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Speran28

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Everything posted by Speran28

  1. Update. I just started living my life and not worrying about hair so I forgot about this thread. These are pics at the worst possible angle, but I'm very happy. Could use a tiny bit more but it's good enough and the scar is way way better (although I still want to get it filled in)
  2. I would highly recommend not going back there. We now have multiple documented cases of poor results from this clinic. Really sorry to hear you're having to deal with this.
  3. Almost back to normal. It was about 1800 grafts. I had him prioritize making the scar as small as possible over getting a ton of grafts.
  4. 4.5 month update: Hair is much better but there are still some small gaps I feel? Hopefully by 6 months it fill in more. My scar is still healing so I am still limited in how short I can cut it, but it's def. better then my first one.
  5. After getting a hair cut today and deciding to do a 2.5 month update, I was feeling pretty depressed overall about my transplant and wondering if things are on track. I saw your comment on my thread and went to look through your story.... and WOW! At 2 months, you donor area, transplant and electrolysis looked just like mine! Amazing results at 7 months and gave me a lot of hope for my own results. Time to move on with life for sure, I hope to get to that point as well, thank you for posting your results.
  6. @vinzaf19 They are simply destroyed, you can't reuse them. If he extracted them like FUE for reuse it would create an FUE scar in my frontal hairline Here is an update at 2.5 months (10 weeks). Nothing much yet as expected, slowly healing. Hoping some of the shock loss in the donor + hair from underneath the skin (double tricho closure) grows back through. As you can see it is pretty wide at this time. At least it does not hurt much and there are minimal keloids forming unlike my last transplant. I also hope that the electrolysis area continues to heal, at 2.5 months I still need to cover it. I am using a scar cream on it 3 times a day called Serica to help speed up the process.
  7. Appreciate the feedback guys! Thank you all very much. Yes, I have tried my best to stay level headed, accept what happened, and figure out a solution. There is nothing else I really could do, other then continue these post and hope others learn from this. 2 month update on Dr. Cooley transplant: Donor Area: Scar has healed a lot more, and is very flat, I have a hard time finding it now vs my old one which had keloid issues and hurt even a year after surgery. I barely feel this one. The downside is that even though I have been very careful and followed Dr. Cooley's instructions, it seems to have maybe stretched a bit? It is a double tricho closure though, so maybe in the next 2 months hairs will grow through. Transplanted area: No hair growth yet that I can find, this is to be expected at 2 months. All transplanted hairs fell out at around 3-5 week mark. I think by the 4 month there will be noticeable growth. As far as the electrolysis, you can see my head does still slightly noticeable markings, but it is healing nicely and I expect it to be completely healed by month 3. Feel free to ask questions if you have any.
  8. 2 month update: Donor Area: Scar has healed a lot more, and is very flat, I have a hard time finding it now vs my old one which had keloid issues and hurt even a year after surgery. I barely feel this one. The downside is that even though I have been very careful and followed Dr. Cooley's instructions, it seems to have maybe stretched a bit? It is a double tricho closure though, so maybe in the next 2 months hairs will grow through. Transplanted area: No hair growth yet that I can find, this is to be expected at 2 months. All transplanted hairs fell out at around 3-5 week mark. I think by the 4 month there will be noticeable growth. As far as the electrolysis, you can see my head does still slightly noticeable markings, but it is healing nicely and I expect it to be completely healed by month 3. Feel free to ask questions if you have any.
  9. Thank you UKLad, I can only hope after my last experience. Newest update at 5 weeks out from surgery. My thoughts: I had hoped the electrolysis marks would heal sooner, but Dr. Cooley says I am right on track. I had to go to a pretty formal conference this week and it was not fun trying to hide the redness under my hair. My hair is a bit thin in the front and even with combing it forward, you can see through a bit in direct sunlight. (see pictures) So, keep in mind if you get electrolysis it can take some time to heal. I am thinking it should be fully healed around the 2 month mark. I am applying something called Serica 3x a day to the area to help accelerate healing. Hair growth seems to be starting already? I see a few small stubble hairs showing up, surprised it's happening so soon. I also had a fair bit of shock loss in the rest of my hair from the prp I received, hoping that can reverse and thicken up the rest of my crown. Will update again in ~1 month as things progress. Feel free to ask me any questions
