My family's history with male pattern baldness hasn't been a good one. My dad is bald, my grandad is bald, and so is my uncle. All three of them lost their hair when they were around 21, so I consider myself lucky to have most of my hair at 28. My story isn't so bad compared to the many that I've seen on here, and to those guys and gals - I truly am sorry for your situations. I've always had weird hair, so it makes it difficult for me to determine the extent of my hair loss. By that I mean that if you part my hair down the middle my hair is different on the right than the left, and the back is really thick whereas the rest is kind of average. I know that the first thought with the back issue is that I'm losing hair on top, so of course the back would be thicker, but it has been that was since I can remember. The back of my hair has an undercoat (for lack of a better word) that is almost curly, whereas the rest of my hair is relatively straight, so confusion arrives when I begin to worry about hairless. My temples have receded slightly, and my crown might be showing signs of thinning but I'm not really sure as I have a fairly predominant cowlick. When I begin to freak out about hairloss I immediately grab a mirror and look at my crown, I look around the house for stray hairs and I also look at old photos to compare them to now. I don't think I've changed that much over the years. I found a photo from 2011 and I honestly think my hair looked worse back then than it does now. Denial though...denial makes me worry also. I don't think I'm in denial but I really don't know. Due to worries I booked into see a dermatologist, but the waiting lists in Australia are horrendous and I'm looking at waiting anywhere between a day and a year. In the mean time I decided to use minoxidil on my hairline and crown to see what would happen. I'm prepared to use it for as long as I see results (if I see any), or at least until my dermatologist can help me out. If my appointment goes the way I think it will I'm prepared to take propecia, but in the meantime I didn't want to be a victim to the potential year wait for my appointment so the minoxidil will have to suffice. I'm hoping I respond, but I don't really know what to look for. Today marks about two weeks using the liquid once nightly, and today I also think that I may be shedding. Part of me is both terrified and excited. I am scared that I'll f*** my hair up by taking it, and I'm excited because the shedding hopefully means that I respond to it. If I am in fact shedding. Something was certainly different about the amount of little hairs that I lost after drying my hair this morning. I'll update this as I go. Thank you for reading.
