Cole is a huge flirt. He always has been! He loves going to the store so he can say hello to people and giggle and get little compliments from everyone. (An elderly woman asked him on a date last week, to which he replied, "Okaaaaaaaay!") Being a cute, flirtatious baby, he tends to draw a lot of attention to himself.
On quite a few occasions (I can't count how many now...) complete strangers have asked either indirectly or not, if he has cancer. I have a few feelings on this.
First of all, it is insane how some people can just come out and ask these things. Not only do I think it silly to assume someone has a specific condition, but the amount of people that have just come up to me and asked this makes me speechless. I can't imagine ever walking up to a stranger and asking them if they/their child has cancer.
I don't necessarily think that these people are ignorant, but I definitely think, "wow that guy was ballsy." Or at least something along those lines. Realistically, most children that are bald probably have gone through some sort of cancer treatment. But even before I knew what alopecia was I never assumed someone had cancer when bald.
As of late, Cole has grown some hair in. It is patchy, weird looking, and not even at all. He has his eye lashes back almost completely, and some eyebrows, though I've noticed those are falling out and coming in rapidly and repeatedly. With this patchy hair, I've had more comments than ever. Sometimes people ask what stage he is at, what kind of cancer he has, or how his treatment is going.
Sometimes the comments catch me off guard and I am confused. "Oh, how is his treatment going?" "What?" I just don't even think about it, so it doesn't come to mind until they ask. Then I take a moment to educate them on alopecia and they are usually very relieved that he is not ill.
Then there are the people who just ask me why he is bald.
What I've learned from all of this is that most people would probably rather you ask than assume what is going on with them, what they have, etc.
