echoes

Don't worry about them having already made the booking. My coordinator Sema was really great about making last-second changes to the bookings, sometimes even changes the day of. I think ASMED's deal with Radisson gives them great flexibility to make these changes without penalty. And again, I really think the night after surgery you'll appreciate the proximity of the clinic. Wifi there worked well. I have started shedding, meanwhile the redness hasn't really faded so it's pretty obvious now. I just edited the original post to add some photos at day 21 post-op so you can see what I mean.

I clicked on this thread because when I saw "Self FUE" I thought someone was making a joke... I hope you aren't seriously considering this.

Oh absolutely! I didn't mention it to be critical of you, just wanted to clarify the detail of the event that night. But you're right, scary. Yeah... no need to rush things, wait and see how the situation evolves in Turkey and what other patients experience over the weeks and months to come. If you really like Dr. Erdogan's results then I'm sure it'll be worth it to you to wait for things to calm down. Maybe book yourself in for a few months from now. Worst case scenario you could cancel the appointment, with enough notice and not lose your deposit.

I think I saw the same study. At one point i was taking just 0.2 mg every third day. I feel this was less effective for me than 1.25 mg/day. Finding your own sweet spot may take some time.

I have been using it almost continuously for about 10 years: started around 21, 22, and am turning 32 in a few months. 1. A great deal, especially in the vertex. 2. I get less morning wood than I used to. 3. 1.25 mg/day. For awhile I experimented with lower dosages. At one point I was taking 0.2 mg once every three days. I got this low dose by crushing Proscar in vodka. I was doing that for about a year and I think that dose was too low, and I started losing a bit of hair. I'm now back up to 1.25 mg/day as I just had my FUE three weeks ago and the doctor felt strongly that finasteride is critical during the 12-15 months after FUE, so I decided to go back to the full dose. In the long run I will again experiment with lowering my dose (though less than before). In the very long run I will hope for something better than finasteride. Even though I've been lucky with side effects, I'd rather take something safer. Since I discussed above tapering the dose, some advice for anyone looking to taper their finasteride dose: Based on research I had read online you want to taper very very gradually so as not to shock your system, in order to reduce the risk of side effects. 4. I don't remember if I might have experienced this at the very beginning.

LOL!! Less balls of steel, and more just me being clueless and tired. Over the days I had been there I was used to the nearby mosque broadcasting the call to prayer five times a day as usual. That Friday night during the coup attempt, I just remember waking up confused wondering why there was a call to prayer in the middle of the night and why the broadcast was taking so long! I was entirely clueless that it was to do with a coup. Also, the broadcasts weren't from the military to support the coup, but from loyalists encouraging citizens to take to the streets to show their support for the current government. You are right, the situation should be monitored. I guess I am less worried because: 1) I live in Boston, in the US, where I am far more likely to be a victim of violence than in Turkey or in most countries in the world. 2) Random acts of violence strike anywhere. I did my FUE as part of a longer trip visiting family in Europe. I have an uncle and aunt living near Nice and I almost went there on this trip. And look what happened there. I think getting a transplant done is a big choice about who you are and what you want to be, and I wouldn't want people to deny themselves that out of fear.

Yeah, I was going to ask if this was an option. ASMED for example will quote you a price in EUR, but they also accepted USD and TRY (probably GBP as well).

Yes I'm really pleased with how the donor area has healed! The recipient area on the other hand is still quite red (more so than the photos suggest). The hospital bed definitely made it easier to sleep, because yes you can adjust the position. However for me the main advantage of sleeping in the clinic is proximity. After a long day of surgery I was exhausted, and how nice it was to just go up a few floors, vs. having to get in a car to get to my hotel. If your swelling is similar to mine, you will look very swollen on that flight. My swelling started the afternoon after surgery, so Wednesday afternoon for you. Swelling was then pretty bad for the following 3-4 days. I don't see any safety issue with you traveling then though. However our cases may not be comparable. Consider though that I had a two-day surgery with 4105 grafts and your procedure is just over one day, so far fewer injections of anesthetic, far less trauma to the scalp, etc. so I imagine you should have less swelling than I did. How many grafts are you getting? I started biotin a few days before the surgery, reasoning that maybe it would need a few days to start having an effect and I wanted my hair to regrow as quickly as possible after being shaved down. It was then about two weeks after surgery when I decided to add MSM, but I see no reason why you couldn't start it sooner. ASMED's instructions give no restrictions on supplements after surgery, and if I remember correctly, they also don't restrict supplements before either, but you may want to double check that.

Thanks hkuser for your reply. I edited my original post to add in two photos showing the hairline from the front. I have not yet trimmed the sides or anything. If your recovery speed is anything like mine, after three weeks the redness will still be plainly obvious, both because the scalp is still quite pink and also because the hair is still too short to cover it. Also, right now some of the transplanted hair has started falling out. That in itself doesn't worry me as I know it's normal, but it certainly isn't helping me to mask the redness. I wish I had a solution for that...

