saf story

[HairPieceMan]

if you dont mind me asking i see your the top poster on this site i was hopeing to find out about your hairloss story here.

how did you go from NW6 in mid 20s to having hair with transplants in early 30s or thereabouts

i thougth transplanted hair looked rubbish if you were actually bald.

did you go to a special doctor in the US

how many transplants did you do and how much was it, how long did it take to develop, are you happy with the results? do you have pictures.

how did you handle the social reprecusion of having hair again, did you have to move or not see people who remember you bald.

are you against hair systems to get your hair back?

 

[s.a.f]

Ok,
My story in a nutshell is being a NW6 runs in my family both grandfathers and father = NW6 although they all took about 40 yrs to get there.
With me I always had a NW2 and very thin hair.

At the age of 19 I realised that the process had definatley started and because of my hair characteristics it was instantly obvious this was like 1994 so I had no internet or anything like that. I tried a few snake oil lotions/shampoos but obviously they did nothing.

My hairloss progressed slowly but surely and by the age of 22/23 I was about NW3 and quite thin, by now I'd already become a social recluse and just spent my life working. I hit NW4 about a year later and then just shaved it all off.
That was it = bald. Ive always been quite babyfaced so I went from looking like a teenager to an old man overnight.
It took about another 2 years to finally lose the rest and hit NW6.

For 5 yrs I lived with the sly look and it was definatley the worst time of my life. Then with my 30th Birthday approaching I decided that it was time to do something, I'd lost my 20's I was'nt going to just live a non existance during my 30's too.
I'd seen hair transplant's advertised in the newspapers for a few years and thought this could be the answer, I was'nt going to opt for a wig I work in a young male dominated enviroment I might aswell turn up wearing a dress as a wig!

Anyway by now (2005) I had a crappy dial up internet connection and I saw Hassan and Wongs 'Joetronic' site. It looked like the answer to my prayers (a hair transplant). So now all I needed to do was go to my local hair transplant surgeon and get it done (so I thought).
After all a hair transplant surgeon is just like a dentist - right? You get the same results wherever you go? :Hmmm:
I did a consult with the Norton clinic (now FUEclinics) and they basicly promised me the earth. At the time they were the most well known UK clinic and they seemed a reputable company I'd seen their ads in the papers for years. They told me that 2 ops would give me my hairback 1 for the front and 1 for the crown.
So I had my first hair transplant and basicly they butchered the F"ck out of me. They gave me a massive scar and put about 200 pluggy grafts into my (new)hairline.
It was'nt quite the result they'd promised.I grew out my horseshoe to hide the scar and although its impossible to believe it now when I saw those few grafts growing on my bald head it actually felt great, I thought to myself well I just need some more thats all. So unbelievably I went back and had another op. But this time hardly any grafts grew and I had another scar!

Ok I'd started down the hair transplant route the only thing I could do now was keep going until it was finished. So I decided to go to another clinic hoping they would give me a result more like I'd seen on the Hassan and Wong site.
I looked for another clinic in the UK and found the Nobel clinic. They too seemed like a top place lots of ads ect in magazines, so surely they must be reputable - right?
Well hair transplant #3 and f*ck up #3! By now I had just a few 100 grafts on my bald head.

Bear in mind that hair transplant grafts grow in very slowly so these just appeared over the course of just over a year.
Now I was in a bad situation lots of donor gone and very little to show for it.
I set about looking for another clinic (yet again looking in the UK).
It was then that I found Spex' website and went to meet up with him just to talk about things. I found out that my situation was not uncommon and there were 100's of guys who'd been butchered in the UK.
Spex told me about Dr Feller and that he'd done repair work on him and other guys on another forum.
So I did some research on Feller and the results he produced were more like that of the Hassan and Wong ones I'd seen.
So I went to New York and got my first 'real' hair transplant about 3000 grafts it helped me immensly but obviously 3000 and a bit grafts on a NW6 is'nt good.
Spex told me about concealers which helped alot but I still needed more so I went for a second op and got about another 2400 which pretty much maxed out my donor.
The more hair that grew the longer I started to grow it out. All this happend over the course of about 3 yrs so people had time to slowly adapt to me getting more/longer hair. I'm sure people are suspicious that I've had a hair transplant but since they never saw me with scabs or go from bald to hairy in a short space of time it was never a real issue. So now along with concealers I have the appearance of hair. Not good hair by anymeans but I'm 37 not bald, have something to frame my face and it looks and feels way better than a chromedome.

