I have reached NW3. Beginning of the end. Must Battle Now.

[Conpecia]

Now comes the slow, horrible realization all of us are either facing or have already faced: I am seriously losing my ****ing hair. Without a major breakthrough I am actually going to be bald in about three to five years. I have lost faith in the cutting edge treatments; two years of monitoring snail-paced advancements have led me to believe that we will not see a cure for baldness this decade, and by the time they release anything better than minox or fin I will be NW5 and too far gone to be saved (2015-17). It sucks. I think about it probably once a minute from wake to sleep. It has become the absolute bane of my existence, and my confidence dies a little more each time I feel that MPB itch on my scalp. I was off fin due to sides for a good 6 months and it wreaked absolute havoc on my hairline; I've lost about an inch in 6 months, totally unbelievable. I'm now noticeably thin in the front, and the worst part is that I have such god damn thick and healthy hair in the donor area that my hair always looks terrible and uneven, like I have a forward combover or something.

All this has led me to the conclusion that if I do not hear anything promising from the big hair conference this month (promising=superior treatment no later than winter 2015), I am going to get a hair transplant in 2013. It's a huge decision, and I may regret it if a cure is discovered and the cure doesn't work in transplanted regions (the original follicles being dead instead of dormant), but I am simply not willing to risk youth and wait until 2020 or beyond to deal with this. I am a young, single, decent-looking man, and I fully believe that having hair is more important now. That is not to say it will be unimportant in the future, but I do believe it will be less important at age 47 than age 27, as by then (I hope) I will have a wife and children, and these will be the focus of my life, not myself or my looks.

Ideally, my plan will involve getting a top surgeon for my hairline and frontal area, then supplementing the rest with Gho's technique as needed for the crown and back areas. Again, I'm pretty sure I have the donor area of Christ, so hopefully graft numbers will not be a significant problem at my level of hair loss. In the best case scenario, a treatment will arise that totally stops further loss (should be released long before a treatment that grows hair on slick bald areas is discovered) in the next five to ten years, at which point I can hop on that and ride into the sunset, hair flowing in the wind. If that fails, I'll just keep going back to Gho until all of my donor is used up, and even if I have bald spots behind the hairline, I'd still prefer that to having no hairline; I see lots of diffuse guys with bald areas behind their buzzed hairlines and IMO it looks better than my receding hairline now, were I to buzz my hair.

Anyways, felt like ranting, and this is the place to do so. If all else fails I'll shave my head completely bald, grow a beard, find some large-frame glasses, marry a slightly less attractive girl who likes me for who I am, and move on with my life. But that's only after I've done all I can.

My advice to anyone who is starting to bald and is NW1-NW2.5: get on the Big 3 NOW. You don't want to get this far, trust me.