Quote from: Harley Quinn on January 06, 2018, 09:07:39 PM
Sorry to hear about the cancer. I hope they beat it. It's always hard.
This was some years ago now. Unfortunately, my mother did pass away due to it, though my sister in law has been free of relapse for about, I wanna say 8 years now. Which is amazing because she had an extremely deadly, rare form of breast cancer (rare enough they ran news stories about it), it is a complete miracle she survived. (My mother's was caught too late stage, peritoneal-ovarian.)
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That 2 years is debatable. If you're getting regrowth, then I would ride the wave and let it come in. You'll know if it's going to come back in about 6 months. I saw regrowth in 3 months and it slowed at 7 months so I went ahead with surgery at that time. If it's not really growing back or filling in, then go for surgery. It's 3 or 4 dollars a graft, so every little bit counts to ease the burden on the wallet... but it's still going to continue to fill in from the meds after replacement. So once you feel you have a bulk of it from the meds, then do the surgery. It takes about a year for transplants to grow out, and they are going to buzz the areas that they are going to place hair, so you're going to have a weird transition haircut for about a year and a half. Mine is about 18 months and it's finally blending into a decent hair style.
Another thing to consider is "how many grafts they'll place in a session. My doctor specialized in "mega sessions". He did 3166 grafts without breaking a sweat in an afternoon. Some surgeons will only do 1000 in a session and there is a waiting period before they can do a second session or a third etc... And if you need it on your crown and temples that's two separate procedures so you can still lay your head down after surgery. So it could eat up a lot of time and for me that wasn't an option to spread it out 2 years for meds, 2 years of transplants, and another 3 years to grow it out to my shoulders after that... So I did a mega session 9 months in and never regretted it. I am 2 years into transition and still about a year from having my hair down to my collarbone (thank you curly hair 
)
The time frame on transplants and then waiting on growth on top of it kills me, I'm pretty much resigned to wigs for the next 3 years. :/ Unfortunately, finances are a concern as well though unless I get really lucky selling off stuff (I'm in school full time right now so no job to fund it ;x) so I pretty much have to wait until the year at a minimum regardless, probably at least a year and a half, before doing transplants to make sure I squeeze everything I can out of the regimen + starting HRT cost wise. *sigh*... Though the long time frame I guess does allow me to look at transplants in conjunction with FFS as well, so I can plan ahead better if I need to cover scars depending on HRT results. (As 18 months on hair regimen would be just over a year hormones, so would be a good indicator of potential FFS needs.)
It's really depressing to think about, but despite it all though I am overall positive about it since there was a time I thought hair was entirely out of my reach. I've had crazy positive returns from the big 3 regimen even at just over 4 months, it really has kicked my long term enthusiasm up quite a few notches.
