Al - Moderator

It was a long time ago. I had tried minoxidil at the time, but it made me dizzy and a rapid heart beat with some chest pain. I had to stop taking it. I've been on proscar for 10 years now.

Read the literature for normal dosage. Some of the side effects are chest pains, blood pressure increases or decreases, heart palpitations, pulse rate increases or decreases, etc. One of the side effects of absorbing too much minoxidil is an increased frequency of angina or new onset of angina. It doesn't take a genious to realize that the higher dosage you continuously take, the more likely and the more severe the negative effects are going to be. At some level you are eventually going to kill yourself.

I know exactly what you mean. My dad had full thick hair well into his 50s and my mom felt if I wanted to have hair I should stop making mine fall out. She thought I was purposely pulling my hair out of my head. I think to this day she still feels it was my fault that my hair fell out. I took my mom with me to the HT consultation just so I could have someone else there to make sure I'm not just hearing what I wanted to hear. A few years later when I had a lawsuit going on she refused to help or be a witness because she insisted that if the doctor said I would have a full head of hair and could have the hairline where I wanted it then it was my fault if that didn't happen.

This looks like it was done some years ago. You can tell by the scars. There's a scar along his hairline in the front picture with no hair behind it. When you look at the side picture, you can see the hair was flipped to cover the front, but as he lost more hair (bald area getting wider and longer) the hairline was lost because that was hair that was originally along the fringe area. This guy might actually look worse than I do and that would be a first. He has less scars, but I at least have some sort of hair pattern. If I shaved my head the way he did though, I would probably look worse just because of the scarring I have. I feel bad for him, but it's strange that it makes me feel just a slight bit better knowing I'm not the only one in really bad shape.

Too much minoxidil will cause a heart attack.

Unfortunately I had sort of the opposite. A girl I was dating a while before I had my HT knew I was looking into having it done. We broke up and I had several HT sessions starting about 6 months after we broke up. About 3 years later we met again and she asked me why I never had the transplant that I said I was going to do. My hair had been falling out so fast that the HT did not even bring me to where I had been 6 months prior to starting. The "After" pictures of my top and back look worse than the "before" pictures.

I think that statement is misunderstood. They are not saying that they won't care what they look like later in life. What they are saying is some hair loss is more acceptable later in life. I don't know anyone who does not agree with that. Put it this way, if you HAD to be bald for 20 years, would you rather be bald from age 20 to 40 or would you rather be bald from age 40 to 60? Thinning and balding after age 40 is more acceptable both to men and women. You can be bald over 40 and get dates, but try being bald and dating at age 20. Unless you can pull off the shaved head and goatee look (which I don't like on myself) you're stuck with dating women 10 years older than you who think you are 10 years older than you are... and once they find out your real age they run away screaming because they are dating a kid. Their thinking is if you are going to wait until you are 40 to just get the front 1/3 or 1/2 filled in, then why not just do that at 20? Why be bald for 20 years to do it? I'm attaching an old picture of myself at age 22. Sorry about the low quality. What would be the problem of filling in the front portion at that age rather than waiting 15 or 20 years to fill in the same area?

I don't think the link to the picture in this thread is what Blondie is talking about. I would not just get a line of hair along the hairline. What I think Blondie is saying is why not get the entire front half filled in with transplants and then just have the remaining circle of crown covered with a hair system. This way you get a full look without the front looking fake. When I went for my HT years ago this was exactly my thinking. I was wearing a hair system for 7 months before going in for the HT. I was early 20s and already a NW 5-6. I thought even if I can't get full coverage maybe I can at least get the front half done and continue to wear the system to cover the back while I'm young. Later as I get older I could remove the hair system and still look age appropriate as I would have hair in the front half and just a bald spot in the back. If I'm lucky then maybe I could get a small amount of hair transplanted to the bald area at that time to get thin coverage there too. It sounded a lot better than "You're too young for a hair transplant. Stay bald for 15 or 20 years and then get just the front portion covered." Heck, if I was only going to get the front covered at age 40 why not get the front covered at 20!? So... yes I do think the half and half approach is a good idea for certain people. For me, unfortunately, the mother-@#$%^& bastard "doctor" told me I was crazy and convinced me that I had some disease and HAD to have a transplant for my entire head because all of my hair would fall out if I didn't. To prove to me they could give me the same thick coverage over my entire head that the hair system gave me, he started the transplant on the top/back of my head first. They didn't do the hairline until several sessions later. Looking back later i realized he did that just to be sure I'd keep going back there and they'd maximize their profit potential from me because if he did the hairline first I would have stopped going for more transplants. I ended up not having enough donor for the front and had to have some of the grafts in the back taken out and then re-transplanted to the front.

