Hair Transplant/hairloss advice

The following is a summary of my personal struggle with hairloss,the bad decisions i made and how i restored my hair.

I first realised i was losing hair in my crown area at the tender age of twenty four(1992)when someone kindly pointed out i was going bald.I shrugged this off as the loss was barely noticeable.Six years later my crown had thinned out,people were making crude comments comparing me to Friar Tuc.This was making me depressed/obsessed with my hair so when i seen an add in a national newspaper offering to restore my hair to its former glory i thought this is for me.

The clinic was a ninety minute drive from my home,so off i went and had a consultation with a sales consultant.I signed up there and then for my first hair transplant which took place two weeks later.I was so desperate to have my situation resolved i believed everything the doctor told me during my surgery.I left there believing that in six to twelve months i would have a full head of hair again.

Fast forward twelve months,there was no improvement whatsoever to my crown,so i contacted the clinic and they agreed to do another surgery for free to rectify my situation as they agreed the end result from the first surgery was insufficient.Off i went and had another hair transplant.I waited the full twelve months to see the result,again i was very disappointed as the cosmetic difference was minimal.Sure i had some new hair growing there which i now know are called plugs(old school work)but i probably had lost more of my native hair as they never once mentioned i should be taking Propecia/Proscar to prevent any further loss.

I slowly began to realise i had been ripped off and lied to by the doctor and his sales consultant,this was confirmed when i saw the doctor on the BBC news being struck off for medical negligence.I slipped back into depression mode which i hid from all who knew me,i suffered in silence and thought nothing could be done to rectify my situation.I then had to live with an unnatural look to my hair,plus two large scars on the back of my head from the surgery for the next five years until i began looking on the internet for help as i was at an all time low in my life.

In 2004 i searched hair transplant clinics,i looked at various clinics and what could be achieved.I came across a clinic who offered a technique called FUE which seemed the perfect solution for myself.FUE is where single grafts are extracted using a punch and redistributed to your thinning or bald areas.This was heavily promoted as leaving no scars with guaranteed growth which sounded too good to be true as i never wanted to have a strip surgery again after my prior two attempts.

So off i travelled to Greece from the UK expecting this miracle FUE to sort all my problems and allow me to move on with my life.On the day of surgery i was very nervous and unsure what i was letting myself in for.I was left alone in a waiting area with a book full of all these wow hair transplant results.Then the office manager came in and asked me to sign a medical waver which i did.Then it was off to the surgery room.I was in there from 10 am to approximately 3.30pm with a 30 min lunch break in between.Had the surgery and all seemed well,went back to the hotel quite happy and excited at the prospect of having a full head of hair again.

Next day i went to the clinic to pay them and have my hair washed.I was asking questions which weren`t answered,this made me feel uneasy and they quickly took me to the airport after my money was in the bank.I flew back home and began to wonder if i had done the right thing.I soon realised i had made yet another bad choice when they would not return my emails or phone calls.Again this clinic never mentioned anything about hairloss medications to prevent further loss.

Depression/anger set in.I then began researching hairloss forums and quickly discovered the clinic i chose have a very poor record in the hair transplant industry.The forums were a great help to me,i started to take Proscar to prevent any further loss and began researching for the next three years doctors all over the world as i never want to make bad choices as in my previous three.

In 2008 i went to America to have my fourth hair transplant to repair the work from the previous three.All i can say is that i`m very happpy with the result i have attained from this clinic.Its sorted my life out and allowed me to move forward.I went back to the same clinic during October 2008 to have a fifth surgery to repair the scars i was left with from the first two.This has been a succsess too.

After all i`ve been through i decided to open my own hairloss forum to help give something back.