 

[s.a.f]

There are a couple of old threads with pics.

 

[HairPieceMan]

that sounds f*****g harse.

i went to FUEClinics (jeremy was my contact) to, i payed £5K to get FUE for my crown, i wanted to see what density id get from my horshoe, it wasnt good enough at all but that is becuase im balding in the horshoe.

i did the hair transplant at 24.

right now im just wigging it, it is literally the only option i have since im a NW6 or whatever (you saw the pic of me at 23)

im going to try to get girls in bars and clubs, hopefully contact some females from the past who showed some intesrted in me in the past WHEN I HAD HAIR.

tbh on the female side of things i just dont see how some 20 somethign girl would be interested in a bald 20 something guy she may have known from the past when he had hair, so i dont know, its a bit wierd becuase i've been walking around sly bald for 2 years, but ive been ignoring people from the past during that time, i wear wigs now, the neibours think i grew my hair!

i mean if you were 18 and you liked the look a girl at 18, but 4 years later you see her and shes really overwight, you wouldnt be interested right? i guess that is what heavily balding is like, escept its sortof wierd becuase we're not supposed to be liek this nowand its out of oour control, and society is excpeting us to accept this.

i dont like lying to the world, but i dont see how i have a choice, im basically kinda "trapped" socially, i can not go meet girls in bars/clubs with no hair becuase they will think im some messed up 35 year old, but im 25, with the hairpiece i guess i could pass for 20 now( i get ID'd al the time with hair now), and likely will for the next 5 years so at least thats good.

tbh if i contact some girls from the past and they see me with hair like they remember me (when they liked me), umm i don't know if theyd known or seen me in the past with thinning hair....becuase i can't remember, i think one of the girls may have seen me with thinning hair.

there is defenelty a good number of people that remember me at 20/21 with thinning hair and making negateive comments about me, treating me liek sh*t etc, being 5 4.5 didnt help of course, being the shortest guy in room etc..., 22 i was sly by cutting my balding pattern early, now people werent staring at my hairline all the time, which was easy to do given my height even girls would only see my hairline, disguising it by shaving with the sly bald look i liked becuase people just left me alone socially, instead of commenting on the issue, 24+ im wearing hair now.

so some people that remember me from 21, i could say i got a transplant, assuming they know nothing about the hairloss industry, obviously a transplant wont help me since im a diffuser everywhere, but people are stupid to hairloss anyway

any guy that saw me sly bald, i could say i grew my hair and i was just a big REM fan.


but i saw some guy from school, who was 24 and he had the horshoe ring grown out, i thougth he was nuts, he was like me, but i was afraid to grow out my hair, and show the world i was actually bald, overall i didnt think the sly bald thing was THAT bad, over say horshoe ring.

the guy knows im wearing wigs, it seem all the young bald guys know wtf i've done, becuase they know that there is only one way to get your hair back.

i dont knwo how that guy is getting on with the horshoe ring of death, does he have a gf, doe she mind the horshoe, how old is she , 42?

f*** knows man, but we have been royally f*** over that's for sure.


for reference my brother has modverate hairloss at 21, bald spot, NW2 hairline, thinning crown buzzed down, at 23 he has 10% of the hair he had at 18, i think its just about acceptable for his age, which sucks becuase he didnt do anything extreme to fix it, 10 years on in his early 30s he's holding on to it, the bald spot jsut got worse, its just about barable, for girls he didnt seem to do very well at all (2 or 3 unattractive females his entire life, the first one an entire decade older than him), i feel sorry for him and i feel sorry for myself, call me vain if you will but i cant imagine sleeping with his girlfriend, but i guess if i was massively balding id have no choice, hes done ALOT for her financially, but really she isn't worth it, she is lucky to have him.

looks liekk we both became the loosers, at least i can rebuild and fix myself.

 

[HairPieceMan]

can i see a link to the thread with the pics.

does it incude the pricing etc.

how do you feel about the wig industry now, like hairdirect videos, do you think if you saw those videos then at 25 you would have gone down the wig route.

 

[s.a.f]

can i see a link to the thread with the pics.

does it incude the pricing etc.

how do you feel about the wig industry now, like hairdirect videos, do you think if you saw those videos then at 25 you would have gone down the wig route.

I dont know where the pic threads are they were a few years ago.

