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spartan13

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  1. spartan13

    Month 3

    By spartan13,

    After the funeral experience, I made an appt. to follow up with my surgeon just to check on things. I had experienced no shockloss whatsoever after my 2006 procedure so I wanted to make sure nothig was amiss. My scalp looked fine and everything healed up well. I had been on finasteride since the prior September and minoxidil maybe a month or two later. I kept taking the finasteride straight through, and got back on minox maybe a week after surgery. It was just determined to be a classic case of shockloss and my number happened to be up this time. I purchased a case of Dermmatch on the way out to go with the Caboki I had already ordered.

    I thought I was feeling crummy by the end of month 2, but month three was definitely rock bottom. I had a shockloss reprieve for maybe a couple of weeks tops before it came back with a vengence later in the month. Now I was getting very thick dark hairs coming out in droves whereas before I was mainly getting thinner lighter hairs. And the middle of my head was really starting to clear out when that had always been a fairly bulky area for me. I was fairly dependent on concealer now, just because I couldn't take the constant looks.

    Attached are some pics taken exactly three months post-op. Again, I'm kicking myself for not taking any pre-op pics for comparison purposes.
  2. spartan13
    I'm a little late to the game as I'm 3.5 months post-op as I start this blog, but pre and shortly post-op I was only minimally aware of this site. As such, this blog will begin with my three-month photos. Unfortunately i didn't take any pre-op pics as I had no inkling I'd ever be doing something like this. So I'll start with a little background. I had two small HT's over the mid-to-late 90's with Nu-Hart when I was in my early twenties (maybe 250 and 400 grafts respectively). In hindsight I had plenty of hair, but I was starting to recede and the prospect of being bald freaked me out to no end. While I should not have done anything at that age, tt was actually fine for a long time but I'm now living with the results of those bad HT's from 15+ years ago. I had another HT with Dr. Robert Haber in OH for approx. 1200 grafts back in 2006. This current procedure from earlier this year was my fourth and largest HT, also with Dr. Haber.

    MONTH 1

    The surgery, while long (I was there approx. 8 hours) was generally comfortable and a fine experience. I was diligent about my post op instructions and never really experienced much pain or discomfort. The area above the FUT scar was numb, but that is normal and something I was used to. The first month was actually awesome. While thinning, I still had a very decent amount of hair, and I loved seeing and feeling the "reinforcements" and envisioning how good things would look once they grew in. The transplanted stubble didn't actually shed until into month two, and I had no noticable shockloss after one month. I had no shockloss from my prior procedure, so I thought I was in the clear.

    MONTH 2

    By the end of month two, my "reinforcements" were all gone and I was starting to experience shock loss to the point that I was balder than before surgery. I mainly believed it was just the transplanted hairs falling out, so I thought; "Yes, progress!" My first real clue that I was losing native/prior transplant hair was catchng people at work staring at my hair during meetings and conversations. Then I actually began to pay attention to the number of hair I was losing in the shower as well as my comb afterwards. Yikes! Shortly after that I had to attend an out-of-town funeral and saw a handful of family I hadn't seen for about 3-4 months. Same story...no one could resist looking at my hair. What I didn't realize at that time was it went beyond just thinning. Those 90's HT's had left a fair amount of pitting and cobbling in my recipient area that I never realized was even there. I'd always had enough hair (until now) to cover it. Furthermore, those old HT's were placed at 90 degree angles, so that hair sticks straight up for almost 1 cm before laying back down (I wear a longer style), leaving a nice open window to view the scarring. Needless to say the close of month two wasn't quite as awesome as month 1. Crap!
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