Tomislav

Month 8 update is coming soon. Stay tuned!

Hey, there is definite thickening up of the hairs from month 5.5 to 6.5 you can see that a lot more hairs are filling in the spots that had wider gaps in the previous month... [...] I look forward to see what happens over the next month and a half, I think we'll continue to see some big changes.

Hey Mikey thank you as always for the kind words. Now I have learned to recognise new hairs from the transplant. They are not a stubble like the one you get after shaving your beard (that's what I was looking for at month 3-4...), but very thin blond hairs.

The only way to see them is to comb your hair very slowly backwards with a dark comb. The short hairs are the first to come up on the front of the comb. At the moment I have still quite a few that are about 1 cm long, so it seems that I still have had new growth until about month ago. Unless these are my old miniaturised hairs... hard to say.

Anyway, I will post my next update at month 8.

Thank you. By the way, for those interested, here is a link about the risks of topical corticosteroid withdrawal: https://www.dermnetnz.org/topics/topical-corticosteroid-withdrawal/

And for those interested in Nizoral, I found the posts he was talking about:

http://www.hairrestorationnetwork.com/eve/135193-nizoral-shedding.html

http://www.hairrestorationnetwork.com/eve/173206-dont-overuse-nizoral-after-hair-transplant.html

I might still have a go at Nizoral after I stop Clobex (soon!), but I'll keep an eye on my skin's reaction to it.

The plan was to use Clobex for a short period of time, just the time for the redness to subside... After that I was planning to use Nizoral.

I am aware of the risks associated with strong corticosteroids, but is Nizoral really dangerous months after a transplant? Do you have any link you can post about this? I have searched a bit online, but found nothing, for now.

Hi Mickhah,

I'm afraid I cannot be of too much help, as I don't know much about surgeons in Turkey. Even though my hairloss is very different from yours (it only picked up later in my life), I really feel for your situation...

Since money does seem to be an issue for you, and since you say that the shaven look does not suit you, my impression is that you should consider doctors that also perform FUT. At consultation (especially if in person) they may be able to advice you. In Belgium there are a few of them (Feriduni, Bisanga...) well known for being very ethical.

Another important observation: if your pattern of hairloss is so special, it may be that this is not androgenetic alopecia. Have you asked a dermatologist to have a proper look at your hair? There may be other reasons for hairloss, which can sometimes be detected with blood tests (e.g. thyroid malfunction).

Last question: I really like Erdogan's work (should I need another operation, he'd be first on my list), but I'm also concerned about his donor management, and surprised about what you told about his old technicians founding a new center. Where have you seen this? I'd be interested in reading about it...

Anyway, I wish you the best of luck. Do not take rushed decisions, and I'm sure that in a few years you will be able to look at this time with a smile.

This is extremely interesting and promising. I am surprised nobody has answered this post.

It is now 4 years since this post. Is Dr Mousseigne still applying this technique?

Here are some more pictures...

Hi everyone, here are some pictures I took in the last couple of days. It is now about 6 months and a half since I underwent the transplant. As you can see the angle, light and way of combing my hair can change a lot the appearance, but I must say that over the last month there has been a definite improvement.

The dandruff-with-hairs-attached thing is now happening at a much lower rate than before. Maybe this is thanks to the Clobex shampoo. But I am a bit less worried about it: even if these were indeed dead follicles being expelled by my body, and even if I did not notice all of them, I think we are talking about at most a few dozen follicles, which is a small proportion of the 3000 I was implanted with.

Please do comment, and feel free to express your sincere opinion.

Cheers!

I used to see similar hairs like that....before I got an HT. I think maybe it's dandruff buildup with a hair stuck in it. This is just a guess though. One shampoo that really helped with that was MG217 Psoriasis shampoo. I've used it once or twice since my HT with no ill effects.

Hi there... I keep thinking they are rejected grafts. This morning I woke up with another one sitting on my head. This one was pretty big, see the picture below. If they were dandruff with hair stuck in it, I would not observe multiple hairs attached to it. Plus, every single time I saw one of these lumps, there was at least one hair in it...

