trashpanda

1) I waited until 3 days post-op to fly out. However, day 2-3 post-op is probably the peak swelling period (at least for me) so if I could go back, I would have waited until at least day 5,6 or 7 to fly out. I'm sure some guys have flown out the day of, but I wouldn't recommend it for a couple of reasons. First, the back of your head will be bandaged and still oozing out some blood from the FUE procedure. So you will have a bloody bandage on the back of your head. Secondly, I think it is smart to stick around for at least a few days so the clinic can monitor you and wash your hair for you. This helps ensure for a better recovery process and to make sure everything is going as planned. 2) I believe I read somewhere on this site that the grafts are secured after 10 days. But this is kind of a vague question 3) Since I flew out 3 days post-op, I wore a cap to the airport and just took it off when I went through security. Before the procedure the thought of this really frightened me because I thought I would be so embarrassed. However, I was actually rushing through security to make my connecting flight in the USA, and just said f*** it, none of these people will ever see me again 4) My post-op instructions said I can return to medium pressure at day 5 and normal shower pressure at day 7 5) My post-op instructions say refrain from working out for 3 weeks. It sucks not being able to be active for that long but you don't want to take any risks when you just made a large investment financially, physically, and mentally. 6) You should protect your recipient area from harsh sun exposure for up to 6 months Hope this helps, but I'm sure others will chime in and correct me if I am wrong or give you their personal advice.

Looking forward to it Spidey. I was just in there 9 days ago. You're lucky to live in Vancouver, at least at this time of the year. I thought it was a beautiful city with great summer weather!

blurrynights, Don't be discouraged by the decision you made today, you are better off not getting a HT than you are going with a surgeon/clinic you are not 100% comfortable with. You're not foolish at all for making that last minute call, but rather quite the opposite. I know hair loss can be tough on young guys like us and you just want to be able to fix it and go back to "normal", but this is not something you want to rush into! I didn't see it in your post, but are you on any preventative medications? If you are considering a HT at this age and your current level of hair loss, it is in your best interest to prevent any further loss. Everyone has their own opinion on this, but I personally wouldn't suggest anyone our age with MPB to go through with a HT unless they have stabilized their hair loss. I'm not familiar with doctors in your area, but if you are set on getting a HT, I would not limit your search to your immediate area. Do A LOT of in depth research about doctors all around, even if it means you have to travel. Do as many online and in-person consultations as you can to determine what is your best option going forward. While you do have hairloss, you still have a decent amount left that you can hang on to if you stabilize the loss. The crown is a tough area to work on because it requires a lot of grafts to present the illusion of density. You also risk having shockloss there if you place grafts there since the crown isn't completely bald, rather it has thinned and has a lot of weak hairs left. However, this is where you should take advice from a professional and hear their thoughts. Good luck going forward. Don't rush into anything and remember there are plenty of people on this forum that are willing to help you make the best decisions for yourself.

wow, its looking good TJ! It looks like you have passed the most difficult part and are on your way to a great head of hair. Congrats!

Thanks for the comments N0air and rawkerboi! Here are some pics right after a shower 1 week post op. Almost all of the scabbing in the recipient site is gone and I have started to apply vitamin E oil to the recipient area as well as the donor area (around 2 days ago).

Congrats hamburger. Ive never been to ASMED and I am not a patient of them, but they put out some incredible results and I believe you made a good decision in choosing them. Best of luck.

Hahaha!

Awesome result so far, and a lot of time left to grow!!

It looks great!! Congrats!

Thanks modernhair, I definitely wanted to stay conservative because there is some history of males on both sides of my family reaching NW6. However, my hair loss has been a very very slow burn and I've managed to stabilize it with medication. Thanks for your kind words. I also thought I would give the graft breakdown 1's: 370 2's: 925 3's and 4's: 564 Transection rate: ~3%

Immediate post-op and a few shots of my donor 3 days post-op

Update 8/11/2016 - 3 Days post-op I stayed locally in Vancouver for one extra day because I had some pimples forming along the recipient site and Dr. Hasson wanted to monitor them and have the nurses clean to make sure I have a smooth recovery. I was glad to take his advice and stay, especially because my donor has healed so well and I'm not really concerned about people noticing I had an HT as long as I am wearing a hat. That is, besides the enormous swelling going on under my eyes. It looks like I got punched really hard in both eyes! Oh well, it will go down in a couple days. I was so pleased with the extra care that the clinic took for me to make sure I was going to have a good healing process. Each day post-op I came into the clinic and they gave me two washes, once in the early afternoon and once later in the afternoon. My advice to anyone going through with a HT would be to plan to stay a week locally to your clinic. That way you can have them monitor you thoroughly and by the time it is time to fly home, your face doesn't look like you lost a UFC fight. Here are some preop pics taken by the clinic..

