I'm one of those who never dreamed it would happen to them. My father experienced hair loss but for some reason I thought it would skip me. I started noticing a thinning of the crown around age 23 for sure, maybe a little earlier than that. Within the first couple of years after noticing loss, I started using minoxodil which was the only thing known to me at that time to combat hairloss. It was only obtainable with prescription then but I thought, "what the heck", I'll give it a try. A little humor there...............the dermatologist I met with to get the prescription was as smooth as a bowling ball on top! I guess I should have known!! Anyway, I tried to stay faithful to it and did, for about a year. I still had quite a bit of hair back then and couldn't tell if it was helping, and it cost around $50 per month, so I stopped. Hey, any of you remember those old commercials about minoxodil/Rogaine?? The one where the guys are white-water rafting together and talking about "doing something" about their hair loss?? Of course most of them were scarcely a NW 2 and looked great!
I used to be very sensitive about going bald and really didn't like talking about it and was quick to take offense if anyone else did. By the time I was around 30 years old, my bald spot was noticable and I guess I'd adopted the attitude that "it is what it is" so I may as well accept it and move on. On the surface, I convinced myself that it really didn't bother me too much and, as a matter of fact, I started joking about it sometimes. But, deep down, I HATED IT and would have very much preferred to have my hair back. Like many, I felt it made me look much older than I really was. Every time I would see someone who's balding, or someone who was wearing a hair piece, it would make me wonder what I looked like to people. I mean, come one, us balding guys can spot those hair piece's a mile away, can't we?? Anyhow, I can't believe some of the "things" called hair piece's that I'd see some guys wearing. I definitely wasn't in the market for that but didn't want to be balding (and eventually bald, period) anymore.
There have been a few things in my favor regarding hair loss over the years. First, my loss has been rather gradual, and, it was from the crown forward. Though I started developing a noticable "B spot" on the back of my head by the age of 28 or so, I'm fairly tall at around 6'4" so, from the front, I had the "appearance" of a fairly full head of hair. Even though my hairline had receeded somewhat by my first hair transplant at age 38, it still didn't look too bad to me. Finally, after losing my hair for 15 years I was ready to do something about it.
I first learned of hair transplants by seeing some of the old Bosely infommercials. They're really good at their marketing. I'm so glad now that I took the time to do some research before doing anything about my hair loss. My wife has always accepted me and how I look and really couldn't care less which is nice. But, I guess, in the long run it bothered me and I wanted to do something about it. I finally stumbled upon Pat's website called the Hair Transplant Network. It was a wealth of information and within 3 months or so I scheduled my first hair transplant. Though it went well, I only received 1200 or so grafts and, being around a NW 5, it wasn't near enough. About a month ago, I received another 3886 grafts mostly in the crown with some sprinkled in the temples and front. It may be my last but I still may want to thicken a little on the top and possibly lower the hairline slightly, we'll see.
Anyway, thanks to Pat's site and the many, many poster's there, I feel I was pointed to a quality surgeon and, thus far, have been very pleased with the results. I'd recommend it to anyone who's losing their hair and is ready to rectify the situation..........permanently! |
Age 40, almost 1 yr HT # 2
