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Hello All!! Hope this message finds everyone well!! I am a new poster here, and am currently 4 days post-op from my FUT procedure with Dr. Rahal in Ottawa, Canada. I wanted to share my story with the forums, as I plan on posting much more often now, and wanted you guys to have a background on me. I must say....it is surreal that I am writing this now and that my procedure is over. It seems like from the point I decided to take this journey to now was an eternity ago, yet it all went by in the blink of an eye!!! I look forward to hopefully getting to know most of you better as I go through this hair restoration journey over the next year of my life and wait for the growth of my transplanted hair!! I’m looking forward to not only sharing my experience(s) with you all, but following all of yours as well! I can barely summarize in words just how excited I am to have finally made the decision to do something about my hair loss…… Nervous, surreal, anxious, and excited are the adjectives that I would use to describe how I am feeling about what’s up ahead of me!! I really can’t wait!! =)
To start, my name is Mike…..and I am a 31 (almost 32….yikes!!) year old male living in the Reno/Lake Tahoe area of the Western United States! I first started losing my hair when I was about 24…..while I was just finishing up my college years. For a long time, I tried to convince myself that my hair wasn’t thinning…..and that I was just having a mid-life crisis and being “ridiculous” and “paranoid” every time I looked in the mirror. After all, I was always the kid that had a FULL, THICK head of hair….and it couldn’t possibly be going anywhere. My hairdresser always told me: ”Hey Mike, look on the bright-side; you will NEVER GO BALD”. As I am sitting here writing this, I am probably a solid Norwood IV….on a good day!!! OUCH, even my own hairdresser was wrong!!!!
As most of you who have, or are going through this know…….losing your hair is pretty devastating!!! I never knew how depressing it could be, until it began happening to me. Unfortunately, I am not like the many guys out there who are comfortable enough with themselves to just buzz their head and embrace their baldness. The only way I’ll ever be content with my hair….is to have it back!! It doesn’t help that I had very negative self-image/poor self-esteem for the majority of my childhood years?! Confidence is important to have in life, and that was something I always lacked. See random (probably useless) paragraph below…..
When I graduated high school at 18 years old, I weighed in at 302 lbs ( or for you Canadians and anyone else on the metric system…..137 kg)!!!! Over the course of the next 2 years I dedicated my life to eating good and exercising, and succeeded in losing 155 lbs. With this drastic transformation, I was (for a short time) starting to enjoy what it felt like to be fit and attractive on the outside for the first time in my life!! It felt great….I felt like I had made the ultimate accomplishment……and then I started losing my hair. Today, I look in the mirror and see someone who looks at least his age…..or older. I do everything in my power to style it in a way that covers up my bald spots. For the last couple years of my life….I bleach my hair bright blonde, as it gives the appearance that I have more hair than I do. No more!!!! It is stopping today!! I am finally doing something permanent about it, and ending this depression and poor self-image once and for all!!!!!! I have worked too hard to change myself for the better to let something as simple as this hold me back.
Anyhow…..sorry for the excessive rant. I just wanted to write this so you all understand a little bit more about me…..a little bit more about my background, where I’m coming from, and why I am here today!! I really hope you guys reach out and get to know me as time goes on. I absolutely love meeting new people, and think it is great having support while going through procedures/changes like this. I plan on keeping a FULL hair restoration blog on this website to chart my progress throughout my entire journey! I plan to post photo’s and all of my struggles/thoughts/concerns/emotions/experiences along the way!! Please don’t hesitate to contact me anytime with any questions, concerns, criticisms…..or if you’re just looking to make a new friend! =) I will post a few photos below to show you my hair in it’s current state (which has been preserved from further loss for the past 3 years with the use of Proscar….or 5 mg Finasteride…..quartered and taken daily), so you can all get a better idea of where I’m starting out pre-op! Because of my location/distance to Dr. Rahal (and a couple other surgeons I was considering), I had all of my consultations online. These are the photos I submitted for all of my online consultations to help the surgeons make an accurate assessment and plan an appropriate treatment. These photos were taken by me, and are being posted here in hopes of charting the changes that will hopefully occur over the next 12 months at the hands of Dr. Rahal……hoping to be that next “AMAZING TRANSFORMATION” here myself. As you can see, my hair looks awful (and so do these particular pictures of me…..sorry guys). Dr. Rahal transplanted a total of 4737 grafts...broken down as: 677 singles, 2729 doubles, 1296 triples and 35 quads for a total of 10163 hairs. These were taken from a 35.5 cm2 strip of donor tissue. Dr. Rahal thought I had good donor characteristics, and that I should be able to get well over 3000 more grafts to address future loss as well. I'm hoping my first procedure gives me some decent coverage however, and that any subsequent procedures will be in the very late future!
