Thorok's story - (age 19)

[Thorok]

Apoligies for the wall of text ahead of time.

My entire life my hair has been one of the focal points of my appearance. I have curly brown hair and had it grown out in high school. I spent a lot of time looking at it, but refused to put product in it. Both sides of my family have experienced little hair loss till old age, most of them died with a full head of hair.

I had no signs of hair loss till shortly after my 19th birthday, in september. My girlfriend and i had been dating awhile and had started becoming sexually active, when one day there was an "incident" with the trojan which lead my to believe she was most definetley pregnant. She is the type of girl who likes to pretend everything is ok and absolutely refused to take a pregnancy test, despite my pleading.

Being young and in college i started to spiral downhill into severe anxiety. I couldn't eat, sleep, or concentrate on anything. I had terrible stomach aches/ulcers also due to this. Every waking moment was stress and fear for about 2 months when she finally got her next period. (This due to taking Plan B shortly after the incident which screws up the menstrual cycle).

During this time i also got a severe case of Mononucleosis (late october-early november), in which i almost was hospitalized due to my tonsils sweling to golfball size, extreme fevers, and not eating at all due to not being able to swallow anything.

I had noticed no hair thinning until january, mind you i always pay attention to my hair, at which time i asked the people around me what they thought. Between late jan-mid march i saw shocking hair loss, you can see my scalp all over, but no receeding hair line. I went from full thick hair to thin hair in the course of just a couple months. it is thin all around my entire scalp (including the sides!) most noteably on the top though. So i went to see my Derm.

When she came in she immediatly sat down, asked what was wrong, i told her "i think im going bald". She then immediatley lifted up some of the hairs on the top of my head and said "yep, you have it, take some rogaine -it will slow it down". I said "is that it?", she responded "yep". I was in temporary coma, total shock, ME, losing my hair? I did not tell her about the mono or the stress, but what worries me is she did not even ask! She just prescribed rogaine, that was it, no hair pull, no tests, no nothing, just "take rogaine", then she left the room. The appointment lasted all of 120 seconds at most.

My question is, should she have done something more than just telling me to take rogaine? Are there more tests she should have done/tried to do before dropping the bomb on me? Should she have asked about my past or is that irrelavent and only a fool would fall back on such excuses?

I'm mainly conflicted between wondering if i've got a bad derm. and it's temporary stress/fever induced hairloss, or that i'm just in denial and need to start on rogaine immediatley to save what i have left.

Thank you for your time.

 

[Aplunk1]

Re: My story, 19.

Welcome to the forums, friend.

No, she was not doing her job.

A dermatologist should inform you once they diagnose a condition. She should have, at the very least, told you about Propecia.

The Big 3 are used on these forums:

Propecia
Rogaine
Nizoral

Do a search.

 

[treeshrew]

Re: My story, 19.

If you post pictures here many of the forum members are experienced enough to tell you if its male pattern baldness or something else.

 

[Kyle Thomp 06]

Re: My story, 19.

One thing that you haven't considered is that extreme stress will cause hair loss. It sounds to me that you did have some severe stress, and what that occurs your body releases much more testosterone, which converts to DHT (Or the most evil hormone in your body) to cause hair loss. Honestly, to lose that much hair that fast might not be from male pattern baldness, as said before, stress can do terrible things to a person.

 

[uncomfortable man]

Re: My story, 19.

One thing that you haven't considered is that extreme stress will cause hair loss. It sounds to me that you did have some severe stress, and what that occurs your body releases much more testosterone, which converts to DHT (Or the most evil hormone in your body) to cause hair loss. Honestly, to lose that much hair that fast might not be from male pattern baldness, as said before, stress can do terrible things to a person.

Yes, stress can induce minimal hair loss and can be an accelerating factor for those who have male pattern baldness, but for those who don't have it and experience stress it doesn't come anywhere close to the same effect. Also any amount of hair loss as a result of stress is not progressive and can be regrown naturally. What you have is male pattern baldness. The whole stress thing is overrated, although going bald is a big stress inducer in itself. So you might as well relax in the knowledge that you are doing what you can to control it. Best of luck.