TJ, For both N0air's and my case, yes our hairlines were shaved just slightly just like yours. If for instance the entire frontal third, the vertex, or the crown were receiving grafts, those areas would have needed to be shaved as well. I wish I had the cajones to shave my whole head down all the way, but I just couldn't do it. I have the worst bowl cut ever right now and it looks really goofy, but I'll give it a week or two post op before I go to get a haircut to blend it all in. I figured this would be the best way for me to be able to conceal the HT as quickly as possible. As you can see, N0air is concealing his HT very well at this point without having to shave all the way down pre-op. Looking good N0air!! Some real solid growth should be right around the corner.

Congrats on your procedure and it looks like you are healing well! Your redness is lingering but that's more normal for people with fair skin like you. That's a nice number of grafts for that area, what was your donor capacity? This will be a great result and you are right around the corner from seeing some early growth!

Hi TJ, thanks for the kind words. Even though H&W is renowned as one of the best FUT clinics in the world, I decided with FUE because I really like to keep my hair shorter on the side and wear more of a crew cut. I also don't think I'm mentally equipped to deal with a strip scar at my age right now, although I'm sure it would have been mostly unnoticeable if I got one from H&W. There's also the fact that I need to get back to work as soon as possible, maybe 2 weeks post op, where I can wear a hat to conceal the work on top and by then the recipient site should have healed nicely. By the way, I just saw that you are a Dr. Hasson patient as well. I'll check out your thread. I'm not even 48 hours post op and im already swelling in my face. It looks pretty funny I must say. Im going to look like a funny guy going onto the plane tonight. If I were to make any suggestion to other considering FUE, I would say stay a week in the area where you get it to give time for the swelling to go away and for the grafts to settle in a bit, so you can wear more of a hat that you like. I'm going to wear the hat that H&W gave me to the airport tomorrow and I have to wear it very loose so it looks a little goofy. At the end of the day, I just have to keep convincing myself that I'm never going to be seeing any of these people again so I just have to suck it up and make it home.

It is really hard for me to tell from these pictures, but I'm not an expert. You definitely conceal any loss you may have very well with that style. Did you have an in-person or online consultation with Dr. Hasson? Are you going with FUT or FUE?

Thanks pkipling, yes it was a very positive overall experience and I couldn't be happier with my choice in H&W. Glad to know I'm not the only one who can have that much of a brain slip and forget their passport, however it is not the first time it has happened to me. You would think I would have learned from the first time, but I'm just so glad that it all worked out and I finally got the procedure done. I've attached a few pics of the hairline/temples where the work was done. I'm hoping to get the clinic pre-op and post-op photos tomorrow and I will update the thread with those, which I'm sure are higher quality than my own photos. When you see the recipient area, keep in mind that areas far back already had some hair in them, but they had thinned out some. So Dr. Hasson decided to put some grafts there to thicken it up. I'm also glad that we went with strengthening my temples. Dr. Hasson thought the follicular density of the total transplanted area was around 60 per cm^2 edit: my pics are coming out sideways and I apologize. How do I make them come in at the right orientation?

