HealingWell
Search Close Search
☰

Baby, it's cold. . . down there.

Support Forums
>
Prostate Cancer
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply
❬ ❬ Previous Thread |Next Thread ❭ ❭
Posted 1/2/2017 10:27 PM (GMT 0)
Couldn't quite figure out why it felt so cool and breezy down there in my shorts. Then after a shower, I looked at a mirror and it hit me . . . where did all the hair go? I seem to have lost large patches of pubic hair, as well as almost all hair from my navel down to my pubic bone. No wonder it felt so breezy.

I've heard that this could happen after radiation therapy, so not really a surprise. Just a shocker at how quickly it seemed to hit.

Anyone else have this? Did the hair ever grow back? (No HT so far, so only a radiation effect.)

Does this mean that I have to go all the way through puberty again?
Posted 1/2/2017 10:31 PM (GMT 0)
You should hope it stays that way. My girlfriend says a tree looks taller without any underbrush..............
Posted 1/2/2017 10:31 PM (GMT 0)
They attacked you with a razor. Some nurse was tasked with giving you a nice shave.

Standard procedure and they don't often mention it.

It grows back.

In time.

Andrew
Posted 1/2/2017 11:01 PM (GMT 0)
I can relate. I didn't get hit with a razor. It never came back after chemo. They didn't even have to shave me for my surgery. And when it started again, radiation knocked it out again. The hair on my chest and stomach still hasn't recovered. Until just a couple weeks ago when my testosterone rose to about 240 - it's like I'm entering puberty again. Now I expect it will all go away again after just starting Lupron and beginning chemo.
But, I've grown to appreciate the smooth manscaped effect. HaHa
Posted 1/3/2017 12:33 AM (GMT 0)
Happened to me during the IMRT part of my treatment. That was five weeks long and I think I started noticing it toward the second half of my time. As I recall it started coming back a couple of months after I finished IMRT.

PS Great thread subject title!
Posted 1/3/2017 1:04 AM (GMT 0)
Lost almost all during chemo....grew back thicker than ever then radiation took it away again...grew back again though. Chemo took almost all the hair on my body...it was nice not to have nose hair for six monthssmile.
Posted 1/3/2017 2:53 AM (GMT 0)
Hormone therapy made most of my body hair just about disappear. Not completely, but it got very fine and did go away substantially. Bare chest, underarms, very light hair on legs. I've always been kind of a strawberry blond so none of it was very visible normally. My arm hair weirdly became very fine but very long, like 3" long. Bizarre.

With T recovery, a lot has come back to "normal". However, I have a couple of symmetrical areas in the radiation treatment zone that don't appear any hair will ever grow back. They're irregular, about the size of a silver dollar. I've read that areas of skin exposed to over 50 Gy or some such will never again grow hair. The precision of IMRT minimized the radiation doses where not wanted, but those skin areas apparently were where the beam was strongest. Never burned, thankfully.

It's odd, but we notice this stuff, since that is another part of "maleness" that this disease and its treatments attacks.
Posted 1/3/2017 3:44 AM (GMT 0)
A tree looks taller. BAh ha ha. I think I will take anrazor to
The
Shower tonight. 10-1/2 years of hormones, I need all the help I can get
Posted 1/3/2017 3:55 AM (GMT 0)
There once was a man of the clergy
who elected for prostate surgery
as they shaved round his crotch
he requested some scotch
to dull his fears of uncertainty..........
Posted 1/3/2017 1:24 PM (GMT 0)

Michael_T said...
PS Great thread subject title!

I figured that I was dealing with a relatively common issue among raddies, but I tend to try to lighten things up a bit when the issue is not life-threatening and there's nothing I can do about it anyway.

I've never been all that hairy, and I miss every one of those that are lost. I'm hoping to be one lucky enough to have enough grow back that I don't look like a failed manscaping experiment when I'm heading for the showers at the gym.
✚ New Topic ✚ Reply