Need advice/recommendations for a surgeon near San Francisco

[krice83]

Hello everyone,

 

I am new here! I am a Caucasian male, 30 yrs old with a receding hairline. It has been getting progressively worse and has made me very self conscious about the way I look. I no longer can wear my hair the way I used to and started to grow my hair out to hide my balding. I have been taking generic finastride once nightly for about 4 months now and try to put the rogain foam on when I remember, I just hate that stuff because it's messy and I have kids that always want to play with my hair. Just in the past year it really struck me hard when my barber said, "Hey man, you are going bald up here. See how it's getting thin around your hairline? In a year or so this will all be bald." Since his comment a year ago, I swear I look in the mirror every morning and it looks like I have less hair than when I went to bed. I have noticed that since taking the finastride, I have had less hair come out in the shower. So, I do think that it has helped or at least slowed down the process.

 

I have an upcoming trip to San Francisco.

 

I am looking for advice on a good HT surgeon near San Francisco. I am already traveling out to to California for my wife to have cosmetic surgery and would like to get the HT for me while we are out there. Knock out two birds with one stone(hopefully).

 

I have a Skype consultation set up with Dr. John Diep for next Thursday(I will post about that after the skype consultation). I looked at some of his patient photo's and thought that the results looked pretty good. After reading through some of the discussions on here for a while, i heard some one say that a lot of these surgeons never post pictures of the "bad experiences/results." That worries me a lot. I mean, I don't think that my hair could get any worse, but what a waste it would be to spend all the money and get no results.

 

Just from the different photo's I have looked at around the web and the number of grafts some people have had, I think I will need between 1500 and 2000 grafts(just my estimate, might not be close).

 

I would be grateful if anyone could post about Dr. Diep and their experience and about how the results turned out from the HT. Also, his office told me that the day I Schedule the surgery, they require a $1000 deposit to hold the date. Anyone heard of that and is that industry standard practice?

 

The only other Doctor I saw was a Dr in Oakland. I can't recall the name, but it didn't look like his patient after photos were very successful.

 

Tonight when I get home I will post up some pictures so you guys can tell me what you think. I would love to hear your thoughts and get some guidance from some of you that have been down this road before.

 

Any and all help is appreciated!

 

Thanks everyone!