Hey Everyone,
I'm coming up on about a month on rogaine now. The shedding has begun to subside; whereas two weeks ago I would pull 10-20 hairs out of my head in the shower running my hands through my hair, I am only getting 4-5 now. So that's good. On the downside, however, my hair is looking incredibly thin. If anyone is reading this in my predicament--that is, dark haired individuals starting rogaine--DO NOT buzz your hair. I buzzed mine with a 3 on the top and a 1 on the sides, and it is nothing short of awful. Even with a week's regrowth over break, when I came back to school it was nothing but comments on my hair. Mostly innocent comments like "why did you cut all your hair off" etc etc, but just yesterday I got two particularly bad ones: a girl came up to me, rubbed her hands through my hair and said "why did you cut all your hair off you look like an old man," and my coach, in front of the entire team said "[my last name] your hair is thinning, just telling you." Took both of those pretty hard. On top of that it doesn't look great because the hair on the sides not only looks darker, but also longer since it sticks outwards whereas on the top it lays flat. So yeah, not good all around.
My main thing holding me right now is the understanding that this is probably the worse I'll get with the current regimen, that from now the only thing that can happen is that my previously shed hairs will start to grow back. If they don't, I'll just discontinue rogaine and let it grow back normally. The only thing I can do is wait right now. I have 6 months until school begins again in September, during which I intend to keep using the big 3. I'm also going to keep the side of my head really closely-cut in the hopes that it takes some focus off of the top, and try to survive this last month and a half of school.
I've attached two pictures of my current hair in normal lighting after a shower and towel-drying my hair.
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