Quote from: Roll on January 25, 2018, 03:37:48 PM
But, yeah, unfortunately no real sensitivity, just puffiness. I thoroughly checked.

Don't worry the sensitivity will come.  The puffiness is just a lead indicator that your body is doing its job.  Boobies ftw!

Honestly, get used to puffy nipples/areolas.  They are going to go in spurts.  Puff up (turn into cone boobs) for a bit then round out and look normal for a bit.  Then suddenly back to cones again.  The cycle just keeps going on for a good while.  I'm a year and a half in and for the last three weeks I feel like I should have a Madonna bra [emoji16].

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Quote from: amberwaves on January 25, 2018, 06:54:20 PM

Don't worry the sensitivity will come.  The puffiness is just a lead indicator that your body is doing its job.  Boobies ftw!

Honestly, get used to puffy nipples/areolas.  They are going to go in spurts.  Puff up (turn into cone boobs) for a bit then round out and look normal for a bit.  Then suddenly back to cones again.  The cycle just keeps going on for a good while.  I'm a year and a half in and for the last three weeks I feel like I should have a Madonna bra [emoji16].

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Amber, you going to join the PNC?

Quote from: amberwaves on January 25, 2018, 06:54:20 PM

Don't worry the sensitivity will come.  The puffiness is just a lead indicator that your body is doing its job.  Boobies ftw!

When it does come, amazing.  Let's just say night time activities has a new play partner:)

Quote from: Cassi on January 25, 2018, 06:55:57 PM
Amber, you going to join the PNC?

Sorry, no.  I start cults rather than join existing ones.

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Quote from: amberwaves on January 25, 2018, 08:10:32 PM
Sorry, no.  I start cults rather than join existing ones.

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Okie Dokey

So for a while now I've been trying to figure out where I am on the norwood scale to address hair issues, because I never, ever, match up with the diagrams and examples. I finally found out why. Turns out I have a somewhat rare and deceptive form of hair loss, diffuse patterened alopecia, that isn't measured by the norwood scale at all until it progreses to complete baldness (in which it is technically a different path straight to a norwood 6 or 7). The results? My hairline is perfect, and my donor zone(sides) is completely thick and untouched (unlike unpatterned version, which strikes sides too and is the worst form of possible hair loss). Literally, I have no recession on the corners at all even, and from the front my hair looks great. But it is thin all over top of the scalp and on the crown, and loss started early (DPA apparently being one of the earlier onset forms).

Supposedly, this is very good news and explains a few things. First, my good reaction to meds. DPA apparently is known to respond very well to minox and finasteride for whatever reason. Which makes me really curious how it's going to go with HRT. Second, because it is just filling in thinned areas and not replacing entire bald spots, transplants are typically extremely viable, particularly if done early (30s still being early) after giving the meds a chance.

So this made me happy, both to be able to put a name to it and known that I can most likely overcome it.

This is not a picture of me, but this is essentially what mine looks like though with more notable balding on crown and way less balding in front, creating a bit of a gradiant going from front to back on thickness. Also the hair on sides for me is super, super thick, meaning I probably have a pretty good supply of donor hair (though for the time being, it also creates a bigger contrast to top).



Now to keep playing the waiting game. Ugh.

oww i dont like that norwood scale..... im at 6 or 7 very sad face

Quote from: Shambles on January 26, 2018, 02:56:36 PM
oww i dont like that norwood scale..... im at 6 or 7 very sad face

In my research even if you are at a pure 6 or 7 it is far from hopeless with modern techniques! I was watching a string of videos yesterday about one guy who was just 100% completely and utterly barren in the entire horseshoe pattern, who through transplants has an entirely full head of hair. He was a bit lucky in that he had a crazy about of donor hair and they did around 10,000 grafts total, but he went way overboard anyway (he could have easily stopped at 5000 and longer hair would have never shown any balding at all, but he wanted to be not bald with like a crew cut basically. And that was done in the early 2000s, and supposedly it is even more efficient now. (Plus there was apparently some recent breakthrough with proteins that looks super promising on the horizon.)