Overview Hey everyone, I wanted to document and share my experience getting an FUE procedure with Dr. Hasson at H&W in Vancouver. I am 25 years old and live in Florida, USA. Background I would say my "hair loss" started as early as age 16-17, when my forehead started to get higher. It continued at a very very slow pace, so slow that I never even considered the fact that I was actually experiencing hair loss that would eventually lead me to going bald. I've always had a really big head and got made fun of it for it throughout my younger years, but it never bothered me and I always rolled with the jokes. It wasn't until I was 23, after a haircut where I asked the stylist to go a little bit shorter than usual, where I looked in the mirror and realized what was happening. That's when I started to freak out and my life definitely changed. As I'm sure many of you are familiar with this feeling, you begin to become obsessed with hair and hair loss. I would go out and the first thing I notice on any man is his hair or lack there of. I hated this feeling and I thought to myself...is it going to be like this forever? I experienced mild depression and a lot of anxiety from my thoughts on hairloss, thinking that I'm doomed and there will never be a better day for my hair for the rest of my life. My dad has thinning hair, maybe a NW3-4 but is still holding it together for a 60 year old man. His brothers are all very similar. His dad had a full head of hear when he died at 93 years old. So I grew up thinking, I will just end up looking like one of them. However, when I started researching hair loss, I realized it can come from both sides of your family. My moms dad and brother both had advanced hairloss NW5-6 before they passed. So I sat there thinking, f*** I'm SCREWED! One of my friends, who has absolutely no filter, was with me and my other friend who is experiencing hairloss, a bit more advanced than mine, jokingly mentioned that we should get hair transplants. He wasn't being serious, but it made me think, is that a real option? I always thought it was only for celebrities and not for the common man. So I began my research and within a week I had set up a free consultation with a local HT clinic near me, a doctor who is in all the top organizations and uses ARTAS. This doctor quoted me for 1500-1700 grafts using the ARTAS and also encouraged me to start using finasteride. I immediately rejected the idea of taking a pill for the foreseeable future, as I live a pretty natural lifestyle and don't like the idea of pharmaceutical drugs. Regardless, after he wrote me a prescription, I did some research online....that FREAKED ME OUT!!! Everything that came up was how I would have permanent erectile disfunction and would essentially be trading my sex life for keeping my receding hairline. I rejected the idea of finasteride for about two months, before realizing (after reading through the scientific journals and other patients experiences) that the chances of side effects are very low and it is basically my only chance of retaining the hair that I have. With that said, I have been on some sort of finasteride for almost a year to the date. I took generic finasteride for 6 months before I decided to switch to brand propecia (1mg), and I couldn't believe the difference that I saw in the reduction of shedding. That made me swear I would never switch back to generic, no matter the price. Since then, I have switched to brand proscar cut into 4s to take 1.25mg/daily. Anyways, months go by since I visited the original HT doctor and I thought I had pretty much decided on going to him because he was local and it would be convenient. However, once I found sites like this, I was able to see the results of other clinics and I began to think: maybe I should consider traveling for such a momentous procedure. I knew I wanted to go with FUE because of my young age and liking to keep my hair shorter on the sides. But the more I researched about FUE techniques, the more I did not like the ARTAS system and leaned more towards a manual punch. I was incredibly impressed by the work of Dr. Erdogen at ASMED and their results, but I also saw the H&W started to offer FUE but didn't have many published results. Thats when I saw spideys results and started to consider H&W for my procedure. I actually appreciate the fact that they took so long to get into FUE and that they were guided into practicing FUE with Dr. Erdogen and ASMED. Reputation is everything in this industry and I knew that if H&W had chosen to go into FUE, that they knew that they could stand behind their results. No offense to the other clinics, which I have seen many good results, but for my own sanity I needed to go to a clinic that I knew I would feel comfortable with. About my hairloss Like I said, I have been experiencing some sort of hair loss since I was 16-17 when my hairline started to get higher. My corners slowly receded and got to a point around age 23 where I became really uncomfortable with how I looked and I was constantly worrying about my hair. I have a big head so any hair loss is more pronounced than someone with a normal sized head lol. If I had to self-assess, I am somewhere between a NW2-3. Day of surgery First let me explain to you the craziness of my journey to Vancouver. I booked my flights around 5-6 months in advanced after I had booked my procedure with Dr. Hasson. My plan was to fly out of Pittsburgh, because I was going to be in that area visiting family before I went to Vancouver. So my surgery is scheduled for Monday 08/08/2016 @ 7am and I am about to fall asleep with my wife in the hotel near Pittsburgh on Saturday 08/06/2016 @ 11:00PM, when I shot out of bed and realized that I had forgotten my passport in Florida. I started to freak out, because my flight to Vancouver was set for 9am the next morning. My only option was to buy 2 new tickets: one from Pitt to Florida and one from Florida to Vancouver, so I could go home, grab my passport, and fly back out. Money was not an option at this