  10. It was 1750 grafts. Great to hear at PeloDinero. Don't get wrapped in by Steve like I did.
  11. Update, showing my donor scar only 1 month after surgery with Dr. Cooley vs my donor scar 8 months after my previous surgery with Dr. Mcgrath. The second picture is the 8 month from first surgery. I only had my sutures taken out 1 week ago and feel it has healed extremely well. My old scar was still very red at this time period and had hypertrophy starting to take place, this scar feels far flatter and I can feel little hair growing through slowly on account of the double tricho closure that was done. Not much to update on the front, going through ugly duckling stage and waiting for hairs to come in. The area with 200 or so grafts removed via electrolysis is still healing and a bit red. Dr. Cooley gave me a solution called "Serica" to help with healing and it has seemed to help accelerate the process, I am confident it will heal with no skin issues or deformation.
  12. Update, showing my donor scar only 1 month after surgery with Dr. Cooley vs my donor scar 8 months after my previous surgery with Dr. Mcgrath. The second picture is the 8 month from first surgery. I only had my sutures taken out 1 week ago and feel it has healed extremely well. My old scar was still very red at this time period and had hypertrophy starting to take place, this scar feels far flatter and I can feel little hair growing through slowly on account of the double tricho closure that was done.
  13. Yeah, so far none have regrown. We'll see though, Dr. Cooley said the hairs can be stubborn and may need a second pass.
  14. 2 Week Update! See pictures. A bunch of my grafts have begun to shed. I had minimal to no scabbing of any kind. I have also taken a picture of my donor to show the strip area. I still have sutures in for another 1 week or so before I will travel down to have Cooley take them out. I am amazed at how the donor area is barely even red. Amazingly this hurts less then the donor area from Mcgrath did at 3 months, and it was extremely red, as you'll see if you check my other forum on him. Very happy with the progress and highly recommend him again!
  15. Hi, I looked through your pages. Checkout my story and see what I did. I would suggest you do something similar and start consulting with your current surgeon and other to doctors recommended on here to help figure out next steps
  16. Please see my other thread here for the original story: http://www.hairrestorationnetwork.com/eve/187676-28-yr-frontal-transplant-~2100-graft-8-months.html 3 pictures are the night post-op from Dr. Cooley. The last is my picture from post-op the night of surgery with Mcgrath when I had it 1.5 years ago. I just had my transplant with Dr. Cooley to fix my previous transplant from Dr. Mcgrath who did give me a 50% refund and apologized for the procedure. I did appreciate him doing that. However, in hindsight and after this experience I could not possibly recommend the clinic. Dr. Cooley is beyond thorough and I can't thank him enough. Here's how the day went. He started by spending over 30 minutes discussing exactly what I wanted while actively encouraging me to show examples to him and explain all of my concerns We then moved into his photo area where he himself took the photos (a tech took them in my last procedure). Then he spent ~30 minutes analyzing my hair from every angle, measuring my head and hairline, and discussing what may be needed as long as I was okay with it. At the end of this, it was decided my hairline was created too low, with far too little density, along with grafts being thicker one hair grafts then he would have used. He later told me the procedure was more complex then he expected because of the high density I was looking for, the tough scar tissue, and over 200 grafts having to be removed all along my hairline with electrolysis to really clean it up and create a more appropriate hairline to match my head shape and facial structure. I can already tell! (those are the red splotches at the front). I'd prefer a higher hairline with more density any day over a lower one and thankfully he agreed. After this discussion, we moved into his surgical room, he spent a long time carefully removing the strip and old scar. He had to take extra care because there was a lot of scar tissue and he did not want to transect any follicles. He closed up the donor using a double tricho closure and also stuffed it full with Acell to further promote healing. I am to keep the suture in for 3 weeks, it was only 10 days on my last procedure. I am confident this will greatly help with keeping my scar from stretching. From there he started creating incision using different size tools based on where the hair was placed, this was an extremely methodical process with only maybe 50% being done then, while the rest were created later using the stick and place method. ~5 techs dissected hairs delicately into 4 categories. FINE single hairs, normal single hairs, doubles, and triples or higher. The fine single hairs are especially important for me because of my coarse dark hair on light skin. Then, we took a lunch break with an amazing lunch they wheeled in for me. After lunch he injected PRP all along my scalp to help with thinning areas and also promote healing where he placed the graft and in the donor area. Finally, they started with graft placement. The amazing thing to me was that Dr. Cooley was there every step of the way. I believe he actually placed the majority of the grafts himself, I mean it when I say this guy is a machine. It is absolutely amazing what he does and how well practiced the process felt from start to finish. After that, he gave me a bag of medication, topical solutions, and sprays. This also included very detailed instructions all nicely written down for every step. He went over them verbally with me as well. Truly a night and day experience. I think the post op photos here will speak for themselves. NOTE: Again, the large red splotches are from electrolysis removal of old grafts. These should fully heal in less then a week.
