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*sigh* I am finally at the point of looking into a more functional solution.... I have very fine, soft, dark hair and VERY pale skin.. so the stark contrast is frightening... Please forgive me if this is too long and rambly..
I have genetic hair loss, which began at about age 16. It got much worse with my pregnancy at 17 and has gotten to the point where it's exceedingly difficult to hide.. My own 16 year old daughter is now beginning to experience hair loss herself - I can't tell you how guilty I feel about this ...
I pulled may hair back in the front with a thick headband with success for several years.. then I began using dark eyeshadow to 'hide' my scalp, then I found Toppix, and a cheaper version called Organin. This does work, but is very messy and it somewhat drives me nuts with the thick layer of fuzz on my head .. I also obviously cannot swim or anything with this product. I recently had a baby, and the 'normal' hair fallout after giving birth has happened, my hair is falling out in an extreme way.. the problem is my hair never grows back once it falls out.. (I have given birth to 4 children, but I have 6) the result is really quite drastic. My hair loss is mostly on the top/front/sides of my hair.. the back is still "okay" but not great.. I couldn't wear 2 ponytails or anything because it IS thin in the back, but I try and hide it with the thick headband and organin.
I have also become engaged for the very first time, and will have my first and only marriage in the coming future.. and my aunt (who is truly more like my mother than anyone) is a hairdresser and mentioned she would do my hair etc for me..... I began to cry, there is nothing that can be done with my hair to make it beautiful for my wedding day. She too has the horrible hair loss, but doesn't try and hide it, she just keeps the color light and her hair short, it's obviously shiny and balding.. but she seems OK with that. Sometimes I wish I was.
So with the impending doom realization that my hair is well on it's way to being beyond cosmetic hiding, I have to figure out something else. I do have a couple of wigs I wear sometimes, I try and pass it off as being fun so that when I am forced to wear them daily it'll just seem like something I do.. just because.
I have been doing a lot of reading on this website, and from what I gather you have to shave your head to really use the hairpieces successfully, as the integration systems can cause as many problems (my hair obviously pulls out quite easily).. I can't get over the idea, though.. call me vain, I guess, but I am so frightened by this prospect it's silly. I also gather you need more than one piece a year.. so I don't know that this will be a solution available to me anyways.. as I said, we have 6 kids, and I am an eligibility worker for the public assistance system, and my fiancee is a dept manager at a retail store, so we're certainly not well off.. and living in California is draining us drastically.. we don't really have the extra $ anyways... so I am somewhat not sure why I am posting, other than my fiancee is so supportive and just wants me to feel happy and as beautiful as he thinks I am .. he said we could figure out how to possibly get one... but then I realized you need more than one per year.. unfortunately I don't know if we could possibly swing that.
*sigh* anyways, sorry to be so darned emo and pouty - I am usually pretty upbeat and perky, but this is just something that gets me so down because I know there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. =/
So thanks for listening to my sob story.. I don't have anyone really to talk about this to, since not many people realize how bad my hair really is.
You might want to try an all poly base (also called conventional), instead of a lace system. Poly bases hold up much longer but aren't as "invisible" as lace bases. Of course there are other cons to poly bases, but if you need something that will last they are the way to go. I don't know personally how long they last, but from different posts on here I have heard of them lasting many months with proper and gentle care. It would be interesting for an all poly wearer to chime in here.
BTW, when is your wedding? And you mentioned your hair is "dark" is it a dark brown? Mine is/was and I am very pale too. What a nighmare that was! My scalp certainly shined right through. I went the same route as you with the Toppik for a while before I finally broke down and got a system from here.
I seem to have misplaced my hair little by little as the years have gone by. Good thing I found it again here.
Hi SadGothyGirl-
*sigh* is right. I read your story and it sounds so much like my own. I also read your reply to my post in another thread, thank you. I don't really have a great suggestion regarding your hair solution. I just want to tell you that at least you know you are not alone. I too have very dark hair and light skin, so I totally understand how noticeable your loss probably is. We are the same age and though I don't have 6 kids I do have overwhelming health conditions that cost me thousands of dollars per year. I just get by and I've come to consider purchasing hair as a health expense and even started writing it off on my taxes last year (This is legal deductible expense by the way). As you read in my other post, I have tried a hair transplant as well as several kinds of hair systems and for now am back to this. I can tell you a few things from my own 20 year journey with hair loss. It horrifies me to think I will have to do this for the rest of my life. I hate being so obsessed with my hair. I have analyzed this to death--why am I so obsessed with my hair? I used to beat myself up for being so vain. My family and friends really just blow me off like it's no big deal (because they don't know what else to say and don't take the time to think about how horrible it would be if it was them going bald at our young age). I have one dear friend that has labored by my side in researching hair replacement and trying to help me figure out how to deal with the problems associated with it. She has traveled with me to these hair places and we have tried to figure out if we could make the hair pieces ourselves (we actually found classes for this but did not take them). It was like walking around in a vacuum until I found this forum. There is so much helpful information here. Believe it or not, the prices here are excellent and this is the MOST respectable company I have worked with. Most customers of HD will probably tell you that they have spent (wasted) thousands and thousands of dollars on equivalent or worse products from companies with no guarantees and terrible customer services. The place I just came from was price gouging it's customers so bad I really should report them to the BBB. They sold me a hair piece they said would last 2 years (I know better now!) and it lasted about 6 months. It was beautiful Italian hair, true, but it lasted 6 months not 2 years. I paid $3,200 for it thinking it was a deal for a 24 month piece. Only $133 per month. Right? Wrong. Add in the $200 every three weeks for service (about $260 a month in addition to the $133). Then, I had hair added three times at $250 a shot (once I couldn't eve tell the hair was added as their was still a bald spot and she told me I had to come back and have it done again, that my $250 only covered a certain amount of time to add hair). $80 for a 1" (30 second) trim. $100 for a perm. I had to travel from Pennsylvania to NY City (a 6+ hour round trip) and then sit in their salon for 5-7 hours at a time because they would schedule so many people in one day to do a service reattach that we all just sat around waiting like stupid sheep. The woman who owned the company was so nasty and full of herself that she would just hurl insults at her own customers the whole time. All this to have hair on my head and feel good about myself??
