OtherSyde

Alright! I'm back in my hotel room now. The procedure went amazingly smoothly. Early this morning, I was supposed to be at the office at about 6:30am, but the taxi was taking FOREVER, so Dr. Gabel actually just drove to my hotel and picked me up in his Acura. We discussed some last-minute thoughts in the office, took some professional-grade pictures for records' sake, and made the guide-lines on my forehead.

Within 30-35 minutes, we were in the operating room and he was sticking me with needles full of local anesthetic. Then they taped/wrapped my head up like a mummy, leaving only the strip extraction-point exposed. I laid face-down in the operating chair which is sort of like laying in one of those weird multi-segmented beds at a massage parlor, and he quickly extracted my strip. It was completely painless; I was pretty shocked at how quickly it went.

After he had sutured up the donor site, they further cleaned my scalp and shaved the recipient area (most of the frontal scalp region). Then I wandered around for a bit, and got to watch the very-skilled staff dissect my strip. They are quite skilled, one being ex-Army, who worked for several years with Dr. Alexander in Phoenix before moving to Oregon. A real crack team.

Then the implanting began. I rarely felt anything besides the occasional vague prick, although I'll warn you that I felt a weird crunching sound reverberate through my skull each time the blade was pushed into my skin. Fortunately, thanks to the Valium I had taken earlier, it wasn't really even unpleasant. I created this thread on my smart-phone, finally got to watch The Truman Show after years of wondering what it was about, and then, after taking a break to eat some teryaki chicken, I simply passed out for over an hour while they worked (which worked out well for them since I didn't move at all, making their job easier), which also goes to show how little discomfort there was.

I must point out that while his assistants took turns helping to place the grafts, Dr. Gabel himself was there, carefully placing the grafts himself almost the entire time. He made additional holes towards the end just for perfection's sake, to fill in any small areas lacking in density.

I was frequently handed a mirror to view the progress, and was updated on the status of the procedure often. I got look at the various tools of the trade, and learned quite a bit about the science of it all.

We were done with the procedure by about 5:30pm, which seems like a long time, but that included leg-stretching breaks, bathroom breaks, lunch, and some down-time while my strip was further dissected in order to yield more grafts.

"From all I've read on here, Dr. Gabel is an outstanding and ethical surgeon, not to mention a comedian. Good luck to ya!!"

Well I had read much the same things and seen only great results as well, and I'm here to tell you that it's all true, possibly barring the "comedian" part, haha. He certainly has a sense of humor and is very upbeat and conversational, but very professional as well. Everything went off like clockwork. And I can back the "ethical" part in full, as he sold me on strip-FUE and a smaller number of grafts for several reasons (including better/prettier end-results with the actual follicle units, and preserving donor areas for later), rather than trying to sell me the raw FUE method because costs a bit more or trying to over-sell the amount of grafts necessary. I'd recommend his establishment to anyone looking for a great hair transplant.

He's crafty with the graft placement, too; not only does he seem to have maintained the upward-direction of my strange but charismatic cow-lick that I've always had in the front of my widow's peak, he incorporated in all the weird twists and swirls throughout my scalp, conforming the new implants to the unique flow of the resident follicles. My hair runs in strange directions every other inch, like the wild currents of the Pacific Ocean, and Dr. Gabel navigated and sailed them like a salty mariner.

And, although price really wasn't an object in this very-important procedure (I have no issue paying more to have something done right), I really expected to pay around ten or eleven thousand for a good, strong hair-transplant. However, with great attention to detail and creative and strategic placement, he seems to have done amazing things with just under 2,000 (about 1,800 grafts) and it all boiled down to about $7,193 total. Amazing.

I have to sleep upright in a recliner tonight, but Dr. Gabel is once again coming to pick me up early in the morning for our next-day instructional consult, post-op exam, and some final photos.

Oh also, here are some photos of bits of my strip, as well as some of the used incision blades...

I'm eating lunch right now... We're about 2/3 of the way done I think. I'm heading back to the operating room right now.

OK! Pics...

NOTE: See the red lines along my hairline? Those are the only implants inserted so far. These are just mostly pre-op pics. The white spots along just below my hairline are where the anesthetic was shot in. More pics as I progress...