Thanks for reading everyone!! I’ll post again with more pictures soon as I start to heal in the upcoming weeks!!
Until then……
Best,
Mike
To start, my name is Mike…..and I am a 31 (almost 32….yikes!!) year old male living in the Reno/Lake Tahoe area of the Western United States! I first started losing my hair when I was about 24…..while I was just finishing up my college years. For a long time, I tried to convince myself that my hair wasn’t thinning…..and that I was just having a mid-life crisis and being “ridiculous” and “paranoid” every time I looked in the mirror. After all, I was always the kid that had a FULL, THICK head of hair….and it couldn’t possibly be going anywhere. My hairdresser always told me: ”Hey Mike, look on the bright-side; you will NEVER GO BALD”. As I am sitting here writing this, I am probably a solid Norwood IV….on a good day!!! OUCH, even my own hairdresser was wrong!!!!
As most of you who have, or are going through this know…….losing your hair is pretty devastating!!! I never knew how depressing it could be, until it began happening to me. Unfortunately, I am not like the many guys out there who are comfortable enough with themselves to just buzz their head and embrace their baldness. The only way I’ll ever be content with my hair….is to have it back!! It doesn’t help that I had very negative self-image/poor self-esteem for the majority of my childhood years?! Confidence is important to have in life, and that was something I always lacked. See random (probably useless) paragraph below…..
When I graduated high school at 18 years old, I weighed in at 302 lbs ( or for you Canadians and anyone else on the metric system…..137 kg)!!!! Over the course of the next 2 years I dedicated my life to eating good and exercising, and succeeded in losing 155 lbs. With this drastic transformation, I was (for a short time) starting to enjoy what it felt like to be fit and attractive on the outside for the first time in my life!! It felt great….I felt like I had made the ultimate accomplishment……and then I started losing my hair. Today, I look in the mirror and see someone who looks at least his age…..or older. I do everything in my power to style it in a way that covers up my bald spots. For the last couple years of my life….I bleach my hair bright blonde, as it gives the appearance that I have more hair than I do. No more!!!! It is stopping today!! I am finally doing something permanent about it, and ending this depression and poor self-image once and for all!!!!!! I have worked too hard to change myself for the better to let something as simple as this hold me back.
Anyhow…..sorry for the excessive rant. I just wanted to write this so you all understand a little bit more about me…..a little bit more about my background, where I’m coming from, and why I am here today!! I really hope you guys reach out and get to know me as time goes on. I absolutely love meeting new people, and think it is great having support while going through procedures/changes like this. I plan on keeping a FULL hair restoration blog on this website to chart my progress throughout my entire journey! I plan to post photo’s and all of my struggles/thoughts/concerns/emotions/experiences along the way!! Please don’t hesitate to contact me anytime with any questions, concerns, criticisms…..or if you’re just looking to make a new friend! =) I will post a few photos below to show you my hair in it’s current state (which has been preserved from further loss for the past 3 years with the use of Proscar….or 5 mg Finasteride…..quartered and taken daily), so you can all get a better idea of where I’m starting out pre-op! Because of my location/distance to Dr. Rahal (and a couple other surgeons I was considering), I had all of my consultations online. These are the photos I submitted for all of my online consultations to help the surgeons make an accurate assessment and plan an appropriate treatment. These photos were taken by me, and are being posted here in hopes of charting the changes that will hopefully occur over the next 12 months at the hands of Dr. Rahal……hoping to be that next “AMAZING TRANSFORMATION” here myself. As you can see, my hair looks awful (and so do these particular pictures of me…..sorry guys). Dr. Rahal transplanted a total of 4737 grafts...broken down as: 677 singles, 2729 doubles, 1296 triples and 35 quads for a total of 10163 hairs. These were taken from a 35.5 cm2 strip of donor tissue. Dr. Rahal thought I had good donor characteristics, and that I should be able to get well over 3000 more grafts to address future loss as well. I'm hoping my first procedure gives me some decent coverage however, and that any subsequent procedures will be in the very late future!
Thanks for reading everyone!! I’ll post again with more pictures soon as I start to heal in the upcoming weeks!!
Until then……
Best,
Mike
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