- Reaction score
- 3,025
Lol. I've been:
- Travelling on vacation over holidays
- Getting back into my "fun" hobbies a lot which I had completely neglected the past few months
- Planning revision jaw surgery
- Working on my scalp expansion for my forehead reduction in a few months (1/3 of the way there)
- Working more at my job
- Enjoying absolutely zero shedding and no longer worrying about hair loss.
I don't intend to post here forever as I've said many times.
As an update, I'm using 2 mL at night and 0.5 mL to the hairline each day currently of:
20 mL Kirkland minoxidil
0.25% daro (50 mg)
0.5% caffeine (100 mg)
5% niacin (1 g)
2.5% panthenol (0.5 g)
1% desloratadine (0.2 g)
It's become very hard to judge my hairline day to day as I am continually now expanding my scalp expander which is distorting my hairline. My surgeon told me from day one that as I inflated the expander it would make the corners look worse as it would stretch them, but to ignore this as it will not be an issue at the final surgery.
What I can say:
- My hair has never shed this little in my entire life. There is almost nothing falling out at all. 2 hairs are on my pillow at the present. I notice maybe 2-5 hairs in the sink after vigorously applying my topicals (previously was 60 during my Telogen Effluvium, and usually around 30 or so before aggressive treatments). Maybe 2-5 hairs on my hands when showering running my hands through my hair.
- The left corner looks fantastic. Under good lighting it looks like a thin but "present" NW1. My right corner was the shittier one and while it's getting some good coverage, it's still very thin. I'm not sure if this is going to fill in adequately by my surgery. If not I will have my surgeon "cut it out" as we will have flexibility with the expansion. The surgery will be at 5 months of daro which is nowhere near "full results" which based on finasteride/dutasteride studies should be by 12-15 months or so.
- Still getting a bit of eye dryness but I'm still using a high dose of around 6 mg per day. It is completely tolerable so I'm not interested in reducing my dose ... yet.
- Not sure if desloratadine is helping or hurting. As it is a broad anti-inflammatory, it blocks release of PGE2 and other inflammatory mediators. PGE2 is stimulated by minoxidil. I doubt I even need desloratadine as if daro is blocking my androgen receptors, there should be no downstream negative inflammatory cascade for which desloratadine would be required. Furthermore, if desloratadine is blocking some of the positive inflammatory mediators stimulated by minoxidil, it could be undoing some of the minoxidil benefits, and therefore actually slowing down recovery. I may cut it out in my next batch.
Lastly, I will just say I love this site and I will be eternally grateful to it and this thread for stopping my hair loss and turning my life around. At my worse after I got the expander put in and realized I was still losing on RU, I was having panic and thoughts like, "This is going to be what finally does me in..." and in darker terms. I am not someone who could live with being bald. I can't afford it.
Now I am looking forward to my final procedure brightly and with optimism thinking it will be the start of a great new chapter in my life. I know as long as I can keep using daro, I will have my hair for life and that gives me so much peace.
But it is an incredible time sink. I logged back in today and after replying to PMs (with still one or two more to reply to) and posting a few replies here, I've already been on this site for one hour. That's one hour I could have spent doing a hundred other things.
At a certain point, I have to come to realize that Internet forums, just like Facebook or other sites like even Tinder, are not healthy for us mentally. If you are getting something useful out of the experience, then they are potentially healthy. But if you are just spending time online every day for hours to complain, waste time, or brag to try to impress others who are equally miserable about life, what's the point? Isn't it better to spend that time trying to actively do something with your life?
I'm at that point now. I want to get back to doing something useful with my life. Something ELSE useful. Because as long as this expansion and surgery goes fine (and I can cut the daro dose over time or get some testosterone/DHT eye drops to resolve the eye dryness), I don't have to worry about hair anymore. And that's a huge monkey off my back.
But I've got a lot of other ones to deal with next. That's the fun of life isn't it? If it isn't one thing it's another.