Just make sure to start the meds if you haven't to get back as much as you can! You are still young, so odds are a lot of follicles are still revivable.

ive just watched a video of a scale 7 have 8000 transplanted and wow! looks like it cost about £2.50 per hair though so thats like £20,000. Way to much for me but omg real hair

Quote from: Shambles on January 26, 2018, 03:21:42 PM
ive just watched a video of a scale 7 have 8000 transplanted and wow! looks like it cost about £2.50 per hair though so thats like £20,000. Way to much for me but omg real hair

I had 4000 done in Istanbul (Turkey) for less than £1500. Many of the places there charged a fixed fee regardless of the no.  of grafts. X

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thanks for that, i always though that i was too far gone for anything like this, turns out im just too poor! hmm is that better?!

Maybe in a few years )

Heck, I'm thinking of going Mad Max on the hair.

I think I mentioned it before, but my step mother gave me 23andme for Christmas because... you know, why not, it may be unreliable but it's kinda fun. Based on what I know about my family and what mirrors tell me, I assumed I was predominantly Scottish, with French from maternal grandmother and German from my paternal grandmother. Both grandfathers, predominantly Scottish. But everyone is always surprised, so I was really curious what I'd find out about my lineage. So I got my results back today.

Yeah. Turns out my assumptions were.... pretty much exactly right.

98.2% European
- 96.9% Northwestern European
-- 49.9% British & Irish
-- 28.4% French & German
-- 6.8% Scandinavian
-- 11.7% "Broadly" Northwestern European

When "6.8% Scandinavian" is your biggest surprise, it is one of those face palm moments.

Of course I'm super inbred, of course.

Additional numbers that are within margins of error and meaningless:
.2% Ashkenazi Jewish
1.4% West African
.4% Native American

I'd wager that testing my younger brother would show much higher draw on the Native American, since my paternal grandfather's mother was supposedly mostly Native American, and pictures back that up. My younger brother definitely had the hair and skin tone to back it up, and my sister (who is half through my dad's side, so same potential genetics there) did too. Me, not so much. I've always been crazy pale. No, wait, "ivory". I'm going with ivory now.

Quote from: Roll on January 27, 2018, 09:11:03 AM
I think I mentioned it before, but my step mother gave me 23andme for Christmas because... you know, why not, it may be unreliable but it's kinda fun. Based on what I know about my family and what mirrors tell me, I assumed I was predominantly Scottish, with French from maternal grandmother and German from my paternal grandmother. Both grandfathers, predominantly Scottish. But everyone is always surprised, so I was really curious what I'd find out about my lineage. So I got my results back today.

Yeah. Turns out my assumptions were.... pretty much exactly right.

98.2% European
- 96.9% Northwestern European
-- 49.9% British & Irish
-- 28.4% French & German
-- 6.8% Scandinavian
-- 11.7% "Broadly" Northwestern European

When "6.8% Scandinavian" is your biggest surprise, it is one of those face palm moments.

Of course I'm super inbred, of course.

Additional numbers that are within margins of error and meaningless:
.2% Ashkenazi Jewish
1.4% West African
.4% Native American

I'd wager that testing my younger brother would show much higher draw on the Native American, since my paternal grandfather's mother was supposedly mostly Native American, and pictures back that up. My younger brother definitely had the hair and skin tone to back it up, and my sister (who is half through my dad's side, so same potential genetics there) did too. Me, not so much. I've always been crazy pale. No, wait, "ivory". I'm going with ivory now.

Aha!  You're related to Julia -- 6.8% Scandinavian

I am no genetics person and so maybe I am completely off the reservation here, BUT if I got my info right, Roll, all your siblings that share the same mother and father should have the identical genetic make up.  you know the half from mom and half from dad thing.
Maybe your younger sib has a different parental source but they are half yours and will only be different in your step-parent's contribution.
My kids and their mother thought for several generations that they were Native American.  One of those tests came back, "nope".
My brother did his and it was Scottish, a little Irish and a bunch of Dutch.  Yea, him and by proximity, me.

