Regrets.

[kaounis]

Hey, ES

 

Your probabaly right...a 14 year old head of hair on a 50 year old might look weird....But wouldn't it be cool!!! At least if it was a cure, and not a HT it might not be so bad looking after all. What I mean is, let's say tomorrow, someone discovered a way to revive all your hair follicles to grow back naturally, without any surgical intervention whatsoever, wouldn't you be more inclined to want to have back all your original hair? It would be as if MPB never existed.. I know it's far fetched and unrealistic, but would you still think it would look strange?

 

 

Just a thought from the peanut gallery....

[John Malloy]

I've said this before, and I'll say it here again: the best HT candidates are older guys (40+) who have faced the reality head-on of being bald/balding for many years already, and who have adjusted to it in public. Many here think the opposite, that once you get older and have adjusted to MPB that your appearence and your hair will not matter anymore. That is about as far from the truth as it could possibly be, and only on HT forums where mostly youngsters hang around do you see this type of false information being propogated.

 

Many of the guys here seeking HTs have never even once exposed their balding in public to their circle of peers, and they live under concealers which also give the "illusion" of a fuller head of hair. They want a HT to try and acheive the head of hair they pull off with concealers, and they want to hide any hint of thinning anywhere on the head because they have never yet dealt with exposing their baldness in public. These type patients will inevtiably IMO be dissapointed with any type of HT, strip or FUE.

 

When you are older and you've spent at least a decade in the MPB pit (exposed in public), then your goals with a HT are VERY different than the younger crowd! Not only do you not expect a "full head of hair", but you DO NOT WANT a full head of hair! You want something that looks NATURAL, that frames your face, and that places you in that "thinning" class of men who are NOT BALD. You know there is no way that you'll be able to maintain the density of a 20 year old's hair, and that if you tried to do this with HTs that you would only look like a FREAK!

 

I've also seen many guys on here say that a HT would be a failure if it still looked "thinning", and that shaving down or just being bald would be a better option. Yet most often this comes from guys who HAVE NOT BEEN IN THE PIT -- not even for a single day! They are armchair philospohers with no experience; they have never been bald (NW4+), they have been obsessively hiding behind concealers, and many have never even attempted to shave their head. So what could they possibly know ? And what validity could their statements possibly have if they have never experienced what they are talking about ?

 

To say that patients like Bobman, Futzyhead, Jotronic, Bill and a plethora of others would have been better off just staying as they were (or shaving their heads) borders on the absurd! Opinions like this have to come from people who have never met patients like this in person to see their results, people who believe the tired rants of dissastisfied patients on HT forums whose expectations were completely ridiculous, almost adolescent.

 

No offense to Malloy, but when I see his hairline from his first surgery it's obvious he wanted to chase a 14 year old boy's hairline with HTs. There's no way in hell a patient who pursues this could ever have been even remotely educated about HTs, and IMO that is completely adolescent. Even if he hadn't received plugs with that first hairline design, as he aged that would have looked completely ridiculous anyway. How many 40 year old men have a hairline that low ? Looking at his pics it is also obvious that he has never really been significantly bald, and therefore he has NO IDEA what it is like to face the public as a bald man. Thus, his level of tolerance is very low and his obsession with perfection is very high. Many here would kill to be able to pull off the look he has right now, yet he feels like the elephant man about it.

 

It makes me think of a beautiful girl who gets one pimple and won't leave the house, and is suicidal about it.

Bill,

I agree with you about the fact that this site is very transparent. I just feel that the docs posting the better results have a louder voice. I'm not saying that this is intentional on your part, but it is just that the docs have paid consultants posting consistently throughout the day. I just want people to know my experience. Trust me, my goal in life is not to be posting hours and hours about the fact that I'm not happy with my Ht, but it does help my frustration if I can help another see my reality. I pray every night to feel normal again.

