem. We poured our hearts out in prayer for her and had several friends and family members pray for her as well. We were set at peace that even if she did lose all of her hair, it would grow back with in one year. And we were so grateful that she wasn't facing a more horrible illness. But we were still concerned and sad. Well, God is gracious. We were encourged by Bible verses sent to us that reminded us that God knows every hair on our heads :) I believe that God prepared Madeline's hair to handle this loss. My little girl had a VERY thick head of hair. So even though she lost a great portion of it and it's much thinner now than it was, she did not lose it all. Her hair stopped falling out around mid November. She now has tiny baby hairs growing in all over her head to replace the ones she lost. Those tiny baby hairs throw a kink into my hairdressing skills but I am overjoyed every time I see them all coming in! I'm going to post here some pics of her and Hannah when they both got cute little bobs :) Even if God hadn't answered our prayers, even if His plan for Madeline was to go several months to a year completely bald, I KNOW that He would have continued to give us what we needed to make it through and it would have been a great character building time for Madeline. But I'm very thankful to Madeline's Creator for answering our prayers the way we hoped they would be answered!!!!!

Madeline, pre hair cut

Back of Madeline ... you can see an area that was balding




Madeline's short new cut and the cute headband and t shirt my friend Rachel made for her


Hannah's long locks


Hannah's cutie short cut