sunhead

I'm at 9 months and my hair is decidedly different to my natural hair, still curly and coarse. I'm told it will 'eventually' grow out, but it seems to have different time frames for different people, as is usual in these processes.

Good to know, thanks.

Funny, someone else remarked on that in a store a while back. To me, I look nothing like him.

Here's the parted style.

Dr Path, 3100 grafts. Excellent job with which I'm very pleased, and he did say that the color would change in time and it would go grey. This morning I changed the style to my old side part, and this seems to have solved the problem... the new hair blends a lot better and it also seems to have thicker coverage. At the time I remember Dr Path saying that he was going to distribute the transplanted hair so that I had more thickness at the parting, and this has happened as he said. Interesting stage, none of the things that have happened to my hair that I expected - I thought it would be a slow growth since I'm 60+, but it has been the same as everyone else. And the kinky stage is straightening out nicely too, much earlier than I expected. Altogether a very good decision to have an HT done, I'm well pleased.

Here’s an interesting development. I'm nearly 9 months into the HT and my transplanted hair at the front 1/3rd is growing a different colour to the sides which is my original hair. The donor hair is darker at the back of my head than the sides, so that's the reason. When I style it combed back, you can see there is a line. It doesn’t worry me much, but it is starting to get more noticeable now as it gets longer. I was hoping the recipient hair would go grey fairly soon, but that’s not happening. I doubt whether anyone will identify it as a transplant, but it does look a little strange to me. Anyone else have this happen, and what did you do about it? I don't want to color it or change the style, so I'm probably stuck with it for a while. BTW, this is not a complaint. I'm just delighted to have enough growth to be worried!

These days nobody really cares about your hair. Just like the disappearance of table manners, good and bad hair styles are taken for granted. No-one sniggers at a combover... we know we will all get to that stage one day and so we have some sympathy for the guy who tries to keep his youth. Some 40 years ago I had an uncle who used to wear a cat on his head, and although we knew, we never talked about it. He actually looked better with an awful wig than without it, so the topic was left alone. If you're good-looking with some personality, hair or the lack of it won't make a jot of difference to your personal or business life. It's all in your own mind. I had mine done - not because I wanted to impress anyone - but for my own sake. I wanted to look good forever, and a HT definitely does that. Besides, I look like an axe murderer without hair, so there's some of us who don't have much choice!

I used Dr Path from Thailand too, and he comes highly recommended. Here's my write up from last year and current update photos from a few weeks back. I'm very impressed and happy with the result after 7 months. http://www.hairrestorationnetwork.com/eve/167345-my-first-week-dr-path-bangkok.html

It has totally transformed his look and reduced his age. An amazing result when all the factors come into play. Good to see long term results too - often 3 or 6 month results is never enough to get enthusiastic about a good transplant. I'm at the 7.5 month mark with 3100 grafts in the same area, and think I'm starting to see the start of a similar result.

Here's the back as promised, showing the crown problem (not enough hair!). Dr Path only did the front two thirds of my scalp, with the hair more sparsely distributed towards the back, so I expected this to happen. I know that everyone says that most people see you from the front, but as you walk and turn your head the back comes into view a lot. So the crown is definitely something I will get done later, otherwise all I will have is a reverse combover for the crown which is not much different from a side combover.

Thanks, definitely a very successful transplant. But if there's one thing I've learned from others on this forum it's that patience is necessary. Hair grows slowly! Life is short! These two facts are a recipe for disappointment for those of us who want instant results. I'll just have to wait the term out, and know that in another 6 months I'll have 3" of extra length to cover a lot of the crown. The reality is that as I look around I see most men my age (60+) are NW5 and higher, so I count myself lucky that I can make a difference in a natural way by not using a hair piece or any other artificial method. There's no substitute for your own hair! Another interesting thing I found is that my recipient hair is darker than the rest of the hair round the front. So there's a difference that is not immediately obvious, but it's there. Nothing I can do about it, Dr Path said the hair will eventually match in time. But it's nice seeing some dark hairs amongst the white at the front to remind me that it was once all that color.

Here's another before and after view at 7 months. I would take a photo of the back but I nanogen-ed it earlier and so a photo now wouldn't give an accurate idea of the problem. I'll try and remember for tomorrow.

OK, here we are at 7.5 months, and a bit of an update. The last month has been a bit of a rollercoaster. First of all the hair is growing well in the front third, and density is 50% but seems to be increasing slowly. I've changed my style to sweep it straight back instead of the side part, and that's because my donor area seems to be thinning more rapidly than I expected! After several years dropping out at a very gradual rate - almost hard to identify - in the last month it seems to be getting thinner quite fast. Whether it's shockloss or the different style, or just some annual shedding, I'm not that happy about it. There's no doubt it is a vast improvement over what I had before, but my expectations are high and the months of a see-through scalp are getting to me. I've resorted to using Nanogen and while this has helped a lot with the recipient hair my bald crown is driving me crazy. I was hoping that at a 1/2" growth a month it would start to cover now, but the hair is still too thin make much difference. Ironically I only considered a transplant because the crown loss bugged me, while the front was OK, but now of course I'm just as hair-greedy as anyone else! These photos taken at 7 months actually make the hair cover look better than it is. Maybe I'm expecting too much, because looking at these photos again reminds me how far I've got anyway. The before shots were taken at Dr Path's surgery. I don't normally slick my hair back like that but it shows how little I really had to start with. Others like spex have said that real growth starts at the 8-18 month mark, so let's hope that will continue to thicken up.

These are great results and have transformed the patient. I always get excited about results like this because of my similar age and NW. But I'm always interested to know - how long between photos?

Anyone tell me what's the significance of all these photos in Dr Nigam's post? Doesn't seem to apply to this thread and really messes up the loading time!