SUMMARY 4105 graft FUE performed over two days (About two weeks ago, 14th and 15th July) to restore my hairline and reinforce the mid-scalp and vertex. Dr. Erdogan strongly recommended staying on Finasteride to maintain density in the vertex, and that is my plan for the foreseeable future. Day 1: • 2000 grafts placed in hairline (density of 50 FU/cm2 over an area of 40cm2) Day 2: • 1200 grafts placed in mid-scalp (density of 24 FU/cm2 over an area of 50cm2) • 900 grafts placed in vertex (density of 18 FU/cm2 over an area of 50cm2) So you can see what my hair was like, with receding hairline and loss of density throughout: And here is a photo they took during extraction where you can see the three recipient areas marked (hairline, mid-scalp, and vertex) MY BACKGROUND I am 31 years old. Hair loss started around 20 or 21, and I started on Finasteride by 22. I have taken it consistently since then, for awhile doing 1.25mg/day. For awhile I was dissolving Proscar in alcohol to get a solution and I experimented with lower doses (as low as 0.2mg once every three days. I think that dosage was less effective for me, though I can’t say I studied it rigorously. In the weeks before my FUE I ramped back up to 1.25 mg/day, and plan to stay at this dose for at least the next 15 months as I understood this time after the FUE to be critical. After that point I might try again to lower my dose, though probably not as much as before. CHOOSING ASMED Advice on this forum was very useful; ASMED stood out for quality and price-competitiveness. I had two online consultations done: • Dr. Feriduni quoted 2500-3500 grafts for the hairline and mid-scalp • Dr. Erdogan quoted 3400-3800 grafts for the hairline and mid-scalp Both clinics have great reputations and undoubtedly do great work, at this point the price difference was too much to ignore. Making the decision even easier was that ASMED could schedule me in at a perfect date so I confirmed with ASMED. COMMUNICATION AND LOGISTICS My emails to the clinic were all handled by Sema, who would be my point of contact before, during, and after the procedure. She was by my side during the procedure to take care of any need, translate when needing to communicate with the technicians, etc. The arrival was quite easy: the ASMED driver picked me up at the airport and drove me straight to the clinic. Depending on when you arrive, you might have your consultation immediately, or maybe not until the next day. I arrived at 7pm so no consultation that day. Instead, once I was in the ASMED car the driver had me speak by phone with Sema so that she could ask me what food I wanted for dinner. As you may know, you have two options for accommodation: the clinic itself, and the nearby Radisson Hotel. I recommend the following: • For the nights before, during, and one night after the procedure I strongly recommend staying in the clinic. I did this, and was so glad. After sitting in the same position for hours, having thousands of holes poked in your scalp, what a relief it is to just go up a few floors and be able to lie on a hospital bed that you can recline perfectly. I was exhausted and wouldn’t want to imagine having to get into a car (even for just the five minute drive) and go into a hotel, call room service, etc. It is just far more comfortable and safe to be right in the clinic during those few critical days. I wish I took some photos to show you guys, but the room in the clinic looks basically like a nice business hotel room (Starwood, Hilton, etc.), but with a hospital bed instead of a hotel bed. You have breakfast and lunch downstairs, and dinner they will order whatever you want and bring it to your room. Every afternoon they bring you a nice healthy snack of things like watermelon, hazelnuts, etc. • The day after the surgery I went down from my room to the clinic for removal of the bandage on the donor area and hair-washing. I then packed up my things and they dropped me off at the Radisson, where I stayed for 3-4 nights. It was nice to be in a hotel, so I felt a little bit more in the real world. While here I basically just laid around doing post-op care (dealing with swelling, spraying ATP every hour), reading, and ordering room service. • Once my swelling was totally gone and I felt I had a bit more energy, I checked out of the Radisson and moved into an Airbnb on the European side of the city. This I did because I wanted to stick around for about 10 days before flying. While on the point of logistics, the recent terror attack and coup attempt in Turkey might give some of you second thoughts but honestly I don’t think you should worry. The clinic is on the Asian side of the city, quite far away from anything touristic or that could be considered a target. The coup attempt happened the night after my procedure was finished and I slept through everything (other than being woken up in the middle of the night by loudspeaker announcements to loyalists to take to the streets) CONSULTATION This consisted of some photos, basic medical tests, analysis of my follicles, and also blasting my face and hair with some laser that apparently helps them make calculations for the hairline. Then I met with Dr. Koray Erdogan, who was really very friendly. We discussed a few things such as: • My use of Finasteride, and he asked if I was willing to continue with it. He was quite glad to hear that I was planning to stick with it. • My vertex. From the online consultation based on the photos I sent, he thought that my loss in the vertex was miniaturization and could be controlled with Finasteride. But in person he saw that part of the loss there was actual hair loss so he asked if I might be alright going above the 3400-3800 graft quotation to do 4100 grafts, in order to transplant some there. • My expectations, and plan for future loss. In looking at my photos and asking me about family hairloss, Dr. Erdogan suggested that I might be progressing towards Norwood VI eventually. He calculated a donor capacity of 8100 grafts so we briefly discussed what a future procedure might look like. Here I wish I had pushed a bit more for calculations on surface area and follicle density, so that I could understand in a more quantified way what a second procedure in years to come might look like. PROCEDURE Here is where some people criticize ASMED as Dr. Erdogan is not personally involved in every step. As you may have read elsewhere, his role is to plan the transplant, design the hairline, and make the incisions. You may be uncomfortable that the doctor does not do the extractions or transplantation, but the clinic’s results speak for themselves. For the extraction, they used 0.7mm punches for the parietal/side and 0.9mm for the occipital/rear. I had planned to pay the EUR300 for the optional PRP treatment but they threw it in for me. After first day of procedure: After both days were finished: Donor area after both days: RECOVERY Day 1 after procedure: They gave me some Advil for pain but I took my last Advil this morning and didn’t use any after then. Swelling starts to appear by the end of the day in the forehead. Sleeping on the neck pillow sucks, especially with the donor area still raw and a bit sore. Days 2-4: swelling moves down my face, and I pass through distinct phases, looking first like some random alien in a low-budget sci-fi with a bulbous head, and then later on looking like some brute who’s had his face bashed in at the pub a few too many times. During this time I figured out the neck pillow would be more comfortable if I have it barely inflated, so that the central part where my head rests has no air in it, but there is air in the sides, so that in case my head turns sideways it gets stopped and cushioned. Days 5-8: Swelling is gone; at this time thousands of tiny scabs fall off the donor wounds. Some scabs in the recipient area start falling off. Day 5 photos: Day 9: The recipient scabs all feel loose so today while shampooing I rubbed them all off. Day 9 (before removing scabs): Day 10: Day 17: Day 21: Now in the ugly duckling phase as shedding has started but redness has yet to really fade. They told me my skin is a bit sensitive so my redness is a bit worse than would be typical. And the high density implanted into the hairline makes it worse. 4 weeks out: Really in ugly duckling phase now as most of the transplanted hairs have fallen out. Luckily the redness seems to have started to fade. I tried to manage lighting conditions in these photos but I have moved over the past week so I couldn't keep things identical. (will happen again in a few weeks as I'm just in an airbnb while I search for a permanent apartment). And now here I am popping biotin and MSM to try to get these hairs to sprout up a little more quickly (in addition to Finasteride of course). I have to admit to being a bit nervous, worrying about sunburn from 90 minutes spent outside even though I was wearing a hat, etc. I suppose the best thing to do at this stage is to try to not overthink things, and just be patient. I know this was long, but hopefully it helps some of you. I have a huge debt to this forum from the many, many detailed posts here so I’m hoping that my experience can give someone else here the confidence to go for it and do it!

