I was a beautician & any perm should easily last 3 mos so she is getting the perms way too often. I have friends that get perms & they last about 3 months so 6 weeks is taking advantage of a client(patron-your wife) Hair should not be washed for 3 days after a perm or you relax the curl & it will get straight too soon. Most older folks heads sweat at times if they get overheated, wear heavy crocheted or woolen caps on their heads(or wigs) & the head can get very smelly- I call it old people smell. I know some people get used to it on their spouse or on themselves & no longer notice it or could be their sense of smell is terribly diminished. I was called to hospital or nursing home in the past as you have to be licensed to cut hair & wash it in CA. Some hair smelled really bad, relatives never mentioned that, probably to be polite to their relative or they had gotten used to it. I think caregivers appreciate taking care of folks with clean hair(& showered) I received many compliments about how good my dad smelled & what a pleasure it was to care for him. Also a clean head has another advantage as not nearly as likely to get infection from scratching their head & breaking open the fragile skin. A clean head just makes a person more comfortable & even if your wife can't express it I'm sure she would not want to smell around her friends. You are a wonderful hubby to care about her & take this step. About hair length if she usually wore it fairly short about to the neck or inch below then that is probably what she would prefer. 3 to 5 inch long hair is easier to keep looking nice & with a perm & weekly washing all she should need is just a comb or brush threw it to look presentable. If you don't remember how long she wore it few years ago Just look at pics of her.

DS's dog is going thru something very similar and has been diagnosed with a bacterial infection.....probably staph. The first antibiotic upset his stomach horribly but he's doing very well on the current treatment. He's also on a short term dose of Prednisone for the terrible itching and hair loss. Poor thing was just miserable with the itching and his scratching was making things even worse. We fitted him with a loose 'shirt' so that he wouldn't injure himself even more with the scratching.

I hereby confer the degree of Doctor, K.T. on y'all! I did run a 102 fever with the pneumonia. Bet that's what happened. I'll keep on with the FE tablets though, since the blood tests did show low iron. (Maybe it was the raspberries, not the iron tabs that gave me tummy trouble! LOL) My hair isn't comming out in clumps, just individual strands -- root bulb intact. I'm not 'shedding' like a dog in spring, but there's just more hair on my brush and comb, etc. I thought of one other possible cause. DH and I decided we could survive without taking our multi-vitamins to Maui last winter, and we just never resumed taking them. I've filled up our dispensers today and we'll get back on thosse. Thank you all for your thoughtful -- and *helpful* -- posts. Now I'm going to start another one to see if you have ideas for DH's skin problem. (No rest for the helpful!)

I hesitate to say this because I did it as part of my get rid of migraine program which worked for 5 years. I took flax oil for 3 years in higher quantities. By the end of that I was no longer having migraines and my hair started to thicken up and my hairline rapidly was moving down lower than I've ever had on my forehead. It was very strange. I quit taking the flax oil because I was sick of it plus the excess weight and for 5 years was completely migraine free but it has moved back in. My hair however has stayed growing much more quickly. I'm not sure if causation and all that. Trier beware