I've never really considered a wig because I cant go from bald or even my hair now to full head of hair without it being obvious. And the huge stigma that comes with it. At least a hair transplant is still your own actual hair. Maybe if I were to move away and start again somewhere, I might think about it but even so I dont know how a relationship with a woman would be possible without them finding out.
I'm sure there are some good wigs out there but its a constant worry of being outed and the maintainance and once you choose that route how do you ever get out of it, you're tied in for life, paying out every couple of months. I'm already like that in a way with concealers.

 

[HairPieceMan]

i suppose, but i have no choice.

sucks thats transplants wont work for me.

ill look through your previous posts to find the thread of pics, im intersted.

for me the sly look wasnt so bad,i never felt like an old man with no hiar, i jsut thought it was pretty f*****g nuts to do it , pretty extreme.



must have been very tough to do that in 1994, when it was very new, nowadays its more acccepted, there are like a good 15 musicans like that now, whereas back then only 1 or 2 just started to do that.

it sucks that you had to grow out the horshoe in late 20s to hide the scar?

how did things go on the female front during that time.

 

[s.a.f]

You never know if you went to Hassan and Wong they might be able to get you a pretty decent head of hair, maybe not as good as a wig but at least you would'nt have to worry about being outed for wearing a wig.
If you look at Joetronic, NicNitro and London Lad they have all got their hair back from NW6 it just depends on your donor.
You've got my timeframe wrong BTW I did'nt shave it until about 2000.
But it was non existant with women during my 20's I became a hermit it was'nt until after the hair transplant's that I started going out again.

 

[HairPieceMan]

well im a NW6 anyway, but yeah the problem is people wont believe me with transplanted hair, people acutally beielve my wig is my hair becuase of my age.

i guess i could transplant underneath the wig in my 20s then show my transplanted hair in my 30s but that's a lot of money.

and that will take years to materialise.

either way only way im going to meet women now is the hairpiece.

ill maybe check out the website, but i plan to laser off my NW6 horshoe to stop it growing, so i can attach my full cap hairpiece easier.

i dont really have the financial means to transplant my hair over rtheh course of 5 years, im better off lasering off and just getting rid of my hair, its hairoiece for the next 5 years anyway, maybe ill just be bald in my 40s...f*** knows.

 

[HairPieceMan]

coudl you find those pics again.

i''d really like to see them!

 

[uncomfortable man]

I don't know what all that was about but since this topic is about SAF, I want to to express that I have much respect for him. I am always interested in what he has to say and besides being the most experienced poster on this site, he is a very level headed individual. I feel if we knew eachother in real life we might be friends.

 

[HairPieceMan]

all 3 of us have somethign in common, we have all been "tourists" in the bald community, being sly bald and walking around like that for a while, myself 2 years.

saf 5 years then transplant

UCMan sly for so many years

saf seems level headed, UCman is right about society hating us (i always felt this).

at the end of the day its a nerve racking expereince to be young and loose your hair, the social stigma is massive, its totally not normal and i think it has twisted our perception of our reality and shifted our lifes path in certain ways.

i am STILL working on my hairloss solution, i need to get the wig on tight for meeting girls, it has taken alot of emotional energy, this lfie has been extremely difficult.

 

[HairPieceMan]

tell that to william shatner at 80 yesrs old.


obviously its a toupey, its kinda funny.

also al pachino looks a bit ridicuous in his movesi in his 60s, elton john look overly good in hair department for a 60 year old man

 

[s.a.f]

I don't know what all that was about but since this topic is about SAF, I want to to express that I have much respect for him. I am always interested in what he has to say and besides being the most experienced poster on this site, he is a very level headed individual. I feel if we knew eachother in real life we might be friends.

:blush:

Got to say I have alot of respect for UCman for being one of the few actual bald guys on this entire site who knows how it really feels to suffer the unfairness of the most extreme degree of H/L.
I'm suprised that there are'nt more actual bald guys on this site. :shock:
Although some people may find his opinions of bald life to be abit paranoidal (is that a word?) He's coming from a position of living 24/7 with what we all fear the most.
Its ridiculous that someone of his experience sometimes does'nt get respect from some people on here and that some people will no hairloss by comparison seem to think that they know more about the situation than he does. :shakehead:

 

[s.a.f]

SAF if say you were a norwood 3 at 33 but knew you were predestined nw7 without meds. You knew this because you had thinning on the vertex but at the posterior of the head as well, way down towards the neck, would you go for a transplant on the hair line to nw2?