point, I could not miss this appointment!!! Luckily, the tickets didn't come out too expensive, especially when you consider what it would have cost in $$ and opportunity costs if I didn't do it. So I flew back to FL, drove home, grabbed my passport, went back to the airport, and flew to Vancouver. I arrived at the Sheraton downtown in Vancouver at 1:30am and needed to be at the clinic at 7am the next morning. I got a few hours of sleep and headed to the clinic and got there on time. I filled out the necessary paper work and went in to talk to Elena, the lead tech who performs the extractions. She is super nice and knowledgable and told me I had nice donor hair. This surprised me because I thought that because I have more fine hair, that I wouldn't have a ton of donor capacity. Dr. Hasson eventually came in and inspected my donor hair, telling me I have approximately 8,000 FUE donor bank which made me ecstatic. I also have good laxity, but a strip procedure is not in my plans for anytime soon. Dr. Hasson drew three different hairlines on one side of my face to see which one I would like best, in which I went for the most conservative option. As much as I would have liked to go for a lower hairline, I would rather save any grafts I have for future loss. I never had any desire to lower my hairline, as many of the males on my dads side have high foreheads and before my corners started to vanish, I was never unhappy with my big forehead! He also gave me the option of having a more curved shaped hairline or more straight, in which I opted for a more curved hairline because I thought it would look more natural and I would age better into it. After we decided on the hairline, Elena shaved a bit into my hairline where the grafts would be inserted and then shaved my donor area. After that, the extractions began. Yes the anastesia injections are a bit painful, but I knew that going into the surgery. During the actual extractions I felt absolutely no pain at all, but I have a bad lower back and it became sore after laying flat on my stomach for so long. I brought my ipad and cell phone that I watched movies on and texted my wife and friends during the extractions, looking at the devices through the hole where my face was in the chair. We probably started the extractions around 8:30am and broke for lunch around 1pm for around 30 minutes. During lunch and through other parts of the extractions, there would be 3-4 techs on microscropes cleaning and separating grafts into singles, doubles, and multis. Then we finished the extractions around 4PM or later (I can't remember exactly). Thats when Dr. Hasson came in and made the incisions. He gave me a clicker to help keep count of the # of incisions he had made, where he would count to himself silently to 100 and then I would hit the clicker. He is very thorough and took his time. After this is when the techs started to implant to grafts. I asked the main tech (can't remember her name, sorry) how long she had been with H&W and she said 10 years! Inserting the grafts took a few hours, but it was the most relaxing part of the procedure since I was able to sit upright and watch netflix on the TV. When we finally finished up, it was close to 10PM and the staff helped teach me about how to wear the hat they give you, the different medications, and all other post op care. I have attached some pre-op pics I took of myself months before the surgery, but I will update soon with the pre-op and post-op pics from H&W themselves. I hope I can help others that are considering HTs in the future, especially those around my age. I did an insane amount of research and I suggest you do the same if you are on the fence. Do not just jump into something like this, like I almost did when I began considering HTs. I'm in the hotel now and do not feel any pain, but I do look kind of crazy lol! I had an old couple on the elevator ask me "what happened to you?" and I replied "I had hair surgery." They were really nice and told me they hoped I healed fast. I am nervous about traveling through the airport, but once I get home I'm sure I will be at ease. I have a wonderful support system around me with my wife, family and friends and that definitely helps a lot. Thank you to the entire H&W team for a very nice experience. Im so glad I chose this clinic and can't wait to get this recovery process started. Also thank you to this forum and all its members and moderators. It has been very informative and helpful in my decision, you just need to know how to sort through all of the crap sometimes. I will update soon with pre-op and post-op pics!! I also want to give a special thanks to N0Air (member on this forum) and Doug from H&W for the info they share on this forum to help other members.

Why is that hilarious?

Great yield! I bet he's happy, and will be even happier after the 2nd FUE!

Your results are so great! Congrats it must feel incredible. Spidey, I've thought of that before but I also wonder what happens when your hair turns grey and you have SMP?

I think that's a very conservative amount of grafts for that level of loss, top that with the fact that some of those existing hairs were probably already miniturized and on their way out anyways, I think we will have to wait another 2 months to see if this patient had an aesthetic improvement from this procedure. He probably needed 2x or more grafts than he received but maybe he was stripped out. Is there pics of the donor?

I see one good growth and it's still so early! Congrats it looks like this will be a great reault

I feel like I see an improvement, but some side by side pictures of pre-op and where you are now would be really helpful. Also, cutting your hair that short is not going to make you see the full potential of your results. Transplanted hair will never be the same density as your full, native hair. Good luck!

Looks like everything is on track! Congrats. Very nice job concealing the recipient area just 1 month post-op. I'm going to try something similar after my operation