Yep, I'm sitting the chair right now, reporting live from my smart phone aas Dr. Gabel is implanting hair grafts into my front hairline. I don't feel a thing. sorry if this text is a bit garbled; not only am i trying type into a smart phone while staring into very bright operating-room lights, but i had a valium about an hour ago. i will try to post a pic if my phone can manage to multitask and hanfde javascript at the same time ;p

After cleaning up and changing and washing my hair, this is more how it might appear in a better situation:

And this is my true hairline, revealed. It's actually gotten quite high. I am really, REALLY looking forward to having it lowered a half-centimeter or so and strengthened/thickened, and my widow's peak restored; that would really frame my face better I think.

EDIT: Holy crap I am so pale, I've been in Washington too long... I can't wait to move to Hawaii and get a tan

OK here are a few from today. This is when I had just gotten home; my hair is a little stringy because I'd been at work on a big dirty ship, wearing a hard-hat all day, but this sort of represents a real-world scenario, the way people might see you hair in a regular situation or if it were wet from the rain, swimming, sweating, etc.

In the second one, the only real bald spot is in the center where you can actually see skin; the camera flash is glaring off of my hair in a big circular area around the center spot; that area is mildly thinning as well though. It's so hard to get a good top-down shot! I tried like 4 times.

OK here's a top-down from a bit over a year ago that I dug up...

Thinning level is about the same now, since I've been on Propecia and now Dutasteride for about a year and a half now. The crown/vertex has gotten a little worse, and the front hairline is pretty wispy and thin now.

I will post some top-down shots later today; I certainly have plenty of them from monitoring my progress over the months/years.

I've now booked my flight for Wednesday afternoon, and can't wait to get there! It was toe-to-toe between him and H&W. I've only seen great results from Dr. Gabel's office, so I'm pretty confident he will do me very well.

Hello, my name is James and I'm currently based around Seattle, WA. I've been lurking on this site and others like it for literally years, pining over a hair transplant. Recently I finished killing off the last of my credit card debt (never again... ugh...) and saved up some cash, so I researched a couple of the top surgeons on this site and came to Dr. Gabel, based partially on results and partially on proximity (roughly a 1-hour flight down to Hillsboro, OR).

So, I recently scheduled a consult with him in his Seattle office. I went today, and gathered a little more information, and formulated a plan.

Dr. Gabel and I chatted and discussed options. I have to say I was very surprised at his honesty; since FUE is more expensive, and I'd heard it was more detailed and less scarring, and also since I went into the consult hell-bent on FUE, I fully expected any hair-restoration doc to tout it, and also to try and sell me on as many grafts as possible on the first transplant. But he explained that in my case, since I'm still fairly young for a transplant patient (27) and also have a family history of baldness, it would be best to stick around a conservative number like 1,500 to 1,800 in order to conserve donor areas for later. Also, he totally sold me on the strip-FUE instead of regular FUE due to the better quality/quantity of the grafts and having more of the healthy, insulating fatty-flesh remaining around each follicle unit after their extraction from the strip, and also due to the far lower likelihood of transection (accidentally cutting a hair in two; this happens during regular FUE due to the inability to tell which angle the hair is embedded in the scalp, and therefore sticking the punch-tool in at the wrong angle; this potentially wastes a lot of hairs).

Dr. Gabel is quite an upbeat and professional fellow, seems very passionate about his work. Maybe because he is one of the very few at the top of the field, maybe because he and a limited number of others are blazing a new trail in this field of surgery/medicine, maybe because his work certainly seems to be a lot more of an art form than most fields of medicine, making it so much more riveting and creative and presenting a unique challenge each time instead of just dolling out prescriptions for pills. Definitely the most lively, upbeat doctor I've ever talked to. Very optimistic, but down-to-earth and honest about expectations; an enthusiastic professional, not a salesman with a bag of tricks.

We discussed options, and took some pictures...

I seem to be roughly a Norwood 3 Vertex, and my primary goal is to bring my frontal hairline down about 0.5cm to 1cm and strengthen it up, restore my faded widow's-peak, thicken up my frontal-scalp region, and mildly fill in my silver-dollar-sized bald/thin spot at my vertex. Maybe thicken up my receded/thinning temple hair just a bit if there is time and resources available.

I'm working fast to pull together the flight, hotel, scattered-but-ample financial means, and permission paperwork from the Navy to get this done (yes, they make you do that) so I can get this done in about three days... Mega-short notice! I wasn't expecting to actually schedule a procedure for several more months, but I go on a two-week holiday leave period in two days and Gr. Gabel said he had an open appointment date on the 30th! I'm so stoked! I will continue to provide updates to this thread, so stay tuned.