That was the sew-in piece I wrote about in the other post. Can you imagine devoting a full-day every 3 weeks to drive an hour to the train station, sit on the train for 2 hours, the train gets stuck and you have to get on another train, walk 20 blocks in Manhattan in the rain no doubt to a salon you are going to have to wait for hours in (and can't even leave to get something to eat because there's no hair on your head) just to pay hundreds of dollars to have insults hurled at you?? In the three weeks in between, my hair/head would hurt so bad from the tightness of the sewing then to the itchiness and pulling as it loosened up. I was conscious of it 24/7. It was impossible not to be. On top of all of the pain and discomfort and inconvenience of traveling and not having anyone local to help me should I have a probem---on top of all that, I still had to deal with the fact that I have pattern baldness. I worry about stupid things like "What if I get in a car accident and they have to take off my hair to clean a sore in my head?" What if I get beat up and someone pulls my hair piece off (the chances of me getting beat up are slim to none and it would be pretty hard to rip off my unit) but we probably all think about this stuff. I believe THAT was when I became obsessed. I couldn't help but being conscious of it because it was SO uncomfortable, even if it did look good.
I'm not really sure what my point is here other than to tell you that unless you are super-human, which I certainly am not, you will probably always be conscious of your head and your hair. I am. We all are or we wouldn't be buying hair here and writing to each other about how to make it look and feel better and how to make it less noticeable. I can tell you that since the most recent fiasco I dealt with (see above), I am so LOVING my HD hair. It is not perfect. I have very curly hair and I finally have come to the conclusion that I will never get a hair piece that matches my own curl. It is way more comfortable but of course I am still conscious of it. It saves me tons of time from traveling to NY and back. Obviously it is also saving me tons of money based on my last system as well. All of those seemingly little things help a whole lot because it actually takes less of the traumatic focus off. II no longer have to sit in my car and on the train for a day thinking about how I am going to have my hair dealt with yet again. I hope you can understand how stressful that was. And then to dole out that kind of money on my credit card knowing full well I had no way to pay for it was probably the biggest insult to add to this devasting "injury." It is really very frustrating but the last 4 years of going through this have taught me a lot about this industry and about myself. I'd like to say I've learned to get over it, but I haven't, I'm sure I never will.
I have cried and cried and cried and told myself how ugly I am and how repulsive I am without my hair piece on. My boyfriend and friends always tell me how pretty I am and I feel (and sometimes say) that it is all smoke and mirrors. Like now that I do have "hair" I don't even allow myself to accept it as my own because I feel like it's a big lie. Half the time when people compliment my hair I tell them it's a hairpiece because I can't even accept a compliment! Isn't that ridiculous? I am getting better and trying very hard to accept myself as being beautiful inside and out. It's just hard to know the amount or color of silky or frizzy strands on our heads makes us appear pretty or ugly to ourselves or the rest of the world. What is wrong with us?? I have all of these other major health issues and my biggest focus is on the top of my head??? Alas, we are only human.
So sad girl, I'm sure this wasn't much of a pick-me-up for you, and I am sorry for that. I can totally understand that you may not be able to afford the amazing luxury of buying a head of hair for yourself but you can at least use this forum to talk with others as a sort of support group if you need it. We all know exactly how you feel, that's for sure. I also would suggest that if you have health insurance, call the company and ask them if they will cover a wig or prosthetic hair piece. Some insurance companies call it a cranial prosthesis (for real!). My insurance doesn't cover it but some do. My old insurance company needed a letter from my doctor explaining that I have androgenetic alopecia but I lost my insurance before they had time to cover it. Also, like I said, you can deduct the cost of a wig or hair piece from your taxes if it's for medical purposes.
I wish I had more exciting life changing news. Like I said, at least you can have a little comfort in the fact that your are obviously not alone, even if you feel like you are.
Thank you for joining us here. Best of luck with your journey.
Susan
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