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thered

Regular Member
  • Posts

    11
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Basic Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Country
    Afghanistan
  • State
    AL

Hair Loss Overview

  • Describe Your Hair Loss Pattern
    Receding Hairline (Genetic Baldness)
  • How long have you been losing your hair?
    In the last 10 years
  • Norwood Level if Known
    Norwood II A
  • What Best Describes Your Goals?
    Maintain Existing Hair

Hair Loss Treatments

  • Have you ever had a hair transplant?
    Yes
  • Other hair restoration physicians
    Dr Andre Nel
  • Current Non-Surgical Treatment Regime
    Propecia (Finasteride)
    Nizoral Shampoo

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thered's Achievements

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  1. Hi guys, Here with my 15 month update. I probably won't post again after this as I'm quite done with worrying about hair anymore My results: I'm pretty happy with the results given that it was only 1400 grafts. It made me care less about my hair, I don't honestly think about it that much anymore. The hairline looks extremely natural to me, which was my most important requirement. The donor zone I can't tell where the grafts came from at all and I've looked very close in harsh light. Here in this photo my hair is shaved very close, zero guard and 1 guard. You can't tell I had a HT. Would I do any further sessions? I wouldn't mind going for a small one, maybe 400 or 600 grafts just to fill in weak spots. But it's nothing that a little bit of hair styling can't overcome. To be honest, no body even notices or cares about my hair. If I can keep what I have right now for the rest of my life I would be happy. Good luck!
  2. Got a haircut today so I thought I would take a few pics and do a better progress update. Cheers.
  3. Hi guys, Quick 7 month update. Getting more growth and starting to thicken up more. I'll post more detailed photos at the 10 month mark. So far so good, no complaints or problems.
  4. Hi, So 4 months have passed and I'm beginning to see a few hairs coming out at last! Very few but still early days. As you can see my hair is getting pretty long and I need to get another haircut soon. I combed it back so you can get a clear view of the hairline zone. Happy growing brothers!
  5. Hi guys, 2 month update. Went for a checkup with Dr Nel and he said the donor area has healed very nicely. You can see from the attachments where I'm at. I took a very close up of the donor area and it's impossible for even me to see that anything is going on here. From the hairline you can see there's a couple of hairs starting to sprout but not much to write about at this stage. I would say that 95% of all redness on the hairline has subsided at this stage. Any lingering redness is hardly noticeable.
  6. 2 week update: Donor area is looking pretty normal by now. The scabs on the recipient area are finally all gone. There is some slight discoloration (it's not pink though, more purplish-bruisish color right now). I would say there has been ~30% shed of hairs that came off with the scabs. I also think there is a slight bit of shockloss on the recipient area where the new hairline meets the old, which as I've read is also normal. Right now I'm hoping my original hair grows out a bit more so and sitting tight to get over the inevitable "ugly duckling" phase. Good luck fellow brothers, we're all gonna make it.
  7. Hi all, Here is an update. It's now day 7 post-op and donor area is looking pretty good, a few scabs still left, but overall it looks well. This is still slightly shorter than I would usually shave my hair on the back if I went for a close cut, so I think "coverage" should be good if I want to sport some close haircuts in the future Pain in occipital zone is also clearing. Recipient area looks to be healing nicely, still lots of scabs but that is expected until at least day 10 when I can start washing my hair more normally. From now on I'll do 1 week updates until month 1. Followed by monthly updates or unless it's completely uneventful I'll update even less.
  8. Quick update: I went for a 5 day post-op checkup and Dr Nel says everything is looking very good. The donor area has healed up very nicely for 5 days. I have some occipital nerve pain which is common and I take a mild pain killer every 8 hours which eliminates this. I want to add some baseline images as a comparison for pre/post op over the next 12 months, but first some history on the medications used: I started using Fin + Minox on 09/2011. I stopped using Minox around 05/2013 due to seeing limited benefits and getting a bad skin reaction. I also used Niz but very irregularly (sometimes twice a week, sometimes once a month) over the past 4 years. I plan to add Niz 1% three times weekly in the coming months post op. The first images shows the state of my hairline from 10/2011 up until 08/2015 a few days before surgery (4 year period). The other 3 images show the temple and vertex state from about 1 year before I stopped Minox to 3 years later (2012-2015). As you can see there's hardly any difference and frankly after getting an FUE on the hairline there will be even less of a reason. Minoxidil is really a pain in the ass to have in your regiment. All in all I'm happy to have "maintained" over the last 4 years and I think this is about 100% as a result of using 1mg finasteride consistently over this period.