Don't know what causes this. Perhaps they were implanted too shallow. Perhaps my body doesn't "like" them...

Anyway. Dr Bisanga was kind enough to see me earlier on this week. He noticed my scalp still looked a bit too red... He prescribed to me Clobetasol shampoo to apply twice a week. Let's hope this helps regrowth...

Hi guys, could this below be a dead follicle? Is this normal to happen at 5 months post-op? Has anyone experienced this so late in the process?

This is the fourth or fifth time that I find something like this sitting on my scalp in the past couple of months. Once it contained a 2-hair follicular unit :mad: I did not worry too much the other times, but if this keeps happening, this is certainly a cause for concern.

I am going to visit Dr B at some point this summer, he'll probably be able to tell me...

Impossible to say anything without the photos!

As you can see the shock loss is now virtually back to normal.

As for the recipient zone, progress is slow...

wow great transformation for sure...the new hairline make you look 10yrs younger..

Absolutely. Mikey on your profile it says you are 41. But you look 25 !!!

:eek:

:eek:

Thank you Mikey!

Those are great results, and even at month 3.5 you can see a very definite improvement. If I could have your results in double the time I would consider myself very satisfied. But you did start from a better position than mine, so it is hard to make the comparison.

A second procedure at 11 months?! Why? I've always read that one should wait for the final outcome of the 1st procedure to be complete.

Yes Mikey it would be really nice for "worried slow-growers" like me if you could post some pre-op, intermediate and current pictures, if you're satisfied with your current result

I've asked BHR Brussels to send me the pictures they took on the day of my surgery. Here they are. In a few days I will be posting my 5-month update, so it will be useful to make the comparison.

Bear in mind that I had shaven my hair about a month before the operation, so my hair in these pics is much shorter than what I intend to wear in the future. I feel that these pics are a very harsh representation of how I was before.

unless something has changed in the 10 months since my procedure this isn't true. Dr B doesn't do all the extracting, he punches all the grafts and he starts extracting a few but then a tech takes over the rest of the extraction process.

I had my surgery with Dr Bisanga 5 months ago, and I can confirm this is exactly what I experienced.

I wouldn't stress it yet, at 4 months my hair looked like a whole lot of nothing. I was well behind where i started off. Looked awful, my native hair was long the new hairs were in all stages of growth, some came out early, some just started to come out and some hadn't come out at all so I was so uneven and wondering what the hell would come from it. Now at almost month 10 my hairline is thick and getting better as the quality of hair gets better. You're making progress, just get used to these emotional peaks and valleys, you're going to have periods where you feel great and then you'll crash again lol... right now it doesn't feel like all the hairs are growing then you'll see a bunch and feel happy...then you're going to start freakin out again because while the hairs show up you still see peak thru and start wondering if it'll be dense enough then it'll slowly start to get denser so you said it, you just have to be patient.

What an emotional roller coaster... Thank you mikey!

I think you're looking good on top. I've seen posts where the transplanted hair really didn't begin making a cosmetic impact until around month 6-8. So I think you just have to hold tight and a positive result is on its way.

Thank you for the encouraging words! I must say I have been looking for cases like this here on the forum, but haven't managed to find much. Do you have names of "late blooming" forum members so that I can look at their pictures?

Looking back at your original pictures, your hair was thinning in an interesting progression. You did have that quasi-hairline prior to your HT and the thinning was in sort of a circle behind it. Without as much loss on the crown either which is a really nice spot to be in, in my opinion. So those hairs on your hairline I think are native ones growing back and the transplanted ones are just going to take some months to catch up.

That's very possible. Or they are transplanted ones whose follicle has some trouble producing the new hair...

As for the shock loss, that's a bummer that that happened. Trust me when I say that no normal person looking at you will care about that in the slightest. People might notice it but maybe they'll think there's a cool scar from a fight you got into under there. I don't think you have to worry about that cosmetically. And like you said, it seems to be growing in so that's good.

