Baldietwo

Woow. Stunning results. 12k grafts!! Can I ask what your average hair per grafts was? I'm also a NW6 and I had my HT with Bisanga in August. My scalp is VERY similar to yours! Same average grafts/cm2, same coarseness. In fact, almost identical, you just had a little bit more hair on the front than me and my scalp was very lax so he got the full 2 cm, 4.7k grafts with 2.5 hair per grafts on average. I had the front and some of the midscalp covered with a dusting in the crown.. Some people say NW6s aren't ideal for HTs. Well you are living proof they are wrong. Of, course we'll never have that teenage density back, but we can still get full coverage with some careful use of the available grafts! And it's a multiyear plan. YOu can't expect full coverage in one session. Congratulations

5500 grafts! Holy macaroni that is a lot! You're going to see stellar results. Congratulations and well done. Look forward to seeing updates from you.

I should probably add here that I have not sufferered at all. These are my friends for many many years and I should probably call it "friendly abuse". I knew it was coming so I just sat and listened and let them talk for 10 min or so. Some of the jokes were actually pretty funny. It's the way our friendship group works and I wouldn't have it any other way. After the initial "abuse" I had their full support, but I still get the odd comment here and there.

No big "news" to report of but I though I'd share some pics anyway. The scar is healing well. It's still red, of course, but not too bad. The feeling in the donor area is back to normal. No tingling sensation, no numbness, no itchiness, it's fully back to normal. I was expecting this to take longer so I'm very pleased with the donor healing. The recipient area is almost back to normal colour. A slight hint of pink maybe but no one would notice. I'm still slightly numb in some areas but I can at least feel it when I touch it! However, I'm spotty as hell....very itchy! I'm spraying a lot of witch hazel on the area and that kills the itching pretty well. I suspect this is where new hair is growing. On the positive side...there is GROWTH! It's not visible on the camera but there's a LOT of new hair breaking through. Another months or so and these should thicken up to show some results! I've attached pictures of the back, both sides and the top. I've got some minor shock loss on the left side, but nothing major. I gave up trying to cover the scar. Long hair on the sides with a bald spot on top is NOT a good look! . I usually have a grade 1, but I think that will make the scar show a bit too much. Grade 3+ makes the hair too long and really shows off my bald top too much. Grade 2 is a happy medium. If the scar keeps healing like this I think I can pull off a grade 2 when the scar is fully healed...Big Bonus! (still early days of course). My hair on the pictures is grade 2 on the sides and a 3-ish on top. By top I really mean the topsides....as my top-top is a barren wasteland Everyone knows about the transplant now and I'm happy to not wear a hat. I just go about my day as normal. I've had the pisstaking from my friends and the intriguing questions from work. All of that which worried me is now in the past and I'm looking towards the future. A future of hair....at least in the frontal half until my second procedure. Pics attached. I just realized they are a bit dark.... The scar also looks a bit more red on the pics than in reality.

Things are good! I've not updated the post since there isn't anything to show Recipient area is back to normal colour, perhaps a slightly pink if you look really close. I've got most of the feeling back but it's still a little bit numb. Donor area is healing well. All the feeling is back to normal, no more tingling sensation. It's still red, but not as bad as a couple of weeks ago. Takes a full year almost to get to normal colour so all is as expected. I decided to not try and cover the donor scar by growing my hair long. It just looked stupid with long hair on the sides and nothing on top. So I'm a grade 2 or 3 with the scar showing and it doesn't bother met that much. Sometimes I wear a hat if I'm going to the shop, but that's only because i can't be bothered to answer questions about it. At work and with my friends I don't wear a hat. Work colleagues are intrigued at the procedure...no "nasty" comments from them as you would expect, otherwise I'd have HR on them! When I told my friends I had a 15 minute session of getting "abuse". I was expecting it so I was well prepared. Interestingly, none of the balding guys in my friendship group contributed to the "abuse". Once they had their 15 minutes they started asking more valid questions about the procedure, did it hurt etc. Interestingly, it was only the guys who hurled abuse, the girls were more like "you're brave, well done"... So now that everyone knows it's business as usual. I look the same as I did before the procedure, just with a red scar visible. I got back to my sports the other day and that felt REALLY good. I had not done anything in 6 weeks and I was out of shape! I'm not doing weights or anything that puts tension on my neck yet, but it felt good to break a sweat. I've got some minor growth going on but nothing that makes a visible difference. I'll update when I have some more visible growth to show.

