Hi all,
I'm a long time reader who finally had a HT on 3/27/2017 with Dr. Alexander in Phoenix Arizona. I'm 26 and noticed my hair loss about a year ago. I've had a pronounced MPB hairline since late high school/early college and knew I was going to go bald one day, but never so early. A year ago it started to get bad and I spent (i.e. wasted) a long time stressing about whether I should just embrace being bald or try to do something about it. At the beginning of the year I finally decided to do something about it and got on propecia.
I spent a few weeks pouring over this and other forums trying to find the best method/doctor and finally selected Dr. Alexander. I reached out to Spex and got a quick and thorough response about what I should be prepared for and what the he and Dr. Alexander thought they could do for me. I scheduled an over the phone consultation (via facetime) with the doctor and talked about what I was hoping for and what he could do in more depth and followed up making my appointment with his office assistant Nicole.
When it came time to actually get the procedure done I was outrageously nervous. The few people I had mentioned my surgery to all seemed to have a horror story of someone they knew (who went to bosley or something similar) or immediately thought of Tobias Funke's HT from Arrested Development (which, spoilers, didn't go well).
As soon as I entered the office at 0730 the staff was warm and confident about what they were doing which put me at ease. The rest of the day is a familiar story: the doctor and I discussed the HT and drew (and redrew) the proposed hairline, they numbed my scalp, the doctor removed the strip from the back of my head and sewed me up, the doctor cut all the incisions in my head, lunch, assistants inserted follicles (just under 3300 of them!) in the incisions. I don't remember exactly, but I think we were done around 7:30 at night.
All considered, I'm very pleased with the experience. Spex and Nicole were helpful coordinating pre-surgery activities. The doctor himself is a very nice, easy going, and professional guy. His staff is equally as easy to talk to and accommodating. They even have an enormous amount of experience as HT assistants (I think 2 of them had over 10 years of experience in the field each!). For a procedure that requires you to sit down for the entirety of a day, being able to talk easily and laugh with the people working on your head is an enormous benefit. Also, they'll put you up in an insanely nice hotel while you're in town. They even called the next few days after the HT once I got home (I'm from AL) and made sure everything was going well. I really appreciated this, as the third day after the procedure I had an incredible headache and Dr. Alexander was able to contact my local pharmacy and able to get me a few more pain pills which took care the head pain immediately.
Right now I'm a week out from the HT and had my stitches removed today. The scar itself is incredibly hard to find. I'm about to resume Rogaine (5%) and start Nizoral (2%), have started taking Biotin and MSM (3000 mg of each daily) in addition to the propecia, and am awaiting a laser cap the doctor recommended/provided to arrive in the mail.
I've attached the pictures of before/after the procedure, and will be posting monthly updates as I can.
Bottom line: I loved the experience with Dr. Alexander, looking forward to having this hair grow in over the next year.
