anotherhairlosssufferer

Dermatologist or the primary doctor

> From hospital to hotel can I wear a hat or anything? BIG NO!! > How soon can I wear a large hat if I have to go out? I was told day 14 is when the grafts have pretty much healed and became a part of the scalp so there's no risk of them sliding out.

I don't think honestly that you should consider a surgery yet. Whenever you transplant grafts you risk shock loss and killing the healthy grafts. Plus it's barely visible that you're thinning, I would even say you're not thinning. However, definitely reach out to a few surgeons and ask them.

Interesting! What doctor did you get a prescription from and where are you buying it? Also, aren't you a little afraid of the side effects given that you had some from finasteride?

Awesome result Melvin! One question: in the video you say that you're considering 1000 grafts from the donor area for the additional surgery. Why not use beard instead or at least in addition, given that you have a nice beard and have used it already? Were you not happy with the beard grafts outcome?

Man that looks awesome, super happy for you!

Absolutely insane!!

Awesome to be able to follow someone who went back to Dr. Konior for more density. I *might* do that at some point but not rushing!

Haha thanks! I am happy too which is the most important thing! You guys have reasonable points though - I don't think this is a poster worthy example but it's also not a failure by any stretch of imagination so I am not going to try to defend anything. It's too easy to compare to other great examples like @aaron1234 and @1978matt. There's a lot of parameters at play here: number of grafts, hair thickness, the size of the transplanted area, hair styling, medications, yield, hair color vs skin color etc. It would be good to know where I stand to manage future expectations - for example if Dr. expected thicker hairline but the yield is low then it's an issue for sure. Or if my hair is naturally thin and I need more grafts than average because of that - although I thought my hair was thick-ish but who knows!

I got some PMs asking me for an update: I don't think there's major improvements since my last update. Donor: Front, under the sunlight: Here are two pics from this weekend but they might not tell you much - in lots of them I look like I'm not balding at all but it's easy for me to get the lightning and angles that are not appealing. Overall as I said before I am very happy with the results! I will be honest though - I am worried about the future loss in non-transplanted areas and the capacity of my donor, but seeing how I can use my beard as a donor it makes me a little more content.

So glad you finally posted this, I was about to send you a PM :) I'll read through all the pages as I assume you covered this, but it's interesting that many things were different than I expected: (1) they were able to extract more grafts from the scalp than I (and probably you) expected, (2) they used fewer beard grafts and (3) they used more grafts in the non-crown area - I thought it would be a lot more in the crown area and fewer elsewhere. Overall, I am glad that the number of grafts was extremely good and it was a pleasant experience. And I am eager to see the end result!

Impressive!

Ok well that strip scar is obvious there, no doubt he did an FUT, I always wondered. Also his hair is too thick all over, there's virtually no hair loss 20 years later which means that he HAS to be on some meds. But even so, that FUT is superbly well done!

That was an awesome repair procedure, I am super happy for you!

Wow that looks magnificent! Are you on Fin too?

Ok so below are some pics from the past couple months. I honestly didn't notice any improvements after month 7 (it's 9.5 now) but I also wasn't crazy about taking pictures regularly in the same conditions. As I noted above some days my hair (i.e. the hairline) looks better than others which makes it even harder to track the progress. So to me it's all the same hair, it just depends on the lighting and in some cases the hair is a little longer. I don't usually have my hair a little longer and pulled back like in the two pics below but honestly that seem to be a good idea to increase the appearance of density. This one below is from a little further away where you don't look at the hairline directly. This one is straight out of a shower with the direct light source THE BAD LIGHTNING As I said some lights are bad, and the picture below is I believe as bad as it gets, it's the only picture that I have (and I took a lot) where you can see my scalp. It also sucks as it's from a museum and I wanted to have that moment saved and posted online but the museum creators decided to use some really nasty lightning. THE DONOR Another bad part. I don't like the donor and I think it didn't recover, I still have two patchy areas on one side. It's not really that obvious and I observed other people and my pictures from before and the hair is never perfectly distributed in the donor area when cut at 0.5/1/1.5. My guy does 0.5 (or 1) on the sides/back and honestly it looks better at 0.5 compared to 1.5 since I guess there is some miniaturization in those two patchy areas that becomes more obvious when the hair grows out a little. Since Konior did a great job there's no scars so I can cut the hair short but let's see how it goes with the recovery down the line. I am not worried right now, but if I want to do more operations later (and I'll probably want to given that I am not on Fin) it might become an issue. Overall I am happy with the results and if it gets better I am not going to complain but if it doesn't I am not going to complain either. Hope this was a useful update!

Great progress dude!

I'll post an update soon, I need to select and crop the pictures and tell the actual story of how I feel and what I see. It's annoying going through other posts where people just disappear and don't post updates but I understand now since first you forget about the hair problem and second it takes time and effort to make an update, especially if you're not updating every few weeks. Long story short I am happy with the result and it looks natural. It's not ultra dense and under certain lights you can see the scalp and also somehow the appearance of density depends on the day (weird I know), but overall Dr. K did an amazing job. I even had a couple people in the past few months tell me how lucky I am that I am not losing hair lol

Fantastic result!

This is the 5 month and 1 week update. Some major things: 1. I had a lot of shock loss all over, both the donor and the transplanted area. My donor looked *really* bad and I was honestly afraid to show it all here which is why I am so late with the updates. The donor has recovered to a degree but not all the way. I will post the pics of the donor later, it's really annoying to make the pics and then crop to remove the face etc. 2. I had two haircuts so far with the old hair dresser and he uses #1 on the sides and he didn't mention anything looking off, and it doesn't look off also except that it might be a little thinner on the sides than before but that's hard to confirm. 3. Having the hairline that frames your face and seeing that in the mirror is a great feeling and should be talked about more. Yes it could be denser which you can see when you come close but from 5+ feet away, which is usually what you see in the mirror, it looks good and really makes me happy with the decision. 4. The progression was and is still weird. I never noticed the new hair - I thought it was the old hair as there was really not a lot of it and was thin but eventually it I guess grew thicker. So I guess lots of shock loss if those hairs were all new? Also, still no new, additional hairs on the horizon. Overall I am happy so far but would like more density and I am not sure if that's coming or not. The pics: Front - looks good from about 5+ feet away, to the point that it looks like a full head of hair. When you get closer you can see the lack of density. Top - the area behind the hairline is lacking in density compared to the hairline and it's very obvious here. This doesn't look any better than before the procedure honestly, and might be even worse. I assume it's the shock loss and the majority of hair there is the transplanted hair but who can tell. It's weird how when the hairline is there to frame your face you don't think about what's happening behind it so you don't worry about it as much. Sides look reasonable I guess: Let me know what you think!

To not show my face

I will make an update soon, took some pics but have to edit them!

Looks awesome!

Looking good!

That donor looks flawless, awesome!