TAMPA, Fla. — Let me begin by apologizing.
This is the last thing I want to be doing: making myself a story, or for that matter, making anything about me. I’d much rather be telling someone else’s story.
That’s my job. That’s my passion.
But there’s no hiding what I’ve been trying to hide anymore.
I look much different than I did the last time I was on the air.
So, I’m coming clean to share what happened and, yes, as cliche as it may sound, hopefully, help someone who is going through what I went through or is dealing with one of the dozens of other autoimmune diseases that can be far more debilitating than mine.
It’s Just Hair, Right?
Full Disclosure: I’ve been battling regular hair loss since I was 20. I’ve done it all. Rogaine, Propecia, Finestride, and a yes, even a hair transplant.
Looking back, I was not mature enough, brave enough, or confident enough to deal with hair loss before I even started my career, a career that, rightly or wrongly, places a premium on appearance.
Knowing what I know now, I would have shaved my head and called it a done deal long before going down the rabbit hole of hair loss treatments.
But this was not normal hair loss. I remember the moment it happened. It was Sunday morning. The night before, I hosted the Hispanic Woman and Man of the Year Gala in downtown Tampa.
My wife Katie and I had a great time. Late night. Without the kiddos. The next morning, I got out of the shower, touched my head, and felt cold bare skin. Like smooth as glass. Bare as a baby’s bottom. Not even a hint of hair. The size of a half-dollar coin.
What the hell?
I started Googling. I don’t recommend that. Everything scary, from cancer to lupus to thyroid conditions, came up.
So, I went to a dermatologist, and he instantly recognized it and confirmed what I had self-diagnosed. It was an autoimmune disease called Alopecia Areata.
Your immune system, for some reason, is triggered to attack your hair follicles, causing them to fall out all over the body. In my case, it was sudden and rapid and happening all over my face and scalp, even part of my eyebrows.
It can be caused by stress, genetics, environment, and perhaps diet. The truth is there is no clear 100% consensus in the medical community on what causes it. And there is no cure.
Now I should be clear: I have a blessed life, happily married for 18 years to a woman whom I don’t deserve. She and my two wonderful boys are everything to me.
A teenager who's an honor roll student and an athlete who fills my weekends with joy watching him play travel basketball. And a 9-year-old, whose precocious personality is much bigger than his four-foot body, still has the face of a baby and keeps me laughing when I’m not chasing him around the yard playing football.
I have no complaints. I brought this situation on myself. I stressed out about stupid stuff. It was a learned behavior, almost a coping mechanism.
In a business where you are constantly under deadline pressure; I got too used to going at a certain pace and pushing myself. But more importantly, I didn’t always take care of myself.
Poor sleeping habits. Poor eating habits. Letting stress control me instead of learning how to control it. Dumb. It all adds up. And I believe it all led to my immune system collecting rent on my poor habits, with hair as the payment.
I’ve made a lot of changes in these past four years that I’ve been dealing with this. Diet, exercise, sleep routine, and most importantly, how I recognize and deal with stress.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love the thrill of the chase. I can still be intense. I live for breaking news. I live for the big stories. Being on the scene, from hurricanes to election nights. Anchoring the big newscasts when you know you are about to tell viewers something important, impactful, and historical.
All those moments when you are conditioned as a broadcast journalist to rise to the occasion. All of that…after 24 years and counting in this business, still gets me going, still gives me chills, and still propels me to work and strive for perfection.
The difference between my hair scare and now: I don’t let the negative stress control me. This situation forced me to confront how I was dealing with stress and why. It forced me to recognize that I’ve seen and been in pretty much every situation, and I know I can handle it.
I don’t need to doubt myself. I got this. There’s a calmness now. Funny what you are capable of when you are forced to make a change.
But it’s just hair, right? Well, yes and no. Sure, I’m one of the lucky ones in the autoimmune disease world. Alopecia Areata is, by and large, mostly an appearance issue, albeit a tricky and unpredictable one.
But, while I can tell myself that it’s “just hair,” I would not presume to tell someone else who's dealing with this that it’s just hair. If you are going through this, it can be a roller coaster at first.
You don’t know what’s causing it or how bad it will get. There are a lot of unknowns.
It’s crucial that you have someone to talk to, bounce off treatment ideas, talk about what you want to do, or just talk about how this is making you feel.
My wife Katie was there for me and still is. She’s helped me reason out the options and think clearly and make better decisions.
Steroid Shots, Wigs, and Micro-Pigmentation
So after I was diagnosed, I wanted to immediately launch a counterattack — of course I did. Patience is not my greatest virtue. That attitude has served me well in a career where you are always up against the clock, but what I should have done was taken a deep breath and realized this was going to take some time to figure out.
Instead, the doc I was seeing said we could try steroid shots into my scalp. This is a common treatment for Alopecia patients. The idea is that steroids trick the immune system into not attacking your hair. Sounds great. Go ahead, “Beam me up, Scotty.”
The problem was, what started out as three or four shots into my giant spot, quickly turned into 10 shots a month later, 20 shots a month after that, until the last visit. I counted just to pass the pain, and I was getting injected with 40 shots into my scalp.
