Jonathan's Story

November 30, 1999

My story…

Like most young men, when faced with the prospect of losing my hair I was terrified.  In fact it appealed to me as much as watching a sadistic clown make balloon animals with my intestines or rolling naked in glass. 

It began at 18 years old when I was chosen above my peers to play a more adult role based on what my lecturer referred to as my ‘maturing’ hairline. An insignificant moment to everybody else, but for me this moment began an escalating obsession with the endangered species on my head.

Over the next few weeks I became the aficionado of the ‘holding one mirror in the right hand whilst in front of another mirror in order to assess the entire head’ technique.  I would repeat this action almost as often as I would go to the bathroom.  This tiresome ritual was accompanied by the persistent questioning of my friends and family.   I began to drive myself and others crazy-mad-bonkers with my preoccupied mind and it wasn’t long until the emotional and social depredations began to take their toll on me. 

I continued this cycle of examining my own head and interrogating my nearest and dearest for around two years, and if I’m telling the whole truth and nothing but, I confess to the occasional 2 mirror session and the infrequent follicle related question even now, seven years on.   

Having grown tired of mirrors and questions I turned to the electronic oracle, or rather the internet, for my miracle. Many, many clicks later I had managed absorb more info on hair loss than Davina has on Big Brother. Amidst the extracted information on the many bogus cures and treatments available for baldness was one genuine sounding offering.  This was a little tablet called Propecia.  If you have been lucky enough to find this site early into your own electronic quest for answers then take some time to look at my other article in which I have documented my findings and given details of various treatments mentioned in this article.  This should save you a lot of time.

Propecia is only available by prescription from your GP which, to my mind at the time, lent great weight to its credibility and still does.  I booked a meeting with my GP at once.  I walked into his office and explained why I was there and what I wanted.  I was understandably fairly nervous about this.  He sat back in his chair, looked at me askance and told me I needed to chill out.  This was not quite what I had in mind.  I was not entirely convinced that this doctor of mine, who by the way had more hair than a fish has scales, realised that this meant more to me than sheep do to Bo Peep.  Sensing my disappointment he acquiesced and proceeded to examine my head but paid as little attention as a toddler would to a book on ball-bearings.   

Reluctantly, he wrote me a private prescription and sent me on my way.  Despite the slightly tumultuous visit with the doc I left that surgery feeling chocolate factory gold ticket winner fantastic.  In all seriousness the relief that I felt as I walked out of that surgery with that prescription was immense.  This profound sense of relief demonstrated to me how deeply this whole baldness situation was affecting me.  It angered me somewhat that the GP did not take me seriously when I really needed him to.  One of the reasons I have joined the Head of Hair team is so that I can offer other people that feel as desperately upset as I did some serious time and attention to discuss their fears and their own experience of hair loss. If your GP behaves in a similar way, which I am sure they won’t, then go and see someone else.  This should be taken seriously, if it means something to you then it is important because that’s how you feel and nobody can argue with a feeling, only a fact. 

For the first few weeks of taking Propecia I experienced what my life would be like if I didn’t worry about my hair.  It was wonderful. However, after taking Propecia for a year, despite being able to detect no further loss I had failed to gain anything.  This, agreeably quite irrationally, made me believe the drug wasn’t working for me, that I was in the low percentage of people that the drug wouldn’t work on.  See my other article for the statistics.  In retrospect, as I hadn’t lost that much hair before starting on Propecia, being in the ‘no further loss’ category was not altogether disastrous. 

As I had decided that Propecia was not working I returned to my search.  I had dismissed hair transplants as a "real" option years ago after seeing and hearing disastrous things in both reality and in popular culture.  I should not have been as dismissive as it turns out.  I researched for a while, speaking to and emailing various hair transplant ‘specialists’ who unfortunately compounded my previous fear that, to be frank, HT’s were a load of bull. 

Fortunately, I managed to get in touch with one Mr Andy Hunt.  I went for a cup of coffee and spilled my beans (excuse the pun).  He was not only lovely and a great listener but assured me that I didn’t need a hair transplant, and from looking at his fine head of hair (all transplanted) I no longer worried about the day that I may need one. 

In actual fact I still have my hair, but as you will have gathered from this article,  I have done enough worrying and caused myself so much anxiety that I am well placed to understand the fear and emotional pain that that more often than not goes hand in hand with hair loss. 

I am now remaining on Propecia for the foreseeable future until such a time when I may need to consider taking surgical action.  But until then I am safe in the knowledge that I have the option. 
 

Jonathan is a member of the Head of Hair team and can be contacted via jonathan@headofhair.co.uk.

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