Hi
I finished 12 weeks of Paclitaxel 6 weeks ago. I used the cold cap consistently and it worked for me. My hair is thinner but still there and no bald patches.
I knew I might lose my eyelashes and eyebrows but I didn’t during chemo and assumed I’d been very lucky re this. Over the last week however my eyelashes have all fallen out and almost all of my eyebrow hairs too! Does anyone know if this is normal 6 weeks after my last treatment?
Hey Jude (sorry, couldn’t resist!),
I hope my experience will encourage you.
My only chemo was 9 weeks of paclitaxel ending October 2020 so I am a year ahead of you on this journey. I also cold-capped and remember the timing well. At 8th session the discussion with the person fitting the cap was how well it was working for me in that I still had all my hair and even my lashes and eyebrows. My daughter’s wedding was scheduled for end of November, 6 weeks after I finished, and one of my hopes was to still look like ‘me’ for the occasion.
From then on my hair thinned slowly but surely for more than four months till I had probably lost 40%, although still not enough for others to notice and I never felt self conscious or needed to cover my head. I also lost my lashes and brows shortly after finishing chemo which I hid behind my fringe and glasses. However, I think the losses were caused by fresh hair and lashes being stimulated to grow by chemo (or the ending of it?) and the new pushed out the old, if that makes senses. So a perfect line of tiny new lashes was visible almost immediately, same with brows. Daughter’s wedding was delayed three weeks by the autumn lockdown and took place a week before Christmas by which time, 9 weeks after finishing chemo, lashes and brows were back to almost normal even while the hair continued its thinning. Now 13 months on, and having also completed a year of Herceptin treatment which may slow regrowth, I have what I call the ‘fluffy look’ with plenty of new shorter hair coming through my shoulder-length remainder to gradually thicken it up. It’s greyer and slightly wavy and still quite a long way from catching up the length but I consider myself fortunate as losing my hair so the whole world would know I was a cancer patient was my biggest fear.
Everyone is different, but I wish I had known I might lose more after finishing chemo than during. I did panic a bit that the thinning would never stop or the lashes and brows would take ages to grow back but it all worked out well for me and I hope you are as fortunate.