You guys missed what he said in an earlier post. His HT was NOT for MPB. He said the HT was to cover a scar above his ear that he got in a car accident. Whether 70 is enough all depends on how big the scar was.

I personally preferred October or November for a HT. The cold weather was just starting to come, so I could wear hats all winter whenever I went out without anyone thinking anything or seeing my work in progress. Then by the time April and May came around my hair would start growing in so I'd be ready for the Summer. Well that was always my plan anyway. Never really worked out like that though.

If you have health insurance,depending on what insurance you have, they should cover it as it's reconstructive surgery to correct the result of an injury. Did he have stitches along the eyebrow? What caused the scar? If it's from a cut that needed stitches, a few hairs along the edges of the scar may grow back. You may want to wait another few months to see what happens.

I've heard this before. I'm not sure I agree with it. Is there any actual data on this? I say this because I had a strip procedure done years ago to remove an area of larger punch grafts that were then cut and redistributed to fill in other areas. Then on a later session I had the strip scar filled in with some mini grafts to blend it in with the rest of my hair. They grew just fine.

Mein Hair, I'm in pretty much the same situation as you. The pluggy-ness of mine isn't so bad, but it's very thin. I'd be happy just to get the donor area thickened up a bit and maybe a little around the edges of the balding area so the area doesn't look so large. Obviously I can't do it with donor hair because I don't have any, so I've been thinking about using body hair to fill in a few spots. I certainly have enough hair on my body, but after 25 surgeries years ago, I'm afraid to try anything for fear of making it worse.

OK. The title of the post is Bosley Boston. You say you went to a doctor in Florida. Now you're asking about former Bosley patients. Question: Are you a former Bosley patient who then tried to have some fix up work done in Florida? That might explain a little bit about the session size. Were you just trying to put grafts in to cover a few scars? Were you just trying to fill in a small area where maybe a few grafts didn't grow?

Why are you so concerned about how much a discount was? They told you your final cost would be $680. You paid $680 and had the procedure done. They sent you a receipt saying you paid $680 and owe $0. They can't send you a bill later simply because they decide to bill you more. If that were possible I'd start charging everyone who ever bought anything from me an extra $500 after they paid for it. From what you say, it sounds like they have a standard $4000 per session charge and whatever amount of grafts they do that's the price. This way you know how much it's going to cost you upfront. Since in your case they determined that for whatever reason you only needed a very small session, they gave you a "discount" on the standard $4000 session fee and made it $680. This $680 would cover however many grafts they ultimately did, but they estimated around 70. The idea of doing that sounds ok to me, but you have to be careful that you don't get a lot less work done than they estimated because really you are pretty much getting charged for the estimated work, so if they do a lot less then that then you are paying more per graft then they led you to believe and you end up being overcharged compared to other places you could have gone. In any case, what concerns me is if they really only did so few grafts. I did have a session of just 12 grafts many years ago with a strip scar (can you guys believe that!), but I didn't really think anyone was still as horrible as the place I went to. I'd like to know why you would only need 70 (or less as you say you got) grafts.

I always combed my hair to the side because my hair naturally grows that way, so it wasn't too hard to cover the thinning on top at first. The problem was I was only in my mid teens. My mom used to yell at me to stop pulling my hair out. It wasn't easy being called the kid with the bald spot at 16 years old. By the time I was 18 I couldn't cover it anymore and people were even asking me what disease I had or what was wrong with me, so I did start doing more of a comb over to try to hide it more. I didn't really realize I was doing a combover until one day my mom said "You comb your hair like a 40 year old bald man." and I just said back to her "Well I AM bald. That's why I look 40." My mom was still blaming it on me thinking I was pulling my hair out because I loved to run my fingers though my hair all day and twirl the ends of it since I was a little kid. I spent a lot of time in front of the mirror after that... and I think I started combing it over even more. The really bad part was after I had a hair transplant. Since then, I can't even cover the sides and back. I wish I could go back to just worrying about the top and maybe just shave it or cut it very short. Instead I have no options at all.

