24 and Losing it :( ... Few Questions

[Don Quixote]

Ok so I noticed my hair starting to thin late last year. At that point and up to about a week ago I had pretty long hair. I recently visited Dr. Hitzig in Long Island, where a friend of mine had hair restoration surgery done. From looking at my friends surgery, it looks like he did a good job, but my friend was an idiot an refused to take propecia and or use rogaine and now 4-5 years later he has continued to lose his hair but maintained a thin hairline from the transplanted hair.

Dr. Hitzig prescribed propecia for me which I have started a few days ago, so far no side effects. He also recommended that I have the surgery to repair my hairline which is not really in bad shape yet, but it is much much thinner then a few years ago. I had incredibly thick hair almost to thick to manage, and now my hairline is visibly thin and has receded some on the sides.

I'm not sure if anyone else here has experience with Dr. Hitzig, but he kind of rubbed me the wrong way. When I asked him about the cost he initially wanted to charge me 6k, which I thought was reasonable but then I remembered that he charged my friend 5k and he definitely required a lot more graphs then I currently need. I also asked him what the cost per graph would be and he sorta dodged the question, saying that he charges based on time and the amount of work needed or something like that. Has anyone had this type of experience with doctors before?

So here are my burning questions:

1. What doctors should I look at in the NY area before making a decision?

2. Should I have the surgery asap or wait a year to see if propecia works well enough for me to maintain what I have?

3. Should I start rogaine along with propecia or wait to see if propecia is working for me?

Thanks so much for reading, any input will be much appreciated.

Here are the current pictures of my hairline:

[mlao]

From your pictures you seem to have a very good head of hair. If I were you I would take a breath and visit someone like Dr. Robert Bernstein. He is one of the top doctors in NYC and one of the most respected MDs in hair restoration.

I am not a medical professional but I think it would be a mistake to rush into surgery without a second opinion. There are a lot of young guys on this site who do great just using Propecia and even though some people say it is not as effective on the hairline there is a lot of evidence that disproves that.

I have found with doctors it is good to go with your gut feeling so if he rubs you the wrong way I would look for someone who did not.

I hope this helps.

[Layercake]

dude, I swear to god I was born with a worse hairline than that. You should just chill and see how the drugs work. For someone with hair like yours I can't see how a transplant would be worth the money, or worse...the scar. .....also consider that new cell matrix stuff they can use promote regeneration and minimize scars....wait for that stuff to be more available. There's no rush.

[Winston]

Most people in the know would agree that Dr. Hitzig should be avoided. He has a very bad reputation and is not someone to consider to have surgery with. It also looks like you still have a great deal of hair so having a hair transplant at this point could actually make you look worse since you can lose hair to shock loss and the net gain might be negligible. I would say the medication is the way to go and wait at least a year before thinking about surgery again. Check out the doctors listed on this forum or on www.iahrs.org but I would seriously reconsider going back to Dr. Hitzig if I were you.

[Don Quixote]

Thank you for the replies. I know my hairline does not look to bad at the moment, but honestly it was incredibly full and has thinned out very fast. I just want to be sure to it does not continue at the same pace. Thank you for your input on Dr. Hitzig.