Shadow of the EMpire State

I was disappointed to read that this is strip, not FUE. Is that so?

Hi. I'd call you a NW 3 at this point. Here's my advice: get to 35 (or at least 30) and then decide on surgery. The years between 25 and 35 are critical in predicting your terminal balding pattern. And knowing your terminal pattern is essential because, no matter how skilled the surgeon, hair transplantation is a numbers game and will remain so unless and until they find a way to clone hairs or awaken the dormant ones. Simply put, the greater the area you have to cover, the less likely you are to obtain a good result from surgery. Time and again, the guys who get the best surgical results tend to be NW 4 and less. So it's critical to get to 35 in the best possible shape. Of course, as some have noted, there are exceptional circumstances in which a man's hair loss accelerates markedly after 35, but this is not the norm. In fact, if you can get to 35 as a NW 3, the chances that you'll progress to the advanced Norwood classes are statistically small. So try to wait it out. That will have multiple benefits. First, you'll have a better idea of your terminal pattern and, by extension, whether surgery is a good option. Second, you'll be able to avail yourself of the many advances that will come to fruition in the next 10 years.

I commend you for pointing this out. Even I missed it. And yes, it makes a very big difference. We need more people like you. I mean, I love this forum. It's the best English-speaking internet hair forum, period. And by a mile, too. HLH is (was?) a joke. But even this forum has a few problems, and one of them is the tendency toward back-patting, a fair portion of which, in my opinion, is disingenuous and motivated by a desire to avoid ruffling feathers. No one should feel hesitant to criticize a bad result or a curious practice like hair-wetting. In fact, I'd say that we have an obligation to point these things out. After all, criticism not only spurs change but also produces the greatest amount of information for the hair-transplant consumer, and that's all of us.

Unfortunately, this situation has all the hallmarks of a bad result. Young patient, extensive loss, weighing cost, hoping for a "minimal" process. Respectfully, these factors generally produce very unrealistic expectations.

How old is the patient?

I've been on these boards forever. The point is, the strip-scarring complaints grossly outnumber any complaints about FUE. And when there *is* a problem, the severity of the problem is not even comparable.

Look, there is a very, very simple way to resolve this question. Step 1: Spend a few months on hair boards like this one. Step 2: Total up all the people who talk about how much they hate their strip scar. Step 3: Total up all the people who talk about how much they hate their FUE scars. I have seen hundreds upon hundreds---possibly thousands---of people saying that a strip scar ruined their lives and made them desperate for corrective surgery. By contrast I have never seen *anyone* talk about how FUE ruined his life, disfigured him, or made him desire additional corrective surgery. Now I fully understand (a) that modern strip procedures have better results than older ones; and (b) that strip procedures far outnumber FUE procedures, meaning that there will be more negative strip outcomes simply by force of the number of procedures. But even accounting for those factors, a strip scar is still much, much more likely to turn out badly than FUE scars. A cursory review of hair boards cannot yield any other conclusion. Period.

This is correct. The suggestion that a person is somehow less credible because he has depression is indicative of the worst, most retrograde stereotypes of the mentally ill. That anyone--let alone a doctor--would use that as a chip in a debate is disgusting, frankly.

I stopped coming for six months or so, and now everything's different. Most of the familiar, high-quality doctors are gone, and now the forum's flooded with results from guys I've never heard of. What's the deal?

You were what? 24? He's 30. Big difference.

Hmm. Which doctor asked you to remove pictures of his work? That sounds troubling. Removing characterizations, OK. But accurate pictures?

Very unfortunate situation. Lawsuits have their place, but they should generally be used as a tool of last resort. Usually, the better practice is to make a good-faith effort to work the matter out in advance of litigation. There's no harm in that, provided that the statute of limitations affords you the time. Besides, if negotiations don't work, you can always sue anyway. Also, when you identify him as a coalition doctor but refuse to provide his name, many coalition doctors become unwarranted targets of suspicion and speculation. And really, that's not very fair.

More like, "upper-middle-class and rich kids who were born on third base."

You guys are in serious denial. First, they relabel the drugs in Europe to include--for the first time--an admission that side effects may be permanent. Then Merck takes down the propecia.com web site and directs visitors to report side effects to their doctors. Now it's been linked to cancer by the Canandian government. How much more evidence do you need?

Looking sharp.

Fixed it for you.

Fixed it for you.

This whole idea sounds intriguing, but how about a clinic that would guarantee not to sue you? That would be great.

More commonly, it's the opposite.

I missed this case the first time around, but boy, it's as fascinating as any I've seen here. This guy's weird and rather unfortunate history with hair transplants has oddly set him up to have the kind of 4,000+ megasession that most NW4 guys actually need to look good. In a strange way, I think this result might provide some insight into the future of hair transplantation insofar as it gives us an idea of the kind of transformation that NW3-4 guys will be able to make once we increase the donor supply.

If you saw the video, you wouldn't feel that way.

Not really. Many post-op pics posted here never have any updates. Most of those usually turn out poorly, and the person simply chooses not to revisit the whole hair-transplant problem.

Keep in mind that these are highly anomalous results. If you look at the propecia advertisements---which are naturally designed to sell the product and thus are predictably sanguine about the drug---you'll see that they show much less progress than these photos.

Hahahaha. They all do. Now if only they were equally impressive after 10 months.

Trying to decide whether Jessie's telling the truth is pointless. To me, the better question is, "Why does this seem to happen so often with this particular doctor?" I've been on hair boards for a very long time, and I've seen my share of doctor-patient disputes, but I've never seen a recommended clinic with nastier patient feuds than this one. In my opinion, there's simply too much smoke to be no fire. I should say for the record that I think Feller does decent work. But if you're going to work with the general public, you have to know how to deal with them---including the nutty ones. In my opinion, Feller has absolutely no idea how to handle people. Moreover, he doesn't seem to understand that being a doctor makes him different and imposes a certain standard of behavior upon him. Medicine is an ancient and revered discipline. In fact, before everybody began referring to themselves as "professionals," that term was reserved exclusively for two lines of work: law and medicine. The rest were just jobs. And it wasn't about money. God knows, bankers and captains of industry always made more than doctors and lawyers. It was about other things, not the least of which was the culture of professionalism, itself: the notion of a man who was both a scholar and a gentleman. And in my opinion, Feller's rants don't acquit him as either---certainly not the latter. To me, he comes off like a construction worker. And I would guess that this has a lot to do with these various feuds. A little tact would go a long way.