jenson

I thought some of you might find my experiences reversing a HT useful. Fifteen years ago I made the worst decision of my life. In my early thirties i was balding fast and saw an advert for HTs. Like everyone else on this forum i was looking for a miracle. Like everyone else on this forum I soon found out there is no miracle cure. If it's written in your genes you're going to lose your hair. And no matter how brilliant your HT surgeon is - and most are far from that - there's only one thing worse than being bald and that's having a HT. Because the problem is that even if your HT is OK at first, you'll still carry on losing the rest of your hair and pretty soon it will look very odd. The surgeons don't mind - they work on the basis you'll soon be back paying for more grafts. But it's a huge mistake because sooner or later there will be no more hair to 'harvest' and the back of your head will look like a war zone. It took my best mate suddenly noticing my HT - some years after I had it done - to make me finally decide it's time to get rid of it. I wasn't suicidal like some of the posts i've read on the these forums - but i did feel self concious. In some ways I was lucky. By today's standards my surgery was small scale - I think the plan was to do several sessions though i quickly realised it was a mistake and only had the one. However, I got two short scars, around 2inchs long at the back of my head, and around 40/50 grafts of anywhere between 2/3 hairs and 10/15 on top at the front. Desperate to reverse the HT I did talk to the HT surgeon who suggested more surgery to cover the orininal surgery - ie take more money off me and give me some new scars. However, he did also suggest electrolysis. And so I found a sympathetic electrolysis person and started having regualr sessions. And it worked. And was cheap. It's true that you have to have lots of sessions because only around 1/3 of the hairs removed in any one session will actually die. But gradually, over the course of a year or two, I got down to one or two hairs per indentation. So the next problem was the scars, a problem as, like many people on these forums, I wanted a buzz cut and the best I could do without revealing the scars was a number four. So i did my research and read formums like this and read about the new micro graft technigue that doesn't require scars on the back of your head. I also read about a surgeon called Dr cole. Now I hate to recommend any HT surgeon as I think they really should be doing something useful with their training rather conning impressionable young men out of their life savings, but if you have to see anyone you could do a lot worse than Cole. Basically he took a bunch of individual hairs from all over the back of my head and filled in the scars as best he could. He pretty much told me the truth, no miracles, and it pretty much worked. I can't shave my head without the scars showing and a number one is pushing it but it's a hellava lot better than before. And recovery was quick and easy. Waht about the holes on the top of my head where the grafts once were? On this forum too I read about TCA. TCA is a chemical peel. Some kids have been using to try and fill acne scars. The theory is the peel acts like an injury and the skin and tissue grow back and fill the hole. I'm not sure it worked that well. Not sure if it made any real difference. But it's worth exploring. So that's about the size of it: elecrolysis ti remove dodgy grafts; fill in the scars with the latest single hair grafts; and poss TCA to fill the scars. For a number of years I was very self concious about my HT. Now I feel it barely exists and seldom think about it. I've written this to help young men who are despairing about their HTs. You can't get rid of it completely but you can go quite some way to reversing it. So don't despair. And good luck.