Hair loss no matter for Lake City graduate

It was third grade when Kyler Little started going bald the first time.

This was before his disease really took hold and before he took hold of it, wrangling something rare and startling into a kind of fearlessness.

“Intellectually, he is brilliant; and as a runner, he is outstanding,” his counselor at Lake City High School, Sue Hennessey, wrote in an email. “But it is how he has dealt with the immune disorder alopecia that sets him apart.”

As a third-grader, Little said, he didn’t really understand his disorder. But his white blood cells were attacking his hair follicles, causing his hair to fall out. He got some treatments that worked, and his hair grew back.

But in eighth grade it started falling out again, and this time, none of the treatments worked.

By the spring of ninth grade, he’d lost half the hair on his head. That’s when he decided to go all out. He shaved his head smooth.

At school, his fellow high school freshmen looked and looked at the bald kid. Some asked if he had cancer.

“It was very embarrassing to go to school like that for the week after,” said Little, now 18. “You could just see all the eyes on you.”

And then it was the next week, and the next. His self-consciousness eased up, and so did the stares. His hair never much grew back.

And his perspective has shifted, he said.

“I know it sounds weird – an 18-year-old talking about a life perspective,” Little said. “With shaving off the rest of my hair, I kind of realized I just shouldn’t care what others think of me and just focus on what I love to do, and not worry about what people are going to say.”

He’d made it a goal his freshman year to rank high academically in his class at his Coeur d’Alene school, working toward the top GPA by earning the best grades in the toughest classes. By his junior year, the stress was taking a toll.

Again, he changed his mind-set.

“I didn’t drop any classes or anything,” he said. He just chilled out a bit. At some point, he made it a point to get more sleep: Because he has no eyelashes or nose hairs to trap germs, it’s easier to get sick. The better he slept, the less sick he got.

He’s graduating as Lake City’s salutatorian, No. 2 in a class of 295. Chilling out must have helped, he said.

Another stress reliever: running. Little runs track and cross-country for Lake City, competing mainly in the 1,600- and 3,200-meter events.

He’ll run track and cross-country at Washington State University. Drawn to science and math, he’s considering a major in mechanical engineering or physics, or both.

His autoimmune disorder seems to only affect his follicles. Sometimes he gets a little peach fuzz on his head and face, and sometimes he’s completely hairless.

He’s focused on other things: “Definitely, now, it’s a lot better,” he said. “I don’t really think about it at all.”