Rashomon

Yeah, I'm concerned that my records will show that I have a prostate problem, which could raise my costs of health insurance and life insurance. If that happens, then... well... there goes my $$$ savings. When I call my insurance company, should I actually tell them that I want to take Avodart for hair loss, rather than a prostate problem? I can't think of any other way to spin it.

I got a prescription for Avodart, and filled two of them using my health insurance. (Only a $30 co-pay for each) Now, I'm concerned that this will flag me as having a prostate problem on my health insurance. I don't want this to cause me to pay a higher premium if I have to change insurance carrier or buy my own insurance. So, will using your drug coverage plan ding your health insurance? If so, will it eventually "roll off" if you don't fill a prescription for a certain amount of time? (I paid for my last refill out of pocket.) What about Proscar? Will this ding your insurance, too? Do those of you who use Avodart / Proscar use your insurance, or do you pay out of pocket?

I got a prescription for Avodart, and filled two of them using my health insurance. (Only a $30 co-pay for each) Now, I'm concerned that this will flag me as having a prostate problem on my health insurance. I don't want this to cause me to pay a higher premium if I have to change insurance carrier or buy my own insurance. So, will using your drug coverage plan ding your health insurance? If so, will it eventually "roll off" if you don't fill a prescription for a certain amount of time? (I paid for my last refill out of pocket.) What about Proscar? Will this ding your insurance, too? Do those of you who use Avodart / Proscar use your insurance, or do you pay out of pocket?

DHoose, did you order Dutas from Inhousedrugstore.com? What has been your experience with it and with the company? Has anyone else tried this company?

What do you mean by "true" microscopes?

Oh! Thanks for the details on the H&W history, Pat. I'm glad to see that the problems you guys had were more "personal" than professional... especially after seeing some of their crown work.

"Dr. Hasson is a strong believer in creating a pattern and angle of incisions that maximizes the shingling of the grafts." What is "shingling"? "He does this in a very deliberate and systematic manner. Dr. Shapiro is also very conscious of the orientation of the incisions and grafts but seems to do it in a more irregular fashion." What do you mean by "irregular fashion"? What effect does this have?

I have a consultation scheduled for this Friday with one of the well-respected doctors on this site. Below is my list of questions. I would appreciate your feedback on them. Are there any questions that are unnecessary, because of industry standards? (I will probably ask them, anyway.) Are there any questions that I should add to the list? Is there another list of questions that I can look at? My questions: 1) How many procedures do you do per day? (How many procedures will you do on the day of my procedure?) 2) Will you have to reconstruct or fill in my front? 3) What is my projected future hair loss? 4) What is the cost per graft? 5) Will I only pay for what is actually harvested, or will I pay for X amount up front? 6) What will happen to any extra FUs? Used or trashed? 7) How do you count FUs? 8) Do you split or combine naturally-occuring units? 9) Does the main physician perform the actual placement? 10) How are FUs split? Do you use a microscope? Do you split in natural clusters? 11) Will there be shock loss to existing hair? What can we do to minimize the loss? 12) FUE vs Strip? 13) What is the possible yield of my donor area, both now and in the future? 14) Lateral vs satigal incision? Which do you use? Pros and cons? 15) Do you use custom-cut blades, according to my FU size? 16) Post Op: - Who will remove my stitches and how? - Will there be follow-up checkups / inspections? When and how many?

Then, why were there problems with them before? What kind of problems were they? How do we know that they have been resolved and won't happen again? Hearing that there *were* problems with someone, but there are not any problems now, still makes me a bit uneasy.

Cool! Thanks, Jake! That's what I was hoping you would say, because this frees me up to travel.

Finally, from the side:

From the front:

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Most of my hair loss is in the crown, though. Everything else looks good (in my opinion). I might be receeding just a bit on the sides, but nothing major. (I'm 37, if that helps.) It's just this big Friar Tuck bald spot that bugs me. I'm going to try to attach pics. This is my first attempt, so I don't know if it will work or not. If it doesn't, then my hair is similar to the first pic on row 5.

Thanks, Jake. Does that mean that there was not any follow-up required? Maybe I should start another thread about this. I'm not sure what the normal post-op care is. I mean, any that you would need your doctor for.

How are doctors Rose, Shapiro, and Cooley with crowns? I want to find someone who can do a natural-looking swirl. I know they come highly-recommended, but I could not find any pictures of crowns on their web sites. I only found one crown pic on Dr. Wong's web site. Why is that? Are crown HTs that rare???