I won't bore you to death with the details of my life..not really exciting anyway.  In short, started loosing my hair at age 19 and into a hair system by age 25.  My first system was an ICL system which was sutured to my head--thus the scars. I had the system removed a few months later and switched to a weave then polyfuse for the duration.  

Fast forward 18 years, several systems, several thousand dollars later. I finally garnered enough intestinal fortitude to shave my head (August 2006). I could literally write a book on the highs and lows of wearing a hair system. Some days it looked great--some days not.  While I could have paid for a transplant with all the money I spent on hair systems, ironically, HT's have only progressed (IMHO) in acheivments/excellence in the past few years making world class surgeons within reach of the average working class person (insert my picture here).   

In knew I wanted to have  a HT and in August 2006 I found this forum after making an appointment with a local surgeon in my area (cancelled shortly after doing some research on this forum-(Pat, Thank You forever!).  After consulting several people and Dr's on this forum, I ultimately made my decision to have a HT w/ Dr. True of NYC. I knew I wanted a large session, however, I wanted to get (my head-live and in-person) in front of a surgeon (since I had scar issues) and didn't want to do it the day of surgery or by photo consult.

Dr. True addressed the scar issues and we developed a plan of attack-which began 9/20/06 with a 4326 graft mega session.

Dr. True's staff is second to none. While I had a lot of anxiety and trepidation approaching the surgery, it all subsided by the way his excellent staff put me at ease through the entire procedure through their genuineness and overall concern, for both me and my wife who patiently waited the entire day.   

Surprisingly, I thought I would have more discomfort due to the size of my session.  The night of the procedure, I didn’t feel the need for pain medication, but took it anyway.  The next morning, I did not take anything other than Tylenol and Advil and have started the (1 thru 4 day regiment).  Looking forward to seeing the outcome-but for now, I’ll settle for the “strawberry head” to subside.

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!

I have been losing my hair since I was about 20 years old, at 34 I decided to get a hair transplant, I researched a lot of places and found Rahal hair transplant in Ottawa with Dr. Rahal to be my best option.

I have been losing hair since my early twenties gradually. I used to sport fairly long hair when I was young, sometimes shoulder length, so i used to notice more hair loss while combing or taking showers etc. Gradually this decreased as I moved into later twenties , most probably, due to the density decreasing and the hair itself gradually thinning out.

I used to be quite sensitive to any comments like - hey you are losing hair, or you have lesser hair etc. Not that too many people have made such comments, it was probably only a handful of people and when such comments were made, I just lost my respect for them and probably did not care much for them after that. But the fact remained that I continued to be sensitive to my hair loss. Similar story to most hair loss sufferers listed here.

I did not really think about any treatments for my hair loss, to be honest. There was once , in my early twenties when i first started noticing hair loss and went to a doctor and he looked at my head and said that I was fine and gave me some pills for peace of mind - can you believe it?

Anyway, it was only very recently, that I learnt about success stories of HTs - even though I had heard about hair pieces, hair weaving etc earlier, but never was comfortable with any of them. I would any day have preferred to bald gracefully than to look like a clown in any of those solutions. But recently, after reading about latest techniques and success stories of HT, I went to Bosley and MHR for consultations. And in fact scheduled a procedure with MHR.

Just like for a few other people on the Hairtransplantnetwork, Pats discussion forum site came to my rescue in the nick of time. And I started my research anew by reading through the website in detail. I quickly narrowed my search to a few top surgeons and decided to finally go with Dr.Ron Shapiro due to the great feedback he had, and also because I had happened across his name earlier during my Bosley/MHR research. For some reason, his name had stuck in mind, I would never have thought earlier that i would fly cross country for a HT. I quickly decided to go with Dr.Shapiro, and called Matt the very next day , and scheduled a procedure for the very next week (Sep7). Luckily someone had cancelled and a date opened up that was offered to me and I grabbed it.

It all happened to me at lightning speed thereafter. I had never thought that I would decide upon and undergo a HT so quickly , as I had only started reading about HTs about late last year (2005). I underwent a procedure with Dr.Shapiro on Sep7. Everything went great (I have posted my experience of the visit on the ht forum). It was very much like others have described a HT procedure with Dr.Ron Shapiro - great doctor, great person, great team - Matt, Janna and all their other staff, very smooth procedure throughout.

I think I would classify as a 4 or so - never asked Dr.Ron specifically about where I stood on Norwood scale. Since I am 31, and my thinning is mainly around the hairline front 1/3 and toward the crown, these were the areas primarily addressed. Dr. Shapiro gave an initial high level recommendation for about 2000 grafts for the front 3rd with about 500 grafts or so toward the top part of the crown, keeping future loss in mind, and also with the assumption that propecia may help keep/grow some hair in that region.

I ended with a total number of 2523 grafts for the front 1/3 and some on the top of the crown with about a two finger width region on the top of my head not being touched as Dr.shapiro indicated that I had decent thair in that region and he did not want to risk going through it. Dr.Shapiro cut my thin hairs in the front region and also some small hairs on the crown were cut to enable placment of grafts there.

Today is exactly day 15 after my HT - my scabs have healed well and i had my staples removed on day 12. I am noticing a lot of hair loss (probably both transplanted grafts and native hair) after week1. This is happening more as I am starting to shampoo and massage my hair more vigorously now. Maybe I should stop that and be more gentle.

I will attach some photos soon (I have a lot of pre-op, photos from Dr.Shapiro of day1 post op, and post op photos). I am looking forward to growth of my new hair in the coming months, hoping that I will not face too much hair loss in the interim. I am also planning to use Toppik/Dermmatch to help with concealment.

I will also keep the blog updated with my progress.