Renegade

Better for you to search the forum and come back with specific questions when you picked the surgeons that you like based on the results you saw .

This is a difficult one. If I'd be in your place I'd just get a full head of hair by wearing a hair system and arrange consultations with the top docs like zarev and pitella without any expectations. I know their price is high but they're so busy, it'll take a long time until a surgery. In my opinion there's really only like 3 surgeons who could pull something satisfying off, if even possible.

In that case Ferreira will be out of your budget as well. Not sure about Pinto.

Yes after 2 years of medication you can definetly start looking for HTs. In fact I would contact the surgeons ASAP for an assessment as the good ones have long wait lists, that grow by the day. The amount of grafts first of all depends on what your donor is able to provide the surgeon with, as well as considering you don't want to completely deplete it. But so far even with the hairloss of the crown going down, I think your donor looks like upwards of 5k could be taken for sure if sides are of same density and its a skilled surgeon with good donor management ofc. For you it's not just the crown but especially going into midscalp. You sort of have a combover so it reality it's probably worse than what the pictures portray. So that's why it'll likely be upwards of 3k grafts for a satisfying coverage on your head imo. 3-3.5k sounds reasonable.

I guess it depends on your budget and your patience. If you have both of those, then all are good. For Ferreira for the consultation you need to wait atleast until beginning of 2023, so almost a year. Not sure if he even is taking any atm. Then you'd need to calculate another 9-12 months to wait for the operation. If you're lucky you'll get it earlier due to cancelations.

6 months might still be too early to tell. In any case, don't pin me down on this, I vaguely remember this so please somebody chime in here but in short there's this thing where with some people dut might be less effective than fin because it destroys dht to such a degree that in effect it raises test levels significantly which actually contributes again to hairloss in their case.

Related to this, I feel like since starting finasteride my tolerance for alcohol is way lower. Is this just my imagination or does someone here share the same experience?

For HT your only options would probably be Zarev or Pitella and Eugenix using some combination of beard hair.

Yes I wish I started sooner with finasteride as well. Start off with low dose of finasteride 0,25 mg and see how you feel. Go from there. If you feel bad or sides, try different brands of finasteride. For me personally, finasteride made from my local apothecary is not only much cheaper but works much better for me mentally and efficacy than the official propecia brand. With fin everybody gets a different response. General consensus is in the beginning it will raise your T levels because there's more leftover since the conversion to DHT is blocked. In longterm most say T levels drop again. For me atleast I feel like since using fin ironically my body looks more manly, I'm constantly shredded don't put on any fat.Also I'm much more emotionally stable. Maybe it is cause my hormonal profile actually got stabilized by fin, in a good way. Therefore it would make sense to get a hormone level check before starting out with fin. Especially when you fear sides, otherwise you'll never know what you natural baseline was.

Makes no sense to do a HT if you not tried medication. You'll just continue loosing hair. Even if you do one rn, you'll need 2 sessions, so you're not going to fill out everything directly anyway. Use minoxidil and finasteride for a year. If you respond well you could regain a large portion of your hair back. Then check in with a HT clinic for a proposal. Until then you will have saved up more money and possibly regrown alot of hair. So you will have more money to pay for less hairs.

Yes that's what fin does sometimes, a big first shed, so it looks like it's working. Obviously you have to have the patience now until the visual results will be visible.

I agree on this post, Ferreira also mentioned touch up surgery with me. I guess it's just honest communication. He sets the bar to reality rather than promising you the perfect celebrity hairline right of the go after the first HT.

About month 3-4, Crown in this case.

You'll have to be okay with the possibility of the hair in a few years being the same or worse in density than now. If we would see pictures before your first HT one could maybe make a careful estimation how it could play out for you.

That's a plus for Pinto, although I wouldn't say it should be a deciding factor when you really want to go through with it. Most important would be the kind of result you would like to have. And looking at the doctors you're choosing you might want to pull the trigger sooner rather than later. I don't want to put FOMO into you, but those guys have a long waiting list that's getting bigger by each day.