Thanks so much for sharing your experiences so generously. talk about being thrown into the deep end head first. I can't imagine how devastating that must have been. it was hard enough for me over a period of several years!
my brother had it way worse than me, he lost his hair very quickly (although not in a weekend, but a few months tops) and he was only 18 at the time. he tried propecia, went to hair club (and left promptly in disgust) then started shaving by 19. he now wears a baseball cap everywhere he goes (there's nothing quite as odd as the sight of a guy in a suit and baseball cap). he's tried my concealers but it got him nowhere as his head is shaved - i explained this but... really hoping that if wearing hair works out for me it might be something that helps him too.

thanks for the compliment on my "skill" i don't know tho... i just style my hair in a way that covers a lot of the bald parts, and i'm very lucky that my style of choice happens to lend itself to that is all.
tho i have been cutting my own hair since i was 14 and i colored it myself lots of times before so much fell out... those things will help i'd imagine... some people are doing those things for the first time once they start wearing. so that is part of the battle already fought for me. diy is the only way for me, that's for sure. but using concealers is a whole different beast= i spent 3 hours trying to make a template tonight and my 4th attempt is still not right! thought it'd be easy! so i'm anticipating a massive learning curve, largely with positioning and bonding/debonding. with concealers there's not much to learn.

all i meant by ridiculous is that from someone whose hair is on its last legs, switching to a piece not because it should look more believable at this stage but so that i can make it pinkish purple!

one thing that's refreshing about this forum is that the people understand biology is not destiny! no shame in fake hair. or blue hair. or no hair, if that's what one chooses! if there's no shame in getting a new nose or a new chest, or even a new gender (and i believe there isnt)

i guess i would ask you also whether you think a skin system would be a good thing to start of with. that would be diving right in, wouldn't it?!