anothermelbournelad
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Hi everyone
Long time reader, first time poster. I wanted to share with you my hair loss experience and to give credit to the many contributors to this forum whose advice I heeded.
I am 32 year old professional. The first I realised I was losing my hair was when I was 21, when my then housemate remarked that my hair looked thin when it was wet. By 23, my hair loss was quite noticeable, and I was getting an increasing number of comments about it from family, friends and work colleagues. I was devastated.
Not knowing the options then available to me, I scoured the Yellow Pages for solutions.
First stop, a trip to a well-known hair replacement clinic, heavily promoted by a tv campaign using high-profile sportsmen. The high-pressure, hard-sell tactics used by the salesman were discouraging. I was advised that I'd be completely bald within 2 years and that my only option was to sign up to a hair replacement program. This was the first time I appreciated what "hair replacement" actually involved. I said to the salesman, "so what you're proposing to do is to glue a wig to my head that needs to be reglued every month?". The salesman said that that was an overly simplistic description and that the unit was very sophisticated.
Next stop, a local clinic that offered laser treatment. I paid $2000 for 6 months of treatment, during which time my hair loss worsened. When the 6 months ended and I was asked to sign a new contract, I bailed.
I then started using Toppik. The initial results - when I still had a lot of hair - were very impressive and I started getting plenty of compliments about how good my hair was looking. I was hooked. 7 years down the track, my hair loss had worsened, but I was still psychologically dependent on Toppik. By that time, what had started as occasional use for social events had become a daily habit. My daily routine involved applying Toppik as soon as I'd showered, combing, hair-spraying and styling my hair until I had achieved a desirable look, and checking my hair and re-applying Toppik several times a day. But I was getting less effect for a lot more effort. My use of Toppik started having an adverse effect on my lifestyle: avoiding rain, swimming pools and the beach, baulking whenever people touched my hair, watching people stare at my hair and knowing that they were silently wondering what was going on. Then a couple of my friends told me that the gig was up, and they urged me to stop using whatever it was I was putting in my hair. I was mortified.
A few years earlier, I had started investigating the hair transplant option. I went to a clinic that offered information seminars attended by past patients. The results were, frankly, a mixed bag. Some patients achieved impressive results, other guys' results were mediocre. One thing they all had in common was that they sported very distinctive strip scars. I did a lot of research and read a lot of horror stories. I started noticing a lot of guys with older style hair transplants that were not aesthetically acceptable. More worringly, I noticed a lot of guys who had had procedures but were evidently so unhappy with the result that they had determined to shave their head notwithstanding the visible donor scars.
So what did I do?
The options, as I saw them, were to embrace the reality of my situation and sport a close-cropped hairstyle that is fashionable these days, or to continue to hide the problem with powders, glued-on hairpieces or high-risk surgical procedures. A no-brainer, if you ask me.
After careful deliberation and many deep breaths, I came home from work one day, scrubbed all the Toppik out of my hair, went to the hairdressers and asked for a gauge 1 all-over buzz cut. I felt so liberated. I went to work next day, apprehensive about the reaction I'd get from my colleagues to my new look. I got some gentle ribbing as well as quite a few complements. After a few days, the subject of my new hair cut was never raised again. And the best bit: no more stares, time-consuming Toppik-application routines, trawling through hair-loss websites, avoiding contact with water.
Don't get me wrong, I would prefer to have a full head of hair. But I have come to accept that I lost the genetic lottery. I feel so much more confident about my appearance. When I look at recent photos of myself I see a self-assured guy with a close-cropped haircut, not the bald man desperately in denial about his hair loss that I see in older photos. Nowadays, I see other guys about town with bad hair transplants, concealers, rugs or combovers and I shake my head in pity.
Long time reader, first time poster. I wanted to share with you my hair loss experience and to give credit to the many contributors to this forum whose advice I heeded.
I am 32 year old professional. The first I realised I was losing my hair was when I was 21, when my then housemate remarked that my hair looked thin when it was wet. By 23, my hair loss was quite noticeable, and I was getting an increasing number of comments about it from family, friends and work colleagues. I was devastated.
Not knowing the options then available to me, I scoured the Yellow Pages for solutions.
First stop, a trip to a well-known hair replacement clinic, heavily promoted by a tv campaign using high-profile sportsmen. The high-pressure, hard-sell tactics used by the salesman were discouraging. I was advised that I'd be completely bald within 2 years and that my only option was to sign up to a hair replacement program. This was the first time I appreciated what "hair replacement" actually involved. I said to the salesman, "so what you're proposing to do is to glue a wig to my head that needs to be reglued every month?". The salesman said that that was an overly simplistic description and that the unit was very sophisticated.
Next stop, a local clinic that offered laser treatment. I paid $2000 for 6 months of treatment, during which time my hair loss worsened. When the 6 months ended and I was asked to sign a new contract, I bailed.
I then started using Toppik. The initial results - when I still had a lot of hair - were very impressive and I started getting plenty of compliments about how good my hair was looking. I was hooked. 7 years down the track, my hair loss had worsened, but I was still psychologically dependent on Toppik. By that time, what had started as occasional use for social events had become a daily habit. My daily routine involved applying Toppik as soon as I'd showered, combing, hair-spraying and styling my hair until I had achieved a desirable look, and checking my hair and re-applying Toppik several times a day. But I was getting less effect for a lot more effort. My use of Toppik started having an adverse effect on my lifestyle: avoiding rain, swimming pools and the beach, baulking whenever people touched my hair, watching people stare at my hair and knowing that they were silently wondering what was going on. Then a couple of my friends told me that the gig was up, and they urged me to stop using whatever it was I was putting in my hair. I was mortified.
A few years earlier, I had started investigating the hair transplant option. I went to a clinic that offered information seminars attended by past patients. The results were, frankly, a mixed bag. Some patients achieved impressive results, other guys' results were mediocre. One thing they all had in common was that they sported very distinctive strip scars. I did a lot of research and read a lot of horror stories. I started noticing a lot of guys with older style hair transplants that were not aesthetically acceptable. More worringly, I noticed a lot of guys who had had procedures but were evidently so unhappy with the result that they had determined to shave their head notwithstanding the visible donor scars.
So what did I do?
The options, as I saw them, were to embrace the reality of my situation and sport a close-cropped hairstyle that is fashionable these days, or to continue to hide the problem with powders, glued-on hairpieces or high-risk surgical procedures. A no-brainer, if you ask me.
After careful deliberation and many deep breaths, I came home from work one day, scrubbed all the Toppik out of my hair, went to the hairdressers and asked for a gauge 1 all-over buzz cut. I felt so liberated. I went to work next day, apprehensive about the reaction I'd get from my colleagues to my new look. I got some gentle ribbing as well as quite a few complements. After a few days, the subject of my new hair cut was never raised again. And the best bit: no more stares, time-consuming Toppik-application routines, trawling through hair-loss websites, avoiding contact with water.
Don't get me wrong, I would prefer to have a full head of hair. But I have come to accept that I lost the genetic lottery. I feel so much more confident about my appearance. When I look at recent photos of myself I see a self-assured guy with a close-cropped haircut, not the bald man desperately in denial about his hair loss that I see in older photos. Nowadays, I see other guys about town with bad hair transplants, concealers, rugs or combovers and I shake my head in pity.
