JohnJohnB

i am in a foreign country where it is very hot. it had been 5 months since my last hair cut and exactly 60 days since my ht. i felt it was time to get a hair cut and some relief from the heat. i went to a salon in a mall and tried to explain that i just had surgery on my head. i dont speak the native language very well.

the barber raked the comb across my donor scar pretty hard. i dont think he noticed it was there. but he did it several times before i told him to go easy. he didnt understand me and did it again before i explained it better.

now my scar, especially near my occiptial bump feels a bit raw. no bleeding or anything serious but can scars stretch or have healing impaired by this kind of treatment?

thats also good news Gillenator. But I hope these things do go away even if they are covered by a transplant. they are kind of weird looking.

I have experienced this problem before, but they went away after 5-6 months post-op.

thats good to hear. so it didnt effect your growth at all?

i was worried i was going to end up looking like this guy

This Guy's Scalp Looks Like the Surface of a Brain

a few weeks after my ht i noticed a couple wrinkles/furrows/creases/folds or whatever you want to call them on my scalp. they run from where i had the ht at my temples back into my native hair. first it was just the right side but not i notice it on the left.

is there something to be worried about here? will it harm the growth of my grafts?

i also started minoxidil after my ht so maybe thats playing a role.

I am at 7 weeks post op. Today I noticed that the right side of my donor scar is slightly swollen and a tiny bit painful. My best guess is that the inflamed scar is now 1cm wide in this spot. Is this normal? Does this mean i have stretched out my scar in this area?

I have been trying to get rid of pimples by using a hot towel to draw them out to the surface. I soak a towel in hot water then put it on my head.

But this time i went overboard and used water that was too hot. Now my scalp is redder than before. Its not blistering or anything but the water was definitely too hot.

I am 6.5 weeks post op. Is there going to be any damage to my grafts? what about scalp discoloration?

Dr. Path told me to pop my pimples then put on alcohol and/or antibiotic cream like bactoderm.

Thanks Eman. I am following Doctor's orders.

What confuses me is that while most doctors out there say folliculitis/pimples are not damaging to growth of grafts, they also want you to tell them when its happening and treat them somehow. Why do they need treatment if they don't affect hair growth? Just because they are unsightly and maybe a little bothersome? They were completely covered up by my native hair and had no pain, yet Dr Path's staff wants me to take some serious meds to treat them.

As long as I have a nice thick transplant in the end nothing else matters.

I had a HT with Dr. Path 6 weeks ago. In the past 2 weeks I have been getting a fair amount of pimples, maybe 5-10 at any given time. They go away on their own in 3-4 days without any application of warm compress, bacterial cream or popping them. None of them pop on their own and bleed. They just simply fade away and are replaced by new ones on a different spot.

However when his assistant Dr. Oravan looked at my 6 week pictures I sent in, she said i had "too many" pimples and should use antibiotic cream and pills like doxycycline. She said I had nothing to worry about with regard to final results of hair growth but still the words "too many pimples" made me think I had severe folliculitis that could hurt my growth. I will start taking the meds Dr. Oravan recommended.

Does everybody agree that i have nothing to worry about here? I worry that I left these pimples untreated for too long and did some kind of damage.

did your doc use dissolvable stitches?

he did. they fell out 3-4 weeks ago

OK so its 6 weeks post op and Dr. Path says I can go back to weight lifting. but i still feel some tightness/swelling/stretching when i bend over to touch my toes in a simple hamstring stretch. its not painful at all but it still worries me. anybody have an opinion on this? should i continue to refrain from physical activity?

i started doing some light stretching/yoga exercises 3 weeks post op. when i would bend over to do downward dog or a simple hamstring stretch i would sometimes feel a sensation at my donor scar. while it was not painful, it felt like a rush of blood to the head that swelled under my scar a little bit. i continued stretching for a week like this until i emailed Dr Path who told me it would be best to stop stretching/yoga until 6 weeks post op, which i will do.

does it sound like i stretched out my donor scar? when will i be able to tell if my scar is stretched wider than normal?

Hmmm... I'm fair-skinned and the redness around my hairline, which I had rebuilt about 3 weeks ago, is still present. Does the aloe actually help to reduce the redness?

i think it is helping a little bit. it feels good on the scalp. i am at 3 weeks today as well. while i am still red it is definitely better than where it was a week ago.

i have not found anything that definitively says its bad to use this "unnatural" gel which mixes in vitamin e. a lot of forum posts just say use "aloe gel." Dr. Path said the product is safe but others like Spex said that there should be no alcohol in the gel. the gel i am using has linalool in it which is a type of alcohol. is this the kind of alcohol that could be problematic?

once grafts are secure in the scalp, past day 10 or so, its going to be impossible to damage them with some topical treatment like alcohol in an aloe gel?

