My mantra..”trust the process. The dread shed shall pass”

Like many of you here, I used to have nice thick long hair. I battled with depression, lost a lot of weight from not eating or sleeping from 2006-2010. That’s when my hair loss started. It never returned to normal. I got menopause 5 yrs ago so everything went downhill since then. Finally decided to see a hair specialist. Ended up getting exosome therapy combined with micro needling too. They wanted me to use their special formulation topical minoxidil but I have the topical and it’s expensive. So they prescribed me with 2.5 mg oral minox. After reading people’s experiences on this sub Reddit, I decided to only take 1.25 mg, sometimes .625 mg. Started taking it Feb 24. I pretty much experience the dread shed in the first week. And it’s gotten worse. Today I counted I lost at least 480 of my hair! There are days I thought about quitting but then I would have to start all over again if I decide to retake it again. So now….i just have to trust the process, praying the dread shed phase will be over soon! But it’s so scary and depressing. I’m so afraid that I’d be bald by the time my hair starting having some growth. I’m also wondering if being 54 would have impact on the progress?

Sorry I don’t have good pictures. Kinda hard to take it with a phone. The 2 pics with bloody scalps are taken after the Exosome and Microneedling.