Es,

I agree with you about the hair line from my first Ht, but I was only taking the doc's advice. I understand that it is my fault for not doing enough research in the first place. And trust me, NOBODY is paying the consequence of that decision like I am. While I appreciate your candor in your post, the one thing I think that you don't understand is that my Ht does not look half as good in person as it does in pics. That is just the way it is. Also, as far as looking for perfection=I disagree. I was looking for improvement. I never was anxious around others in public. I admit I wanted to look better,but I was never anxious. Now, after my Ht's, it is extremely rare that I have a conversation without wondering what the other person is thinking about my hair line or why I always wear a hat. I understand that I'm the one who should have done more research, but I sincerely feel that my punishment far exceeds my mistake. I just like to share my experience so others see all sides of the story. I think I'm extremely fair and honest in my posts.

I had unrealistic expectations, and I admit that, but I also have an unrealistic hair line at this point, and I'm wondering if that could be addressed or if it is just not possible?

As you said in your post, I was never that bad to begin with. So to be looking at a 3rd surgery in 2 years with my starting point should say alot in itself.

Edited July 24, 2010 by John Malloy

[EpilepticSceptic]

Bill,

I agree with you about the fact that this site is very transparent. I just feel that the docs posting the better results have a louder voice. I'm not saying that this is intentional on your part, but it is just that the docs have paid consultants posting consistently throughout the day. I just want people to know my experience. Trust me, my goal in life is not to be posting hours and hours about the fact that I'm not happy with my Ht, but it does help my frustration if I can help another see my reality. I pray every night to feel normal again.

Es,

I agree with you about the hair line from my first Ht, but I was only taking the doc's advice. I understand that it is my fault for not doing enough research in the first place. And trust me, NOBODY is paying the consequence of that decision like I am. While I appreciate your candor in your post, the one thing I think that you don't understand is that my Ht does not look half as good in person as it does in pics. That is just the way it is. Also, as far as looking for perfection=I disagree. I was looking for improvement. I never was anxious around others in public. I admit I wanted to look better,but I was never anxious. Now, after my Ht's, it is extremely rare that I have a conversation without wondering what the other person is thinking about my hair line or why I always wear a hat. I understand that I'm the one who should have done more research, but I sincerely feel that my punishment far exceeds my mistake. I just like to share my experience so others see all sides of the story. I think I'm extremely fair and honest in my posts.

I had unrealistic expectations, and I admit that, but I also have an unrealistic hair line at this point, and I'm wondering if that could be addressed or if it is just not possible?

As you said in your post, I was never that bad to begin with. So to be looking at a 3rd surgery in 2 years with my starting point should say alot in itself.

 

John,

 

I'm really sorry if my post offended you in any way; that was not my intention. You actually seem like a very intelligent guy BTW.

 

Sometimes I forget that I was lucky enough to have a bad experience with this whole "hair replacement" industry at age 19 (that was back in 1989). To make a long story short, I responded to an ad in a magazine and fell victim to a "tunnel system" wig that they made sound like it was your natural hair. At the time I was still a NW1.5 with very mild temple recession, and I wanted to chase my hairloss and naively believed this would be the way to do it. They ran these plastic tubes through my scalp (lots of blood) and attached a RIDICULOUSLY FAKE looking WIG to my head! I was stupid enough to walk out of there, but the next morning I showed up and demanded they immediately remove it. I lost $1000, but I gained a very hard and valuable lesson that made me extremely skeptical from that moment on.

 

I mentioned this because had I not gone through that then, who knows, I might very well have made a similar foolish decision as you did with your first HT. So again, I apologize.

 

Anyway, do you think that your Dr. Feller surgery might have satisfied you if he didn't have to remove all of those former plugs ? To be honest, your hairline still looks too low and broad to me and I think that partly contributes to it looking unnatural in person. I think a NW0/1 hairline is ALOT more difficult to pull off and make look natural than a NW2 is.

 

I chose Dr. Hasson specifically because of how he seems to make all of his hairlines a NW2 with recession/thinning built into them. To some this is unsatisfactory, but to me it's what makes or breaks a HT as far as looking natural. Hasson is one of 3 HT surgeons that makes natural looking hairlines IMO, and it's because they are conservative. And I've seen a number of them in person so I know the photos and HD videos are not lying.

[Sparky]

Theres definatly more than 3 surgeons doing natural hairlines.