Preamble: this is a a very open and frank account of what Ive been through (and going through). Every event here is described as it unfolded, truthfully. My presumptions and assumptions may well be totally wrong and misplaced. Yet ...............

(read on)

Some time ago, actually just around five plus years ago, I woke up with a start: as I was brushing my teeth I saw myself in the basin mirror: mortified and shell shocked. There was something terribly wrong with my face. I should know, I see it once every morning. A strange queasy feeling wrenched my guts as my hand went up to my cheek – bare. Gone was patch of my bristly beard. A naked hairless patch. Smooth. Now for those that know me, I have always been a little shabby and scraggy in my appearance – right from 1970 or sometime around, I started to sport a beard, and it has stayed an integral part of my persona (along with my unruly mane) ever since. 

I have faced many a problem because of this harmless fetish – mainly from examiners and senior medical professionals who don’t take kindly to ‘breaking the unwritten code’, personality-wise that is, on how a doctor should look or what he should wear. In not fitting the ‘image’, I paid quite heavily.

And now, as I scratched my chin, I felt facial hair coming loose.

In a few days, my whole face was pock-marked with bare areas, alopecia areata. To add to my dismay even my moustache, was partially gone – and more embarrassingly on one half. Boy, I looked and felt like a clown. Of course, I could have, as some here may advise, taken everything off entirely – but, thirty years is a long time to be familiar with ones own image – and I got nightmares even thinking of emerging clean shaven.

Convinced in a week of this regular shedding, and alarmed – I walked into a consultant dermatologist clinic for medical opinion and advice. The specialist was an old student of mine, who was quite rattled seeing me all changed, like a partially plucked chicken. He examined me closely, asking a hundred questions on diet, personal history with needless to add here, included the possible mental stress and related depression that accompanied and followed my recent separation from my loved ones. Sleeping well? Yes. Eating okay? Yes. Work? As regular as clockwork. He shook his head, looking worried for he could I could discern find no usual or common cause for the strange and abrupt alopecia. A skin scraping and will help – he writes as he talks, listing a whole battery of investigations and laboratory tests.

A few days later, he calls me over the phone, asking me to come over if possible – or I’ll come home sir, he says. I instantly negated his latter request for I didn’t want anyone to see what a pathetic state my lifestyle had turned into in sight months since my family left me. I was living in a tiny tenement, without chairs, bed, curtains or TV, so miserably low had my bank balance been reduced to, that I had to scrape, survive and subsist.

He looked quite grave and serious as I met him. He pushes the reports to me. I scan the numbers and entries, the hair on my nape rising and goose pimples bubbling out along my forearms. My hands trembled. There was something wrong here. This can’t be! But numbers and levels don’t lie. The tale they told was incredible and frightening. 

Toxic levels of un-taken drugs and alarming levels of some unusual hormones.

Sure you’re not on any drugs sir – any medications? For stress? Tension? Sleep?
I shook my head slowly to left and right after each question – too stunned to comprehend the implication and enormity of this development.

In the years since then, 2002, I’ve got back my beard and re-grown the missing half of my drooping moustache. I am as healthy as a near sixty man can be today. But many nights, I lie awake and wonder and question myself. Why? How? When? Each time I end up in cold sweat. I still am clueless and know of no cause for the alopecia that rattled me – one nagging possibility remains unanswered and hangs like a noose over my head – Could those that gypped me of every penny, could those that left me orphaned and on the streets, could those that abandoned me to the streets with just the set of clothes I had on, been up to something sinister? NO, NEVER, NO, NO, my inner voice screams. But to be honest, the very thought frightens.

Once is near enough. I scrupulously avoid eating or even drinking offered beverages (except at hotels) anywhere except my own home. I now only eat what Lakshmi cooks. She knows my fears: she nods in understanding, as she nudges away even her mother in law from the kitchen even now.

Am I insane? Am I hallucinating? Paranoid? Persecution complex? Psycho? May be I am. But, as long as the truth is still out there – it still scares the hell out of me.