Hello All,
Glad I found this forum. Just went full head-shave about four days ago after discovering a huge alopecia on the very back of my head last week. Happened so fast--surely within no more than a week--and is first time. Have no idea if it will grow back. Steroid injections and creme are only treatment I'm doing. I'm fine if it doesn't work.
I think the alopecia was stress-related. Too much work + a divorce at home over the past year. I had a thick and full head of hair all my life, so this happening at 53 is quite unexpected. But I live in Singapore, 1 degree from the equator, and the humidity is brutal--so I'd often considered going full shave to cut down on sweat and heat. Taking the plunge is not hard.
What I do find hard is the "shadow." I have dark brown hair, and even with a close shave--today was the first time I'd managed to achieve that, four days in--the alopecia spot still stares from the back of my head because of that shadow. I'm hoping a bit of sun will tan the whole scalp and make the coloration of the scalp more uniform.
I'll add pics later. Right now I have to go to work--I'm a teacher, and summer holiday ends today--and navigate how to explain the shave. I'm wearing a hat because of unsightly nics (is there makeup for that?). When they heal, and my shaving skills and kit know-how improve, I'll go hatless and feel fine about it.
Anyway, nice to be here. Your forum posts were helpful.
PS. "WhoKnows" is a pun on an old Daoist (Taoist) folk tale in which an old farmer keeps responding to his neighbor's insistence that good luck was good, and bad luck was bad. The old man replies to every event with, "Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?" And the next day, invariably, bad luck becomes good, and good luck bad, and the concept suddenly becomes silly. So I'm looking at this from the "Who knows?" point of view. Here's a poor translation of the tale:
http://www.yellowbridge.com/literature/horse.php 