Isn't avodart basically just Rogaine with a few things mixed in? If so just use Rogaine for much less money. I think there's a couple of people here who alternate Proscar and Dutasteride. Take Proscar one day and Dutasteride the next day.

Once they offer a refund you can no longer post that they won't honor their refund policy. If you refuse the refund they still offered it and you still can't say that they wouldn't give you one. So basically I see his options as 1. Take the refund which was the original goal and stop posting about not getting a refund OR 2. Refuse the refund and still be required to stop posting about not getting a refund becaus they offered it. Seems like an easy decision. Why would you be mad at someone taking the refund that he was trying to get?

1. It's a commercial. Don't believe everything you see and hear. 2. You only have a limited amount of hairs that you can ever have transplanted. If some don't grow, you may not have enough donor area left to transplant more for free or for money. You are then left with less thickness than you should have had. 3. If they transplant 4000 grafts and 1000 don't grow, do you really want to risk another session with the same doctors considering there is a limited amount of donor hair? 4. Moving hair from one place on your head to another is only one part of the process. The transplanted hair has to look natural, be placed at the right angles, correct density to mix in with surrounding hair, etc. 5. There is also the donor scar. Some doctors are better at leaving less of a scar. 6. Bosley is a chain. You never know who will actually be working on you. Hair Transplant chains generally get the beginner hair transplant doctors. It's like the minor leagues. If they were really good they would open their own practice and make a lot more money. 7. Watch out for being quoted a price that is lower than other places, but then during the procedure they tell you they will need to charge more for various reasons. 8. Go here: http://www.bosleymedicalviolations.com/

I've been taking proscar for years. I started lifting weights almost daily about a year and a half ago. I found that my hair grows better now and I can use a lower dosage of proscar. I heard several fitness "experts" say that lifting weights is good for growing hair and I've found that it's true for me. I don't know about the protein shakes though. I guess it depends on what in it.

Artificial hair implants were banned in the US about 20 years ago because they have a high rate of infection. Just combing your hair can hurt and cause bleeding. It was also pluggy looking because they would put a bunch of hairs in each small implant (maybe 2mm wide I think they were). If you do smaller ones you would have to do more of them, so you're just going to have more of them getting infected and needing to be removed as time goes by.

One thing to be concerened about is being able to cover the strip scar after FUE. Doing some FUEs in a limited area around your donor scar will leave the area around the scar thinner, so you may not be able to cover the scar as well with less hair around it.

To crewguy28: It definately can be from the rogaine/minoxidil. I used to get dizzy, my heart would start beating rapidly, and a few other reactions. Here are a few of the adverse reactions in the older documentation. I don't know what the wording is these days, but I think they've since downplayed a lot of this stuff now that it's over the counter rather than prescription. 7.36% had Respiratory reactions including bronchitis, upper respiratory infection, sinusitus. 4.33% had Gastrointestinal reactions including diarrhea, nausea, vomitting. 3.42% had neurological reactions including headache, dizziness, faintness, light-headedness. 1.53% had cardiovascular reactions including edema, chest pain, blood pressure increase or decrease, palpitations, pulse rate increase or decrease. .36% had psychiatric reactions including anxiety, depression, fatigue. There were other items listed with percentage rates from .31 to 7.36 but I only listed the ones that you say seem to be happenning to you. I would stop taking the minoxidil and continue with the propecia and see what happens.

That shouldn't be a problem. I've had numerous surgeries and even had a transplanted area excised by strip removal to retransplant old plugs and then the resulting scar transplanted into during a later session.

That is false. It has FDA clearance to be marketed as a safe medical device because it bears similarities with previous devices that have been shown to be safe. The FDA did not determine or even attempt to determine whether or not it has any hair growth abilities.