user61

First of all, thank you everyone for your kind words and also honest opinions about how to proceed. I wish I had consulted friends, family, and this forum before I rushed into a needless procedure due to a week or two of insecurity. I'm having trouble uploading photos at the moment for some reason but will upload a very recent pic of my recipient area buzzed short with my original, longer-length hairline/hair very soon. Electrolysis is slightly different from laser in that it's permanent and removes hair follicle by follicle. It might take a few passes to get rid of each one permanently however. I have considered eventually visiting HASCI in Europe so they could re-transplant the hairs back to the donor area since they seem to use the smallest manual punch. However the idea of scarring at my hairline is something I don't want to even consider, that's why I prefer electrolysis. I do have some folliculitis irritation around the recipient area but I've recently been using a combination of anti-bacterial cream and emu oil to alleviate it and it's been improving. My hair from the back donor is just way too coarse for the hairline, and despite that many two-hair follicles were used. I guess I'm somewhat "lucky" in that this makes it even more clear where my natural hairline starts/ends, it'll make clipping them short and directing the electrolysis tech that much easier. I do feel like I've cut part of me off though after losing 1600 follicles, many of which seem to have come from high up in the donor region and it's difficult suppressing the utter regret I feel every day over this. Maybe some of you are right in saying that grafting beard or sideburn hair etc. back in the donor area will only complicate things further. I've had a difficult time finding similar cases for review.. By the way today I tweezed out a few beard and sideburn hairs.. They are just as thick as my donor hair from the back, probably why those hairs did not make for a natural hairline!

Alright guys, as promised here are the donor photos, three pre-op. Please excuse my zitty scalp skin. Also in the pre-op pic with hair, I was wearing a hat that was way to small for my head most the day and that's why it looks weird/extremely messy there.. I'm extremely depressed as my insecure vanity ruined my formerly strong head of hair at 24.. I'm at a loss as to how to repair this situation if possible. pre-op post-op after recent haircut with flash photo after using a brush to brush back of the hair down

I'm definitely having anxiety and stress problems over the regret I feel. I will admit that my donor region "feeling thinner" might just be in my mind. I mean the recipient area (my hairline) is small and the back of my head didn't feel or look weird post-op, but I still know 1600 grafts is quite a lot. It's a big number. My beard hair is somewhat coarse and wavy, same texture as the back of my hair. If I do eventually try a beard hair graft to the scalp donor region I might do a test of 20 or so first. With the electrolysis, I'm going to buzz the transplanted part of my hairline down so that only those follicles are targeted and not my original hairline (the hairs on which will be kept long and out of the way in the process).

I'll put some up soon, but for now just think of it this way.. My donor scalp doesn't show after taking a shower and drying off but the back of my head definitely feels "flat" in the mornings after waking up, relative to before. If I wake up after shifting around in bed a lot that night and the hair gets parted the fact it's more thin than before does become apparent to me. I used to struggle getting a comb or brush through the back of my hair without tugging at it though so that's my relative perception again. My donor was fine after the surgery with short hair, no signs of anything done and looking at it now I can't find anything on my scalp that stands out scarring-wise. My doc's specialty was making sure the donor is left unharmed aesthetically. It's just that 1600 grafts is a big number and I know the region is thinner, I've never even counted to 1000 before in my life. There is a psychological element here for me in restoring the density of the back of my head so I can grow my hair long again without worrying that it might look thinned or shifted around too much after I lay down or wear a hat. I'm pretty sure good FUE surgeons can also use a microscope or special goggles or whatever to see the spacing of follicles on the back of my head to know where the 1600 original grafts were taken from and where to place the beard grafts at what density (my beard hair is thick, very closely resembles my back-scalp hair since that's already coarse/curly, and grows long pretty quickly). It'd also be important for the beard grafts to be placed and face in a natural way on the back. Still I'm really curious if anyone has experience with placing beard hairs on the back of their scalp, if anyone has experience filling in their strip scars with beard grafts I think that'd be relevant as well.

