Interview with Jodi Pliszka Part 1 - Baldness
To honor Mother’s Day, I wanted to do something special here at Baldiness.com. I was delighted when Jodi Pliszka, mother, author and finalist on American Inventor, agreed to an interview. The interview will be running each afternoon over the next several days. It will conclude with a guest post from Jodi on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 14th.
The interview was conducted via email, and we began with the obvious subject: Baldness.
Baldiness.com: Could you briefly recap your alopecia? When did you start losing your hair? When did you become “bald?” What, if any, counter-measures did you take?
Jodi: My hair loss began at the age of 13. For the next several years we went from doctor to doctor to see if they could find the cause of the bald spots but had no luck. Within a month, I was forced to wear a wig to conceal the bald area. I looked like a cancer patient losing hair from chemo. The huge difference is that I was not sick at all. I didn’t have cancer.
Eventually I learned that I had alopecia universalis. The universalis part of the disorder means that I have no hair anywhere on my body - not even inside my nose. Only one percent of the entire alopecia (balding) population has universalis.
People with alopecia universalis produce too many white blood cells which kill off infection. My body thinks that hair is an infection, so it kills of all the hair cells. However, the mutated gene that causes my immune system to overproduce the white blood cells also helps make me a very healthy person. I have a super woman-like immune system.
B: Is your hair loss permanent, or is there some chance that it might regrow?
J: My hair loss is permanent, since it is a reversed gene that is causing the overabundance of white blood cells.
B: What were you thinking as you begain losing your hair?
J: I was 20 and devestated. “How could this be happening to me? What bad did I ever do to deserve this?
B: At what point did you come to terms with your hair loss?
J: Two years after… I had a God like experience where I wept for 45 minutes. My clothes were saturated with perspiration. At that moment, I know that I no longer had to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. I knew that I could give this up to God and he would take care of me.
Q: What was the tipping point at which you were able to say, “This is me. It is who I am.”
J: Every day I gain more acceptance, with every person that I personally touch and help. it’s like a huge puzzle. The more people I help, the more pieces I am able to fit together for myself. It is a circular relationship. I love to help people and the help me right back in return. God is amazing. God has given me a voice, education and the ability to reach out to others.
Be sure to check out Part 2, where we discuss Motherhood.
Tags: American-Inventor, headline-it!, jodi-pliszka, mothers-dayRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Bald Celebrities, Bald Women
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