In my opinion, I wanted to stay away from those "cooling" chemicals and went for the all natural variety both gel and liquid from the local health food store. Both needed to be refrigerated.

 

Again, just wanted to be as natural as possible!

Do you have any evidence to support the idea that the other chemicals in this gel are somehow bad for the grafts/scalp? Dr. Path's assistant told me the gel was safe to use so I will take his word for it. Or are you just saying you wanted to be "natural" because its more effective?

I have been using the Hawaiian Tropic stuff for about a week now 2-3 times a day. So far I have not noticed anything problems. I still get some mild itchiness and tingling sensations once in a while. But my transplanted hairs are starting to shed on schedule and the redness has started to fade ever so slightly

Hi John,

 

Its good to see your happy with your procedure. Do you have any pictures before the operation?

 

I'am currently in correspondence with Dr Path at the moment. I should be seeing him in November.

Tinkz,

You can see my pictures from the consultation which show my hair before the procedure. Just check my blog under the entry "Consultation Day." Good luck. I don't think you can go wrong with Dr. Path.

-John

well i actually already made the walk a couple times last week with no cap. didnt feel anything different, definitely no sunburn. do i have anything to worry about here? from what im reading some people say that only a serious sunburn will kill the grafts while others think that uv radiation can disrupt growth without any burn.

i will play it safe and keep the baseball hat on going forth.

I have a 20 minute walk to work every day, about 75% of the time I am in direct sunlight. My native hair completely covers my grafts to the point where you can't tell I had an HT if you look at me when i have my hair combed forward (which I always do). I have never liked wearing hats and don't want to wear one now if possible. Can I walk to work without a hat at 19 days post op?

so i am 17 days post op. took a shower tonight and noticed this strange red spot on my recipient area. there is no running blood and i didnt notice any in the shower (possible it got rinsed off before i noticed) and the spot is not raised and there is no pain. it looks like a broken blood vessel. i didnt hit my head on anything today. one possibility is a mosquito bite

what could this spot be? would a mosquito bite cause damage? could there have been any damage to a graft here?

Do you have very fair skin? Do you think there is possibility that you have an infection?

Why do you ask that Dr. Charles? I have relatively fair skin but i am almost certain I dont have an infection. I just wanted to use the aloe gel to see if it can reduce redness faster.

Sounds like you followed his instructions closely, and should be just fine. How many days post-op did you use the blow dryer?

Dr Path said it was ok to use it 24 hours post op. I start using it around 48 hours post op. However he said no hot air. I am just worried that my method of holding a hot blow dryer a foot or two away from my head was not enough to cool it off. I am just wondering if I would know if I had damaged my scalp.

Thanks for calming my nerves. I maybe brought the dryer as close as 6 inches only for a bit and never held it in one place for longer than 3-5 seconds. The heat my grafts got was probably no more intense than it was being outside in the Bangkok heat, even with a hat on.

Just out of curiosity, is the damage only possible when you actually burn your scalp? will you be able to notice it when heat damage occurs to the grafts?

i had an ht with Dr Path 2 weeks ago. the Dr said i could use a blow dryer on cool setting but my dryer does not have a cool setting. for some reason i used the dryer on hot but just held it farther away, maybe 2 feet away from my head. i would do this for about 5 minutes and it didnt feel hot at all. i dont have any pain on my scalp and it seems to look fine compared to what i have seen of other people at the 2 week mark. but for some reason, now i am starting to worry that maybe this was a mistake and i could have caused damage.

would i know if i had done some done some damage to my grafts with a hot dryer?

as you can tell i am pretty worried right now. thanks for your help.

How would one tell if there was damaged caused to transplanted hair from blow drying/heat in the first few weeks post op?

I used a blow dryer like Dr Path said I could. However because it did not have a cool setting I just held it from a pretty far distance. Should that have been OK?

Dr. Path's assistant said it is safe to use. Is there any insight out there about the best aloe gel to use? Will this brand I got help with the redness?

Been reading about some people using aloe gel on their heads to soothe redness. I am at day 9 and have a very pink scalp. I have a bottle of this stuff and was wondering if its ok to use since its not pure aloe vera gel:

Hawaiian Tropic Cool Aloe Vera Gel

Ingredients:

Aqua, Glycerin, Polysorbate 20, Carbomer, Triethanolamine, Allantoin, Aloe Barbadensis, Panthenol, Chamomilla Recutita, Carica Papaya, Mangifera Indica, Plumeria Acutifolia, Colocasia Antiquorum, Psidium Guajava, Passiflora Incarnata, Aleurites Moluccana, Simmondsia Chinensis, Tocopheryl Acetata, Retinyl Palmitate, Tocopherol Quaternium-15, Parfum, Benzyl Salicylate, Hexyl Cinnamal, Linalool, CI 19140, CI 42090