I'm experiencing the same as you JB and I'm 1 month and 5 days post op All the transplanted hair has shed but some of then broke off instead of shedding properly. I have lots of tiny black dots on my scalp. You can't really see them unless you look really close. Now.....some of those have now started growing again! They have a thick black end which then narrows to a thin, growing, translucent hair. It's the same hair but it seems like it went into hybernation for a month and then continued growing. It's thinner at the growing(scalp) end but the other end is the same thickness as when they were transplanted...weird! I have loads of them! They don't make a difference to the appearance yet, but they should start to thicken up i hope See attached picture. This is a week ago and I have loads more of these bad boys now....

I had FUT with Bisanga. He removed and sutured the strip. He also made all the incisions. The techs separated the grafts and placed them. Dr Bisanga was checking up on them quite a few times during the day. They're all heros in my mind....or at least will be once I see the result from my HT...I'm only 1 month in.

I had a HT just over 4 weeks ago. Most of the transplanted hair shed after 2 weeks. However, most of them didn't really shed. They just broke off at the skin surface. I was left with lots of black dots at the skin surface. I have a LOT of them, maybe 50% of the transplanted hair remained in the scalp as black dots. Today I noticed that these broken hair seems to be growing again! The top of the hair is really thick, then it narrows to a thin translucent hair which grows thicker at the shaft. Have a look at the attached. Is this growth, or is it preparing to shed? They seem to be to long to be shedding and I haven't seen this before on this forum. It seems like the hair "paused" in the growing phase and then just continued to grow.

That's what my adviser said too. It's good that you are both consistent in your responses Fast regrowth would be nice, but not keeping my hopes up for that. They do seem to have started growing in the last couple of days. I'm guessing their shedding rather than actually growing.

Found him. Thank you. There's some a few photos on this forum. Looks good.

Any photos of Dr Dimersoy's work? He doesn't even appear when I Google him.

Are there any photos of Marals work?

You're looking great. Looks like you got a nice shape to pull off the shaved head look as well. Doubt your mates noticed anything. Benefits of FUE! Although hairloss plays on our minds a lot others pay little attention to it. We do it for our wn vanity. Metro sexuality and all that I'm going to my office for the first time tomorrow. I have no way of hiding my work as I have a looong red strip around my head. Looking forward to hear their reactions.

Time for a photo update! Last week (2 weeks post op) I had my sutures removed. You can read about that story here: http://www.hairrestorationnetwork.com/eve/171965-suture-removal-uk.html It's now been 3 weeks since my procedure and the donor area seems to be healing nicely. Most scabs are gone, there's some tiny ones here and there. It's still very red as you can see on the photos. My hair isn't long enough to cover the scar so I'm still using a hat I might try some concealer to make it less obvious. Dermmatch might do the trick. The transplanted hair started shedding on day 9 and by day 14 most were gone! The weird thing is that they don't seem to have shed properly. I still have thousands of small black dots on my scalp. The hair has broken off rather than the whole hair fallen off. Does anyone know if that means the hair will be stuck in the hole until the new one grows out in 3-4 months time? The scalp color is more or less back to normal, it's slightly pink, but not really noticeable unless you look very hard. All in all it's progressing well. Photos attached.

Yep, I already use aloe Vera Tricomin is supposed to be good for the scalp so I wanted to throw it in for good measure.

Thanks gillenator. You might be right. I've got half a bottle left so might as well use it. If it helps then that's a bonus

I just wanted to point out that my calculations are purely hypothetical, not based on anything other than my some guesswork. They are most likely very very wrong! Don't take that as a genuine price! It was just a simple way to illustrate the value (just want to cover my butt:) ) On a side note...my wife had a knee MRI scan and a consultation 1:1 with a doctor for 45 minutes..Price.. ?250 (British pounds)!!!! That was paid by the insurance company but it proves my point

