My hair is long and can be silky or wavy. That night, the night in my dream, it was silky, shiny and smooth. I was happy with it, and having a good hair day.

I kept running my fingers through my own hair, the way I do when I need sensory stimulation and calming. Everything was fine.

That's how most dreams start out, with everything fine.

Then I realized that the hair on the right side of my head felt thinner than that on the left side. I looked in the mirror.

Oh my god, I thought, how long have I been prancing around, thinking I looked great, when I'm missing a third of my hair?!

What I saw horrified me: a large portion of hair on the right side of my scalp was entirely gone. Not just thin, but gone. I tried to remember if I'd noticed any hair coming off in my hands a while back, when I was stroking it. Nope. Nothing had come off. No hair on my hands or on the floor. I looked back to the image before me.

My scalp was irritated and pink, with occasional dark red, smooth patches about the size of dimes. In general, it looked like I had psoriasis but without any raised up portions. Just lesions. Almost like KS lesions, dark and flat and ominous.

And then I woke up to my full, radiant head of hair.

(Just so TK didn't think all my dreams were lush and cloying and redolent of cedar.)