Well this is my story I guess. It's probably not remarkable in any way but I am guessing it probably goes the way about 90% of this board's goes. I am a couple months away from my 23rd birthday and have been losing hair pretty rapidly since I was about 18 or 19. When I first started college my bangs were down to about my nose but I already started noticing a recession in the temples and a little bit of thinning in the middle. I kind of lurked around a message board or two every few months looking for some miracle treatment which obviously never came. Last year I started looking a little closer and found out about the finasteride-minoxidil combo as the one to use. I went through a really crappy ending to a relationship for about 6 months which I'm sure worsened my hair loss. I have been wearing my hair fairly short for the last couple years and it looks ok i guess, but my front area is receding and thinning incredibly uneven, which looks kind of crappy. I am just about graduated from college and finally accumulating enough money to afford the treatments so here i am about to give it a shot.
I went on this board a couple weeks ago and noticed it had a much more positive feel to it then any others I had been on and saw some of the success stories which kind of pumped me up. So I just ordered a three month supply of 1 mg propecia, two bottles of 2% nizoral, and am going to go look for the rogaine cream next week. I have very little expectations but am going to try to stay positive about it. I would actually be perfectly happy if I could just maintain my hair level for about 5-10 years and then be totally bald, who knows by then maybe they will have better treatments and possibly hair multiplication from everything Ive read. I just don't feel like being a totally bald 25 year old. Whenever I shave my head to the skin it looks pretty good though, so if nothing else works I figure I can do that for the rest of my life. But my ears look a little funny when I do it that way and I definitely look much better with hair than without.
So my plan is to take pics the day I start taking the finasteride, rogaine, and nizoral, and then bic or shave my head with an electric for the next 6 or 7 months so I dont notice any shedding from the new growth and get depressed about it. And then when I feel like I'm ready to face the results I'll grow it back out an inch or two and measure my results (I realize I might notice shedding even with shaving it, but hopefully no one else will notice as much). I'm going to commit to a year and a half of paying for the med's, and if nothing happens well then I guess there's going to be one more shiny head roaming around the world. Maybe I'll just move to a really sunny place and keep my bald head tan year round so it looks good.
I also have a minor question. The propecia I bought was in a generic from from shopeastwest, which apparently is from india. Does it work just as well as the normal brand? I don't want to give up on treatment if the product I'm using sucks. The website said it had the same active ingredient, being finasteride, so i figured it would be ok but has anyone had good/bad experience with generic forms of propecia? Thanks, and hopefully I will add some pictures in the next couple weeks.
I went on this board a couple weeks ago and noticed it had a much more positive feel to it then any others I had been on and saw some of the success stories which kind of pumped me up. So I just ordered a three month supply of 1 mg propecia, two bottles of 2% nizoral, and am going to go look for the rogaine cream next week. I have very little expectations but am going to try to stay positive about it. I would actually be perfectly happy if I could just maintain my hair level for about 5-10 years and then be totally bald, who knows by then maybe they will have better treatments and possibly hair multiplication from everything Ive read. I just don't feel like being a totally bald 25 year old. Whenever I shave my head to the skin it looks pretty good though, so if nothing else works I figure I can do that for the rest of my life. But my ears look a little funny when I do it that way and I definitely look much better with hair than without.
So my plan is to take pics the day I start taking the finasteride, rogaine, and nizoral, and then bic or shave my head with an electric for the next 6 or 7 months so I dont notice any shedding from the new growth and get depressed about it. And then when I feel like I'm ready to face the results I'll grow it back out an inch or two and measure my results (I realize I might notice shedding even with shaving it, but hopefully no one else will notice as much). I'm going to commit to a year and a half of paying for the med's, and if nothing happens well then I guess there's going to be one more shiny head roaming around the world. Maybe I'll just move to a really sunny place and keep my bald head tan year round so it looks good.
I also have a minor question. The propecia I bought was in a generic from from shopeastwest, which apparently is from india. Does it work just as well as the normal brand? I don't want to give up on treatment if the product I'm using sucks. The website said it had the same active ingredient, being finasteride, so i figured it would be ok but has anyone had good/bad experience with generic forms of propecia? Thanks, and hopefully I will add some pictures in the next couple weeks.