My Hair Loss Story

Like many men and women worldwide, I’ve experienced hair loss.   Some people are lucky. They have nicely shaped scalps and they can get away with shaving their heads, growing a beard and they still look good.  Others however, simply look better with hair.

How Hair Loss Impacted My Life

But then there’s me. I just don’t look good with a shaved head.  I know that this is a matter of opinion, but our experiences teach us to believe certain things.   I still remember back to ninth grade when the girl I was dating at the time broke up with me when I shaved my head for a swimming event. Moreover, a girl I was interested in when I first met her first wanted to date me only after my hair grew back six months later.   On the flipside, I spent over 2 years growing my hair so that it was nice and long. Not only did I receive many compliments from women, I was told that I look like Brad Pitt when the movie “Legend of the Fall” became popular.   So what did I learn? I learned that I just didn’t look good without hair but girls found me attractive with long hair.

So when I started losing my hair at 21 years of age, I was devastated. I remember seeing that first little spot of baldness in the crown and I panicked.

Hair loss isn’t something that just affected me physically. It impacted my entire life.  I became insecure, I felt less attractive, I lost my confidence, I wouldn’t go anywhere without a hat, I felt 10 plus years older than I was and looking back, I made decisions I wouldn’t have made had I been more confident if I had hair.

So restoring my hair was more than just a cosmetic improvement. It was therapy. It was the answer to my problems.  It was the cure to my depression.  It was the only way to restore my confidence and eliminate my insecurities.   Now I just had to find out how I can get my hair back.

 

Non-Surgical Hair Loss Treatments Didn’t work for me

My father was using Rogaine with some success so When I first started losing my hair in the crown, I tried it for myself. I felt like it was starting to help but foolishly, I thought I was cured so I stopped.   Several months later, the hair in my crown was exponentially thinner than it was even before I started using Rogaine.

After that, I began using a number of lotions and potions in an attempt to restore my rapidly receding hairline and ever increasing thinning areas. Let me just say upfront that despite all the claims on commercial websites and fictitious customer reviews, the only proven nonsurgical hair loss solutions include minoxidil and finasteride.  These are the active ingredients in the more popular name brand solutions Rogaine and Propecia.   However, I realized this a little late and by the time I started on both of these treatments, I had already lost a significant amount hair and at best, they were helping me maintain the existing hair I had left.

Frankly, I didn’t have much hair left anymore. So I eventually stopped all nonsurgical treatment because after years, I concluded that they were likely not working at all. Because I believe I had reached my genetically pre-determined final hair loss pattern or close to it, I haven’t lost much if any additional natural hair since I stopped using those treatments. For others the medication may be important but it seemed that nonsurgical treatments weren’t going to work for me and because hair loss was emotionally devastating to me, I had to do something else.That’s when I learned about hair transplant surgery.

Hair Transplant Surgery – The Hair Loss Cure 

Surgical hair restoration had previously developed a reputation for producing unnatural looking cornrows or doll hairs that scared individuals who saw them. However, if you select the right surgeon, today’s modern hair transplant surgery is so natural that even expert hairstylists can’t detect them.

In 2004, I underwent my first hair transplant. Because I had advanced balding, I learned that a single procedure wouldn’t be enough.

Long story short, in order to achieve a thick, natural looking head of hair with minimal signs of thinning, I would need approximately 10,000 “grafts” to be placed strategically in the thinning areas. This included reconstructing a natural looking hairline, adding density and re-creating the natural whorl pattern and filling in the balding crown.

Hasson & Wong – Restores Hair and Lost Confidence

My first two hair transplants totaling 3800 grafts were a good start but I was left in a position where I knew I needed to find an exceptional surgeon. One that specialized in densely packed ultra-refined follicular unit hair transplant mega sessions. In other words, I needed a doctor that could harvest an exceptional number of grafts in a single session and not only fill in the remaining balding areas, but implant them as closely together as possible in order to minimize the appearance of thinning.

This led me to Hasson and Wong and Dr. Hasson who possesses a stellar reputation for this exact procedure.  My third and fourth hair transplant therefore, totaling approximately 5600 grafts gave me the exceptional, natural and full looking head of hair that I have now.

Had I chosen Dr. Hasson in the beginning, I likely would’ve only needed two larger hair transplant procedures to meet my goals. Like many others who have come before and after me, I did not fully research and understand the differences from one clinic to another.  But at the end of the day, I was led to an exceptional surgeon who provided me with the results I needed to achieve a desirable look and get the confidence back that I needed to succeed.

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