This is an interesting discussion. You don't need a hair transplant to carry on with life. That's the harsh reality. Is it expensive? Yes it is. If you're on a low wage it's not going to work. Do not get a loan or use a credit card to pay for a HT, being in debt sucks. People who say get a loan to fund a HT is giving bad advice! It's much better to be debt and hair free!! I'm by no means a rich man. I don't live in a big house with lots of cars. I'm in an average house and have an average car. I probably earn slightly above average wages, but believe me when I say that I have to watch what I spend every month the same as everyone else. I I funded my HT by saving up for many years. Whilst saving I spent time researching my options. Do Clinics charge too much? Some probably do. I don't think the good clinics do. I did some calculations. My HT took 11 hours in total. I had 4700 grafts and the price for that was just under ?10k. For the 11 hours I had 6 people working together to make it all happen. (hope I counted right!). They didn't all work the full 11 hours as some finished once the grafts were cut and moved on to another patient. But I do remember there were 2 of them who were there all the time (with some breaks of course). So lets do some assumptions: The doctor probably spent 3 hours with me I think. 2 hours for the strip and the slits and then he came back for some crown work for an hour or so in the afternoon as well as constantly popping in to check everything was ok. So Doctor 3 hours 2 Technicians - 22 hours (11 each) 4 Technicians - 20 hours (5 hours each) So I paid an average ?222 per hour (British Pounds) for the team doing the work on me. Of course, they don't all make the same amount so the doctor makes more of course. On top of that they have to pay the reception staff, finance staff, the equipment, the rent for the building etc etc....When you add it all up it really isn't expensive! Yes, it's expensive for you to pay, but it's not an inflated price. It's a price that reflects what the true cost it. Can you get it cheaper? Of course you can. Go to a low cost country and you can get it much cheaper (and still maintain the same quality if you go with a recommended surgeon). That's my two cents

Hey Matt, Interesting to see your photos. I had my HT on the same day as you. FUT and in the same area. My scalp looks exactly the same as yours! (Except you have more hair in the crown). Most of the hair has shed and we're left with a pink scalp and the odd stubble hair and there. Your scar looks great! Good that you can cover it. Dr Bisanga always shaves an extra 2cm around the strip so takes a while to cover it with hair....oh well. Keep posting updates. Will be interesting too see if our journe will be the same

I'm pretty sure it's normal. I started shedding at day 9. By day 14 I had shed pretty much all if the transplanted hair....I'm now day 18 and I'm back to being bald.

2.5 weeks ago I had a HT to permanently fix baldness issue I've got some Tricomin left that I was thinking to use on the recipient area. Would Tricomin (copper peptides) make the scalp heal quicker and get rid of the pinkness? Is it ok to use in the recipient area?

I'm sure they would have recommended something, but that would mean taking time off work to travel to wherever that clinic is. Although the nurses were fascinated by it they had seen similar, equally long sutures on other body parts. But never the scalp. They did miss 3 stitches, but they said the suture was very thin and hard to see due to the my hair. Dark blue sutures against dark hair is not a good combination. The nurses are trained to remove sutures, it's part of their job. They were very careful when pulling them out and there was very little pain apart from one or two which were slightly covered with scab. My worry was whether they would actually do it, since it was a private procedure. I'm wasn't doubting their capabilities. I also didn't mind sharing my story and answering the questions. They were not judgemental but genuinely interested. I think they had a chat about it at lunch time because the 2nd nurse knew everything I told the 1st nurse

I think she used some wet pads. I also soaked my head beforehand to loosen the skin a bit. And I sprayed saline before and after. Just in case. I think I'm covered

Had my sutures out today. Not straight forward, but not too bad either. When I booked the appointment with my surgery I told them that the suture was about 30cm long and that I would likely require 2 or 3 of their routine 10 minutes appointments. The receptionist declined and said that the nurse will have no problems doing it in 10 minutes. Ok....they know best! When I arrived this morning the nurse was very helpful. Although she did ask why I didn't have it done by the HT Doctor. When I explained that I didn't want to take a day off, pay for travel to Brussles, she was ok. She was very fascinated with the suture! However, she had to stop after 10 minutes since the queue was big. I did explain to her that I asked for more time when I booked it and she said "we get this all the time, sometimes I wish they listen to the patients more!" She managed to book me in with another nurse later same day using their spare emergency appointments...hope I didn't prevent someone really ill from having an appointment I returned in the afternoon and this nurse was equally fascinated! She asked a lot of questions, said that the suture was "beautifully done" and she'd never seen anything this long on the scalp. She also asked questions about the procedure, the maintenance of the recipient and donor area etc. She did say that I was healing remarkably well so I guess that is a good sign. She also said that my body has started to reject the sutures already! In some areas they had been pushed outside of the skin! I noticed this myself as I'm keeping a detailed track of the progress. I've attached two pictures of the same suture area. 1st picture is from 12th day and you can see the suture through the skin. The 2nd picture is from today (day 14) and the suture has almost made it through the skin!! It took 30 minutes all in all (10 with the first, and 20 with the second nurse). At the end she had one adive to Dr Bisanga: Please use a different colour suture! Dark blue was impossible to see against my hair When I got back i used my clever microscope to check she got it all out...She hadn't! 3 stitches was left! No biggie, I sterilized my tweezers and the donor area and pulled them out. She had already cut it so they came out with no problems... So when you have your sutures out, make sure they get every single one out!!

Cheaper brands works just as well. The active ingredient is Minoxidil