Hi all, Check out this video, it gives an overview of a few promising technologies: The Leading Edge: Surprising Treatments for Thinning Hair Made Possible by Cutting-Edge Cell Technology - Science View - NHK WORLD On Demand - NHK WORLD - English The segment covers two other topics briefly, relevant to hair loss starts a bit after 3 minutes in. I'm sure many readers are already familiar with some of what they cover but hopefully this gives a good introduction to others who may not be as familiar. Check out this mouse they generated hair in!!

Thanks Transhair! Here's another photo (uploader gave issues with multiple attachments) If I discontinue finasteride after FUE, the transplanted hairs should not be impacted right? So is the reason it is suggested to stay with finasteride is that FUE does not create high enough density and your hair would end up very thin? Or, to be able to drop finasteride you would need FUE with many many grafts to create the sufficient density and that would just be absurdly expensive? Or is there a different reason? Thanks again!

Hi all, I'm new here, thank you in advance for any input! I started losing hair around the age of 20, now at 31 I am considering a FUE. I don't want to restore the youthful hairline I once had, as that won't be realistic looking. I just want to restore density in the crown and top of the head. I have been using finasteride consistently since the hairless started; ideally after the FUE I would discontinue finasteride (though I am aware that post FUE results may take 12+ months so I shouldn't rush to make any changes, and anyway people seem to recommend sticking with finasteride) I recently got a quote of 3400 grafts from one surgeon and 2500-3500 grafts from another, both are leading FUE surgeons often recommended on this forum. Maybe it's just my ignorance or denial of how much hair I have actually lost, but I was expecting fewer grafts would be needed! What do you all think? Again, I don't want to attempt to recover a youthful hairline, just consolidate what I have to have higher density in a look that will be more sustainable and reasonable as I age. Is as much as 3500 grafts really needed for this?