My Hair Problem make me growing

I used to think my hair problem was just my hair. With frizzy, unruly locks, I was always self-conscious about my curls growing up. In school I was picked on a lot for my hair. Boys would throw staples in my hair from the back of the classroom because they said it was like Velcro. My mother, the source of my tangled and twisting mop of hair, always said that people pay a lot of money to have what we have. She would say to be thankful because we will never have “boring hair.” In middle school and high school, everyone was ironing their hair to be board straight. My thick, stubborn mane would not succumb to a flat iron, no matter how hard I tried. Until I was about 18, this was my hair “problem.” As a young woman, I began to embrace my bouquet of curls. I wore them proudly and with confidence. I realized that what I always considered a problem, was one of my favorite things about the way I look. My hair began to change when I was about 22, along with other more serious things happening in my body. I had just moved to attend university, but skin problems, joint pain, and illness plagued me for weeks at a time while I tried to keep up in my classes. Finally, after a year of doctors, I was diagnosed with Lupus as a junior in college. Lupus is autoimmune disease, meaning in its simplest definition, my body recognizes its own tissues as invaders and attacks. As a systemic illness, it can affect almost any part of my body, like my skin, my kidneys, my joints, and my hair. Coming from poverty, neither of my parents are able to provide health insurance for me, and as a college student, I cannot afford it myself. Even though there is no cure and the treatment can have horrendous side effects, lupus is life-long threat that requires the oversight of physicians. Without being able to go to the doctor, I have no way of knowing how far the lupus has progressed or which organs it is affecting. My only clues are my symptoms that I experience during flare-ups of the disease. I will get rashes, my knees and wrists will ache, and sometimes I will be too sick to get out of bed. These symptoms do not last more than a couple weeks at a time though, and then I am back to normal, or almost normal. Now three years post-diagnosis, I am almost 26 and in graduate school. I have lost over 50% of my hair. What I have left is thin, dry, and graying at an uncomfortable rate. This symptom is always with me, as my hair loss is progressive. I have tried everything to bring back my once bountiful head of chocolate brown curls. I have spent hundreds of dollars on magic pills and serums that leave me disappointed. I have tried every deep conditioner known to woman kind, but my hair continues to fall limp and gray. After a good haircut my hair feels alright for a couple days or a week at most, then it is back to its dry, brittle, dying state. Sometimes I get so filled with anxiety over my hair, I sit in the bathroom sink with tweezers and pluck every last gray I can find. Unfortunately, I always feel worse afterward, knowing that I now have even less hair. The thread-like strands of hair I still have will not even grow past my shoulders before dying or falling out. It is so embarrassing to say that I cry over my hair, but I do. I look in the mirror and I do not recognize myself. I am 26, but I see a haggard old woman looking back at me. Every day I have to face the painful reality of the damaged, mangled remnants of my once thick, long, healthy hair. I absolutely hate leaving the house, because of my hair. My hair problems keep me from enjoying my youth. I do not go out with friends, or rarely even dates with my boyfriend. Just going to the store, I have to hold back tears of shame and anxiety. When I must leave the house, my morning routine involves making sure my bald spots are covered before I leave for work or class. I can’t put my hair in a ponytail, because it is too thin to stay in place, and my gray and bald areas are more exposed. Tony from umi hair factory recommend me to use hair extensions. To say the very least, I am angry. With everything this illness has taken from me, it could have left me my hair. But with my curls, it also stole my self-esteem, my confidence, and it robbed me of part what makes me, me. This is my hair problem.