  9. Since I don't see much about Dr Nel and I had a hard time deciding on this doctor, let me give more details on how and comments about the Dr for other people like me looking for more info. Note: I did not do this in Ireland but as I understand Dr Nel's staff travels with him (there's 4 people that worked with him during the transplant) and 2 of them live in Ireland. Dr Nel is first and foremost NOT a hair transplant "salesman". He will tell you this himself and he will not try and convince you to do anything or get anything done. He has also had FUE done on himself by Dr Bijan Feriduni, so he knows what it's like first hand. During my initial consultation he spent a great amount of time going in very detail exactly all the options available to treat hairloss, how it works, what medications work and what "might" work, etc. Then he took a lot of pictures and showed me very detailed photos of patients with similar hairloss and the results of their progress so far and what I could realistically expect. After this he took detailed photos of my hair and drew a hairline he suggest would look good on me. It was very conservative and I liked it alot. The next day he emailed me a very thorough report about the current state of my hair, density, characteristics, etc. based on his examination. I asked when he would be in the country again to do procedures and he said usually every 3 months so May and I mentioned that I would be interested more around July. After this I did not contact his office again as I suspected someone might give me a call to ask if I wanted a procedure done or not. This did not happen and I contacted them again around end July to ask if I could have a procedure booked. I guess this just affirms that he's not really in the business of "selling" hair transplants. After deciding on a date with his assistants Dr Nel gave me a phone call a few days later to say he's aware of the booking and he's looking forward to the procedure. About a month before the procedure I received my pre-op instructions. Dr Nel suggested that I apply Minoxidil once a day to donor and recipient areas. I googled and it seems there is some studies that suggest this prevents the usual shedding [1]. I tried this for a week but the Minoxidil just gave me extreme dandruff, rashy and itchy skin and I decided I didn't want to risk recovering while having the urge to scratch my itchy scalp. The night before surgery Dr Nel again phoned me and said he re-looked at my pictures again and he is very excited and thinks I'm going to get a very good result. He assured me that everything was in place for surgery and I should not worry about it and just get a good night's rest and he would come pick me up the next morning with one of the technicians. The next morning before we spent about an hour taking photos again, re-doing the hairline, discussing everything in detail, etc. This was followed by breakfast, shaving my head, taking some sedatives and then the rest is your standard FUE session, spend a few hours harvesting grafts, breaking for lunch, going back doing a bit more harvesting, then implanting and going home. One other thing to note is that he takes a lot, and I mean, _a lot_ of photos during all stages of the procedure. The next day you go back for the first wash which the Dr does himself and shows you how to do it. His post op instructions are quite thorough. One thing he asks is that you spray a light mist every 30 minutes on the recipient area. On the bottle is marked "Bepanthen", sleep with head raised 30/45 degrees (you get one of those travel pillows), a couple of dressings to put over your pillows in case of bleeding, you apply a thin layer of Vaseline to the donor area each day, and alternate the next 10 days between rinsing with water, and dabbing baby shampoo and rinsing, then for the next 5 days it's washing with the baby shampoo and light circular movements. And that's about it. [1] Topical minoxidil used before and after hair transplantation. - PubMed - NCBI Runner, to answer your questions: In _my_ opinion it is 100% absolutely necessary to be on Fin if you're going to do a HT. Everything else is secondary. I evaluated Fin for 4 years to see if it worked properly before deciding on a HT. I have close up detailed photos which I took approximately every month during those 4 years which includes the 2 years I used Minixodil and after. This is a life long commitment and you are modifying your body permanently, you need to be sure you can sustain your results. I was on Minoxidil 5% for 2 years but I did not see any regrowth and it started giving me a bad skin rash so I stopped it. Niz I have been using on and off but not religiously. It would be better going for a consultation first and then discussing costs, but Dr Nel is not very expensive.
  10. Hi all, I haven't seen any forum posts by people who've done an HT by Dr Andre Nel so I'm sharing my experience. I started on the Big 3 in October 2011. You can see how my hairline looked on 10 Feb 2012 in the 1st photo. The second 2 photos show how it looked on Thursday 27 August 2015 the day before surgery. I stopped using Minox about 2 years ago because it was too much hassel and I didn't get much growth. But for 4 years the fin seems to have kept my hairline pretty much were it was. On 28 August I did a FUE 1400 graft procedure with Dr Nel. He is a very good HT surgeon and considers Dr Bijan Feriduni to be his "master". Here you can see some pics of him with the great Dr himself: (Link removed by moderator - See Terms of Service) My goals were to restore my hairline. I was classified as a NWII Anterior. I did not want it lowered, just add more density and make it look normal. The surgery was rather uneventful and I was there from 7am and by 16h30 I was back home. I have absolutely no pain in donor or recipient areas and didn't take pain killers after the first night. The last two photos show me 1 day post op. I had just come back from the clinic after my first hair wash. I will be updating this thread as the months go by and answering any questions you guys might have. So far I'm very pleased with Dr Nel and his team they were extremely professional and the Dr even personally came to pick me up and drop me at my house since it was rather close to the clinic where the surgery was done.
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