spartan13

In the last week and a half since my last post I'm happy to report that the intense shedding has subsided. I'm not seeing even a visible amount in the tub's hair catcher, and I've only been combing out between 7-15 post shower. Hopefully this means the worst is over. In speaking with my surgeon, he believed that the tingling and prickling sensations were a result of my nerves regenerating versus something like inflammation as I never experienced any redness or tenderness on my scalp. And while he didn't believe the laser comb had any ill effects, I still have not used in the past couple of weeks. I have gone back to minoxidil at night on my crown and continued the finasteride throughout. Since21, I saw on a nother thread that minoxidil thinned out your crown and mid-scalp area. That's exactly what happened to me, but I was blaming it all on shockloss. Maybe a combination of the two.. I don't know. But at this point, I figured I might as well stick with it since the damage is done. I had problems geting the pics from my phone to my desktop which is why I haven't posted them yet, but I will try again this evening. I cleaned up some programs I think might have been gumming up the works, so we'll see.

I'm not sure how long LLLT has been around (I just recently found out about it myself a handful of months ago - so I haven't used it before), but I believe it only recently received FDA approval so it is probably only just starting to get more serious traction in the hair restoration world. I checked with my HT surgeon and he gave me his blessing to undertake it and he did add he thought the modality had some efficacy. That said, this LLLT is about the only thing different I've done this time around (other than twice as many grafts as my last one) as I had been on finsteride for several years before taking a 6-9 month break and starting again last Fall. Even today, the nurse told me the laser comb should be fine to continue with...but I'm with you. I'm putting it away at least until things (hopefully) turn a corner in the coming months. If I recover, then I'll think about using it again sometime in the future for maintenance.

He's about an hour and a half from me, which isn't too bad. I have a pretty open schedule at work next week, so I may ask to be seen once we talk on Monday. I did just have my wife take those pics, and the scalp doesn't really look bad (as you'll see when I get them posted tomorrow), so hopefully you're right and this is nothing too nefarious going on. I re-started finasteride very early in September of last year, and minoxidil sometime shortly afterwards. So the only really new thing was the low level laser therapy (LLLT) which I started about a month after my HT - simply one of those laser combs that you may have seen advertised. So yeah, there is kind of alot going on up there. However, I did see alot of Dr.'s post on the various forums about the benefits of undertaking finasteride and minoxidil after transplant surgery...so who knows. Hopefully by this time next year things will have resolved to some satisfactory level. I will definitely re-post any new information/developments after talking to my surgeon next week as well as getting those pics up.

Connecting the dots a little more (I hope). My scalp has been tingling and prickly off and on the past month or so when most of my damage has been done. It hasn't been severe or constant, but it has come and gone each day. I just figured it was the grafts "working" and it meant growth was coming. Last night while watching TV with my wife I experienced more significantly than usual. Then this morning was the absolute worst post-shower shed I've ever had. After much Googling this morning, I found that this sensation is not a good thing and seems to mean scalp inflammation in most cases. I called my HT surgeon's office (he's also a practicing dermatologist) to tell them of my symptoms. He wasn't in, but the nurse took alot of info and they are going to get back to me Monday. She mentioned they'd likely call in a prescription. What's weird is that there is no noticable redness, flaking, or scaling on my scalp whatsoever. Ironic that after having gone through HT's 3 times before that I am having my absolute worse experience now that I am a "veteran" at this. By this point, all I was is to look like I did before I ever went in for #4! Sometime this weekend I will make an effort to gets my wife to take some pics to post up. Unfortunately I didn't take any pre-op to give everyone some basis for comparison, but I can at least track progress going forward from here.

My surgeon is Dr. Robert Haber, who also did my last procedure in 2006, so I feel like I have a very reputable clinic behind me. As to some of the other questions...I did not shave the recipient area (or anywhere for that matter) prior to surgery and did have alot of existing hairs where the new grafts were placed. However, I had thought most of those were transplant hairs from my prior procedures. As for harsh shampoos, I did use Nizoral exactly once since my HT and got a good enough shed to scare me off of trying it again. Maybe in the future if my shockloss resolves and my new grafts come in good, I may give it another try. But right now I'm just scared to do anything that will cost me one more hair than I would otherwise lose.

Hi all! I've actually been lurking as a non-member for maybe six weeks or so and finally decided to take the steps to join up. Some brief background before I get into my question: I've now had 4 HT's. 2 smaller ones (maybe 400-500 grafts) with NuHart back in the mid-to-late 90's. I had another one in 2006 (approx. 1200) and I am almost exactly 3 months post-ops from procedure #4 (approx. 2300 done on Jan 10). What prompted me to join the forum is I've been going through what I can only describe as devastating shockloss with this last one, and am having a really hard time coping. I understand the phenomenon well, and went through it on procedure 1 (though not really on #'s 2 or 3)...but a few things make this time different. First, as I have a professional job I can't ride it out under a baseball cap like I could with #1 when I was still in school. Second, being 40 now instead of 22 I know I'm at a much higher risk for not getting a complete (or even partial) recovery from shockloss like I did before. Third, and worst of all...this extreme shockloss has exposed a ton of scarring and dimpling in my recipient area from those 90's procedures that I never even realized was there. My first month post-op was great as I noticed very little shedding and still had my little "shoots" hanging around. By the end of February my crown had cleared out a good bit more, I had lost the "shoots" by then, and had thinned noticably in front from where I was pre-op. At this point, I'd noticed that alot of my shed hairs were of the thinner variety. I'd gotten a break for a couple of weeks where it looked like I might be finished with the shockloss phase. Now though, at the end of month three I'm enduring a new shedding phase that's probably in it's third week where the crown has stabilized but my recipient area has gotten decimated like never before. The vast majority of hairs I'm losing now are much thicker and stronger than any I've lost previously, and it seems like it will never stop. Standing under the shower head after shampooing results in 25+ hairs in the hair catcher. Drying and combing loses me another 25-30. Even now as I type this, I scissored my fingers and gently pulled them through the hair at the back of my head (I wear my hair longer and combed straight back) twice, producing three thick black strands. So what I'm wondering is: is this level of shockloss this far post-op way out of the norm? Most of what I've read doesn't seem to indicated extreme shedding at three months is normal. I'm just trying to figure out if this is something to ride through or if this is unusual enough that I should be getting looked at. Forgot to mention...I've been on finasteride for seven months, minoxidil almost as long with a brief pause around my January surgery, and have been doing LLLT treatments 3x per week for the past two months. Basically all of the things that I've read will help minimize shockloss, which makes this even more depressing. Any thoughts, feedback, suggestions, etc. would be greatly welcome. Thanks!