Hi all, I had a 1600 FUE procedure about two years ago at age 24, long story short it was a totally unnecessary hairline lowering which made my hair harder to style because my donor hair is quite course and curly. I regret it and will soon start electrolysis to have most of them removed permanently. However, I am experiencing a lot of extreme anxiety over this regret because my donor is now 1600 follicles thinner than what it was. As a result, I am considering moving about 1000 beard grafts into the back-centre of my scalp (my previous donor area) just below the crown to regain density. Does anyone have any experience with such a procedure? Also if I went through with this would it negatively affect/damage the health of the surrounding hair in the region? After the electrolysis for my hairline, and potentially re-adding density to the back of my head via beard grafts, I want to be done with any further cosmetic surgery. Thanks

Hey guys, I got 1600 FUE grafts to my hairline when I was 24. Not even 3 years later now I very much regret doing it at that age. I have a large forehead and a high, V-shaped hairline I was self-conscious about. My hairline had matured kind of early and I would be teasingly called dracula or told I look like a vampire. I didn't have thick skin back then whereas now I'd laugh it off. Since the surgery, I haven't lost any natural hair at. However the grafts just seem very unnatural and pluggy to me, and pushing the hair to the left, right, or parting it in the middle is out of the question. It has to be a forward, somewhat pushed up style all the time to make it not obvious. I think it's because my hair is very wavy, which didn't help. The first year it was pretty good then afterward lost much of its former density for some reason despite me always taking vitamin supplements and using organic shampoo/conditioner with no sulfates and all that. Again, my natural hair has stayed the same. Recently I shaved the grafted hairs off to see what I'd look like without them, and I just thought to myself "Man what were you thinking? You would've looked completely normal without the trouble.." I was working abroad at the time and was absolutely miserable in my environment, calling my family and friends back home every day. As someone who already wasn't very self-confident, at the time I just made a rash decision. Nobody in my close family is bald. My dad in his old age has a similar hairline to my original one and just some thinning around the back and crown. So I'm considering two options: 1) One is to schedule a FUE procedure with the same surgeon to just remove the vast majority of the hairline grafts (but not 100%, the areas in the temples blend in way better) on the condition that he can do it without scarring. 2) The second is to schedule a FUE procedure in which the removed grafts are placed either back in the donor area or a little higher up in the crown just so they won't go to waste (my crown is fine it's just when I wear hats then take them off or wake up in the morning you can see some skin. then after taking a shower or wetting it down it disappears completely under the hair again, just the nature of it being wavy/oily I guess). I'm leaning toward option one, hoping the surgeon will do it without charge in that case as well. Do any of you have experience with any of this? Would really appreciate any input, advice, experience, etc. for someone who just wants to be free of ever even thinking of anything HT-related after this is taken care of. Thanks.

Thanks guys, I'll be updating this thread every month or two with more pics. In the past two or three days some more noticeable shedding has definitely started, which I'm kind of glad about because at the same the dead/flaky skin is finally getting off my scalp as well. Quite a few hairs are still in place and growing outward, with the 2nd or 3rd hairs also growing out of the same grafts at various rates. They will probably start shedding soon as well. There is still some numbness in the center and center-left of my hairline in the recipient areas. s2thoudriver I just took a look at your thread and your growth is also looking good. I think from my experience thus far and from what I've heard from others I'd have to agree that the quality and value of the work being done in Turkey is pretty remarkable.

Hey all, I'm just under a month post-FUE and wanted to share my progress and thoughts thus far. I underwent the procedure at Dr. Keser's clinic in Ankara, Turkey after having flown in from the United States. I decided he was my best bet after seeing the results of his work online. I'm 24 and I've only ever taken vitamin tablets, I've never been on any oral or topical hairloss medication. There are only two bald people in my entire family, and my father and his father only had receded V-shaped hairlines. I have coarse, curly hair. I actually arrived at the clinic money in hand asking for 1700 grafts, although Dr. Keser recommended something like 1200 or 1300 at first. After some more talking we compromised at 1600. So he really does consider the patient and not just the money. The surgery took place over a span of three days, starting with the right side of my hairline to the left. I've attached my pre and post-op pics. One set of pics is from the second week, the last set is from the month-mark. There is still some numbness in the middle of my hairline, not so much around the temples. My doner feels a tiny bit itchy but has healed really well and is covered in hair already with no signs of shockloss. Although I've experience quite a lot of shedding thus far, the one thing that worries me is my right temple (last pic at the bottom right). Ever since the first week or so it's been looking much more sparse than the left temple, as you can see in the pics. I don't know if this is just shock loss since I was operated on there first or just uneven shedding, but it's been bothering me. What's confusing is that I distinctly remember (as you can see from the post-op photos) the right side being just as filled in as the left, and it only really became less even when compared to the right side after the first week. I'm hoping it's just uneven shedding because I don't want to have to go in again for a procedure anytime soon. As you all know sparse temples are a primary reason why a lot of us look at these procedures in the first place. Looking forward to hearing from you all..