Yeah I really think it is going to get back to almost normal. The cosmetic difference with a couple of months ago, when it was a 100% bald patch, is already huge. And I don't feel self-conscious about it anymore

Some news at the 4 months post-op mark. Compared to a month ago I am a bit less optimistic. But let's first start with the good news:

The shock loss behind my right ear is becoming less and less apparent. The thin and wispy hair I first noticed a month ago are increasing in numbers and thickness. A month from now the shock loss will hopefully be no more visible.

Then the not-so-good news: it seems that the short hair I had observed in the hairline have stalled at about 1 or 2 mm. I now interpret the fact that they are short and thick as a bad sign: it may be that these hairs were there all along since my operation, and that I did not notice them simply because I was not looking for them, or because they were surrounded by hairs of similar length. Now that the surrounding hair have grown, they have become noticeable.

I was able to take a zoomed picture (see below, and notice the short hairs above the red dot on my skin). Could it be that their blunt end is the result of the shave I had 3 months ago?! Of course if someone with magnifying glasses could look into this, the answer would be immediately evident I believe... In the same picture notice that there are a few other hairs whose end is progressively thin. I think these are hairs growing healthily. I hope to be able to take a new zoomed picture of the same area in about ten days and compare it to this one. That may allow me to answer a lot of the questions above.

On top of this, I see no signs of thickening in the recipient zone. This is ultimately what worries me most. I know I know... I have to be patient

Hello everyone, sorry for the long silence, but not much happened in the last couple of months. I am now at exactly 3 months post-op and I'm happy to report that I can see many new hairs sprouting along the hairline. I can also see some new hairs behind the hairline, but the density seems to be much lower... Obviously, the new hairs are very very short (1mm at most) so I'm afraid none of this will be visible in the pictures below.

Not sure how to interpret the difference between the hairline and behind it. It may be that the hairs I'm seeing are mostly the ones I lost because of shock loss, so the difference may be due to the fact that pre-op I already had many more along the hairline than behind it. Or it may simply be a false impression, as it is harder to spot a 1mm hair behind other hairs. Anyway, time will tell. I'm staying optimistic.

As for the donor shock loss on my right side, as you can see, it is still very evident. Longer hair actually makes it more visible. Here as well I can observe a few small hairs sprouting. In addition to being very short, they also appear to be very thin — much thinner than those I see in my recipient zone — so I reckon it's impossible to see them in the pics. I hope that in a month or so they will be providing some coverage over there!

Quick update at the end of week 5. In the past few weeks, the recipient area has thinned progressively, a consequence I guess of the normal post-op shedding. The frontal area is more or less as dense as it was before the operation. Should the shedding be over at this point, I would consider myself very lucky, as I was expecting a much worse "ugly duckling" look by this time. Fingers crossed!

As for the donor shock loss, nothing new on that front. I am slowly getting used to it, which certainly makes life easier...

Here are two pictures at day 24. Shedding has started in the recipient area (as normal), and the shock loss on my right side has progressed

At the moment it is the shock loss that worries me the most. I know the lost hairs should come back, but at the moment it's not easy to conceal and it is holding me back from social life. This is a relatively small price to pay, should the end result be a good one (thank you KO for your optimistic comment!!!)

By the way, I would be very happy to get any suggestion on how to style my hair to conceal this... I have thought about shaving my hair on the sides, but I'm worried that the small scars from FUE would be visible. At the moment, my plan is to grow the surrounding hair so as to cover it... but it may take about 1 or 2 months...

Thanks Mikey, that's very helpful and makes me a little less stressed about it, although I am really worried about the shock loss spreading more (right temple looks already weaker today).

Looking forward to hearing about your results in a few months!

Hi Mikey, when did you have your surgery? When did your shock loss appear and when did it go away? Did you post any pictures anywhere?

I was thinking of applying hydrocortisone cream for one more week around the area of shock loss to prevent it from spreading, as I read that it's used to treat alopecia areata sometimes... did you do anything special yourself?