This is my situation. Problem being, I have medium to low donor density and the meds currently seem to just be holding me there but with side effects that I haven't yet figured how to work around. I've been in roughly the same place for a decade now with a bit of fluctuation after going on and off meds. What do you reckon?

I don't know whether to bite the bullit and live my life for the next 20 years or so and try and maintain or get a topper or something. It's just I look at these old men who in their prime or even at 50 were nw1s but at like 90 they are nw3s. Nearly anyone would look ridiculous with a nw2 at 90 right?

Cheers

Well firstly if I had lasted until 33 and only got to NW3 I probably would'nt be here and my life would be alot different. So theres no real way of knowing how bad that NW3 @ 33 would feel.

However if it does bother you and you think you are maintaining well with meds then you might aswell go for a hair transplant. It did'nt do Rooney any harm did it?
A 33 yr old worrying about life in his 40's is justified, but theres no point in worrying about wether your hairline will look too low in your 80's/90's or even 70's because a) Its possible to have a NW2 at that age and b) If you are lucky enough to live that long what your hair looks like will be the least of your worries.

BTW are you comparing the density of your donor region with how it was as a teen? Because its pretty normal for it to be much less dense even on guys without m.p.b so dont be so sure that you're headed to possible NW7 thats very rare and usually you'd have male relatives who had progressed to that far. And most (I'd say virtually all) NW7's would have been very bald by their late 20's.

 

[s.a.f]

Sh1t man I only joined this site to post about my hair transplant experience as a favour to Spex. That was like 5 yrs ago and I never intended to stay.
It was during my late teens and my 20's that I really needed help/advice and just a place to vent about hairloss. You younger guys dont realise how lucky you are.
When you think about it being the top poster on a hairloss forum is a pretty unenviable claim to fame.

Wish I was top poster on the well hung studs forum instead.

 

[HairPieceMan]

lol saf i know how you feel

i cant imagine when i was 18 years old, thinking id be on a "hairloss" forum in 5 years time, becuase im massively "balding" and "loosing my hair" and ive atually been gogin around with no hair AT ALL for a year now.

the entire idea of that is ridiculous, if i had to explain that to myself in the past, id be very confused, it almost doesnt even enter my realisty of possibiity.

this is the main reason why my friends/peer group from school keep thinkning i "grew" my hair with the wig, its like there totally unaware of this.

 

[HairPieceMan]

saf i knwo i asked this before but could i see the pictures, i tried checking your posts in your profile and i find it hard to find them


woudl be nice if i coudl search threads created by...

also what has driven you to post soo much on this forum, i mean you have your hair/life back the way you want it to be good enough, yet you are still on this forum talking about baldness in the impact section.

also i realise i am with hair now but im posting mainly becuase im not out in the clubs yet and i am bored wating on my new hairpiece.

 

[CaptainForehead]

.

at the end of the day its a nerve racking expereince to be young and loose your hair, ... i think it has twisted our perception of our reality and shifted our lifes path in certain ways.
.

For sure.
I now identify with Lex Luthor and Hugo Strange and such bald characters. It is impossible for me to identify with people with hair.

Being bald changes you mentally. People may not realize it, but it changes you.
As any other physical trait/deformity.

 

[s.a.f]

saf i knwo i asked this before but could i see the pictures, i tried checking your posts in your profile and i find it hard to find them


woudl be nice if i coudl search threads created by...

also what has driven you to post soo much on this forum, i mean you have your hair/life back the way you want it to be good enough, yet you are still on this forum talking about baldness in the impact section.

also i realise i am with hair now but im posting mainly becuase im not out in the clubs yet and i am bored wating on my new hairpiece.

I have no idea where the threads are, I've got 7000+ posts and they were done about 3 yrs ago.
I guess the way that I had to deal with losing my hair on my own has made me pretty obbsesive about talking about it.

But as for being sorted about my hair, I'm far from that if I was I would quit this place immeadiatly. My hair is probably worse than 90% of the people on here.
Remember I got butchered 3 times and this wasted about 30% of my donor as a NW6 with only 70% of my donor I'm left with a very thin NW2.5 and a pretty bald crown. I'm reliant on concealers to improve things especially my strip scar. So I'm still feeling the impact of hairloss.
Another reason I'm here is to try and give some common sense advice to the young guys on here. Guys who think that having a NW2 is somehow a big deal.