Quote from: JulieOnHerWay on January 29, 2018, 09:33:21 PM
I am no genetics person and so maybe I am completely off the reservation here, BUT if I got my info right, Roll, all your siblings that share the same mother and father should have the identical genetic make up.  you know the half from mom and half from dad thing.
Maybe your younger sib has a different parental source but they are half yours and will only be different in your step-parent's contribution.
My kids and their mother thought for several generations that they were Native American.  One of those tests came back, "nope".
My brother did his and it was Scottish, a little Irish and a bunch of Dutch.  Yea, him and by proximity, me.

I did one of those tests and it came back I was part German Shepherd, part Irish Setter, and part Scotish Bloodhound.

Quote from: JulieOnHerWay on January 29, 2018, 09:33:21 PM
I am no genetics person and so maybe I am completely off the reservation here, BUT if I got my info right, Roll, all your siblings that share the same mother and father should have the identical genetic make up.  you know the half from mom and half from dad thing.
Maybe your younger sib has a different parental source but they are half yours and will only be different in your step-parent's contribution.
My kids and their mother thought for several generations that they were Native American.  One of those tests came back, "nope".
My brother did his and it was Scottish, a little Irish and a bunch of Dutch.  Yea, him and by proximity, me.

You may be surprised how much you vary from your siblings. (Here is a quick article about it: http://genetics.thetech.org/ask-a-geneticist/same-parents-different-ancestry)

Only identical twins have the exact same genetic makeup. What happens is that you get half of one parent and half of another parent of course, but it's not always (well, never except for the aforementioned twins) the same half as your siblings. It will be close, and there are certain things that will almost always pass along, but they won't be identical.

So say that you have different genes represented like this(all else being equal):
Dad - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Mom - A B C D E F G H I J

You may get 13489ABEFG while your sibling gets 23478ACFIJ. (This is a massive over simplification of course, and I'm just using this as example of genes not even getting into chromosomal pairings.) Hence the reason siblings can have different color eyes, hair, etc., and even vary from their parents. (But that deals with dominant and recessive, and not really relevant.)

The way 23andme and the other testing services work is they match up against known genes. So let's say that my dad has genes that are associated with different ethnic backgrounds at the following proportions: 50% scottish, 25% german, 25% native american. For my half from him, it could be all scottish, or half german and half scottish, or half german and half native american (or any proportion therein). If the genes I received were split between those associated with scottish and those associated with german, I wouldn't show evidence of the native american genes (in these specific tests) at all. Though it is extraordinarily unlikely you show no genetic heritage at all for any remotely recent ancestor. (Again, all super over simplification.)

Unfortunately, it is also imprecise based on the sample method, and some people have said you would have to run the test at least 8 times for a reliable average. However, any overwhelmingly large numbers are most likely accurate to a reasonable. (Ie: I'm definitely extremely northwestern European, and a retest isn't going to suddenly drop that to 10%. But dropping to 80% and revealing other stuff, possible.) With the lower numbers, you need the average though, and they can and will vary by low double digits or reveal previously unrevealed associations (and not show previously shown ones). So this time I was 1.4% west african, next time maybe I'm .8% mongolian and .6% pacific islander. But that is why they always label them for entertainment purposes only.

Ugh.  The interweb is as complicated as genetics.  The stuff you can learn!
I stand corrected.
Now go make that causeway your modified bad word inserted here tomorrow.

Quote from: JulieOnHerWay on January 29, 2018, 11:13:19 PM
Ugh.  The interweb is as complicated as genetics.  The stuff you can learn!
I stand corrected.
Now go make that causeway your modified bad word inserted here tomorrow.

Tomorrow is tacos! Then causeway and interstate practice on wednesday.

Ugh, I also have to start selling my stuff for real so i can afford laser now + hair transplants later. Soooooo muccccch worrrrrrrrrrrrrk.

Change is not comfortable.
Causeways and interstates are means to an end.
Tacos?  IDK  Sometimes.
Money is necessary to achieve our goals.
As an aside that you wont understand.  You make your money when you buy, not when you sell.