I was doing this every three to four weeks. I would come out of the doctor’s office with my head ringing in pain, dizzy, bleeding, immediately going to work, bare-knuckling through the day, and at times feeling faint. Why?!
Because this is the stupid mind tricks BS, I played on myself. Perfectionist, all that crap. Say nothing, just do it, get it done, keep your head down, don’t make a thing of it, suck it up, blah, blah. Not good. Not to mention, it wasn’t even working.
Sure, one spot would start to regrow hair, but another one would break out a week later. It was whack-a-mole or more like whack-a-scalp.
I finally reached the point where I recognized I was either going to stop shooting myself up with steroids or I was going to end up fainting on live TV. I stopped.
But I still wasn’t at the point where I was ready to shave it all off and go 'Breaking Bad' style. Meanwhile, I was losing more hair, even faster, all over the place.
By this time, the pandemic had set in. Things were closing down and stuff was getting disrupted. I needed cover, literally. So, I made the leap of faith to wear a wig, figuring it would at least buy me some time to figure out my next move.
I never intended it to be a permanent solution. However, you get into the routine; life gets back to normal. It did the job of covering up what I was trying to hide. I no longer had to see what was happening underneath.
Out of sight, out of mind, right?
No.
It was about as fun as you would imagine it would be. High maintenance, high cost. Don’t get me wrong, the people who helped me were awesome. Great people. I owe them a huge thanks. They got me through a tricky time. Very attentive.
They also help all kinds of people, even children, who are dealing with all kinds of issues that cause hair loss.
The issue was not them.
It was the inescapable reality that I live a very active lifestyle. I’m playing non-stop sports with two growing boys. If I’m not breaking a sweat with them, I’m in the pool with them. Ironically, despite the profession I’ve chosen, the last thing I want to be concerned about is how I look.
That was not my thing before this situation came along. But with the wig, you got to be on top of every little thing, or it will go south quickly.
Also, ironically, I think it actually works better if you do not make your living on camera. I found myself much more relaxed about it on the weekends or on vacation. The camera is completely unforgiving. It magnifies everything and every imperfection. So, if something is off, it will show.
More than a few viewers noticed I was wearing hair, and more than a few felt free to let me know exactly how they felt. It comes with the territory, I suppose. I’m not complaining. My female colleagues have it a thousand times worse and they deal with more than just comments about their hair.
This business is finally getting better at accepting people for who they are and what they look like. And I’m fortunate enough to work for a company and a News Director who has been nothing but supportive throughout this whole process.
In fact, I should have come to them sooner and let them know what was going on with me. I didn’t, in part out of fear of what I thought it would mean for my career.
Which leads me to my final stop on the Alopecia train.
I finally got to the point where I said: enough of the fear. I want freedom. And the truth is, my condition started to improve.
All the adjustments I made started to pay off. My hair started to grow back. That is not uncommon with Alopecia. It’s cyclical. Sometimes people experience complete grow back for years.
Either way, I was done with the wig, done with the shots, just done. I decided I would lose the wig, shave my head, start clean, start over, and reset. But I still needed a way to conceal the scars that were left behind from the disease.
Much of the back of my head was discolored. I did a lot of research on a process called micro-pigmentation, to put it bluntly: hair tattoo. It’s a relatively new procedure.
To be clear: I am in no way endorsing this as a treatment. In fact, I just did this, so I’m not 100% sure if it’s going to work.
But I really only have three options: Do nothing and let the scars show, wear a wig, or do this. It did the job. It covered the spots and the scars. It supposedly will last for five years.
To be honest, in my situation, it was much more physically painful because the skin and scar tissue in the back of the scalp is much more sensitive. If you’re just doing the top of your head, it’s not painful at all.
Final Thoughts
So there it is. The four-year-long hair journey from spots to scars, to shots, to wigs, to a shaved head.
I’ll leave you with this. Don’t make my mistakes. Don’t rush into treatments. Take your time. Know that in the beginning, it’s okay if you don’t know what you want. In fact, it’s normal to not know what you want.
And it’s okay that what you may want now is not what you may want a year down the road. There is no wrong choice. It’s really about figuring out what works for you and what makes you happy.
There may not be a cure for Alopecia Areata, but just because there’s no cure doesn't mean you have no control. You do...more than you think.
Look at your life, your routine, what you put into your body, what you leave out. Look at what is causing stress in your life and really have a conversation—not about eliminating stress because that’s probably impossible—but about how you deal with it.
And finally, if you find you are stressing out about stuff that is trivial, be honest with yourself and recognize that it’s only contributing to the problem. If I could go back in time, that’s what I would tell myself.
Here’s how I know that I’ve made progress: Not by my appearance or whether my hair is growing back, but just a few days ago, a situation came up that two years ago would have kept me up at night.
I briefly thought about it for a few minutes, processed it, and moved on. I didn’t give it another thought, and I managed to forget about it completely.
If you are going through Alopecia Areata, feel free to ask me any questions on social. I’ll be open and honest. It’s more common than you think, but not so common that you have someone in your phone that you can ring up and say, “Hey, you went through this. What should I consider.”
Sometimes you just need someone to walk you through the dark room to let you know where the walls are before you can find your way around.
Bottom line: Take your time, and it will all work out.
