26 year old male. Initial hair growth using minoxidil, but no changes for several months

Dear concerned 26-year-old male.
I would suggest you have a consultation with your doctor to make sure there is no other reason for hair loss, then I would switch to taking hair vitamin daily and save money for a laser hat to add on later.
good luck and best of health.

At 7 months of treatment with a twice per day minoxidil application your probably will not get any additional significant hair growth. However, the minoxidil is likely keeping the initial small hair growth viable and is also likely preventing the loss of additional hair. The addition of a second agent such as PRP injections/microneedling to the scalp can be used to enhance your current result.

This is a great question. I would encourage you to sit down with your physicians and review things carefully. Good photos (before starting treatment and after starting ) are going to be helpful. Minoxidil helps some males improve their hair and helps some stop the loss. How do you know that minoxidil has not helped to freeze your androgenetic alopecia right in its tracks? How do you know that you are not one of the individuals whose hair loss can be stopped or slowed with use of minoxidil? You and your doctors can sort this out. If you stop minoxidil and find that you start getting way more shedding after about 1-2 months of stopping it, then you have proven that it was doing something and might consider getting back on it. Ideally, one should not stop in order to get these answers and a discussion with your physicians might uncover whether or not the minoxidil is truly helping or not.
But if the minoxidil is not helping, you and your physicians can review other strategies.