  17. Thank you everyone for your feedback and comments. I really do appreciate every single one! I had been way too busy with working full time and running my own company on the side to answer until now. Because...... I just had my transplant to fix this with Dr. Cooley. And, let me say that this was a night and day experience! My old transplant was from Dr. Mcgrath who did give me a 50% refund and apologize for this procedure. I did appreciate him doing that. However, in hindsight and after this experience I could not possibly recommend the clinic. Dr. Cooley is beyond thorough and I can't thank him enough. Here's how the day went. He started by spending over 30 minutes discussing exactly what I wanted while actively encouraging me to show examples to him and explain all of my concerns When then moved into his photo area where he himself took the photos (a tech took them in my last procedure). Then he spent ~30 minutes analyzing my hair from every angle, measuring my head and hairline, and discussing what may be needed as long as I was okay with it. At the end of this, it was decided my hairline was created too low, with far too little density, along with grafts being thicker one hair grafts then he would have used. He ended up removing, it seemed like around ~100 grafts all along my hairline with electrolysis to really clean it up and create a more appropriate hairline to match my head shape and facial structure. I can already tell! Then we moved into his surgical room, he spent a long time carefully removing the strict and old scar. He has to take extra care because there was a lot of scar tissue and he did not want to transect any follicles. He closed up the donor using a double tricho closure (i had a single last time) and also stuffed it full with Acell to further promote healing. I am to keep the suture in for 3 weeks, it was only 10 days on my last procedure. I am confident this will greatly help with my scar. From there he started creating incision using different size tools based on where the hair was placed, this was an extremely methodical process with only maybe 50% being done then, while the rest were created later using the stick and place method. ~5 techs dissected hairs delicately into 4 categories. FINE single hairs, normal single hairs, doubles, and triples or higher. The fine single hairs are especially important for me because of my coarse dark hair on light skin. Then, we took a lunch break, with an amazing lunch they wheeled in for me. After lunch he injected PRP all along my scalp to help with thinning areas and also promote healing where he placed the graft and in the donor area. Finally, they started with graft placed. The amazing thing to me was that Dr. Cooley was there every step of the way. I believe he actually placed the majority of the grafts himself, I mean it when I say this guy is a machine. It is absolutely amazing what he does and how well practiced the process felt from start to finish. After that, he gave me a bag of medication, topical solutions, and sprays. This also included very detailed instructions all nicely written down for every step. He went over them verbally with me as well. Truly a night and day experience. I think the post op photos here will speak for themselves in comparison to my post op photos from my past surgery of which you can find at the beginning of this post. NOTE: Again, the large red splotches are from electrolysis removal of old grafts. These should fully heal in less then a week.
  18. Updated pictures at 15.5 months out that I have sent to the doctor for refund last Friday. Still waiting to hear back. They did call me last week offering the free transplant again. No mention was made about the refund. I am not sure why they keep wanting to redo the transplant. Perhaps it is less costly? Regardless I am not going back and am just happy they're at least willing to do 50%. I did sign a bunch of forms that likely said we are not entitled to refund you and anything can happen etc. Regarding why this happened, he said it could be a number of reasons and he honestly does not know why. He stated he follows the same procedure and uses same techs everytime. They do have good reviews on Yelp and Google so not sure what happened here. I am currently consulting with a few top surgeons to see about fixing this in May sometime. I admit it's incredibly frustrating and I still wish I could go back and simply shave my head, so word to the wise here. I will be starting a new post after my new transplant for people to follow. To be completely candid, I am thankful this is fixable and I have the monetary means to do so, but I admit the recovery from an FUT procedure isn't fun and am not looking forward to doing it again. This will be my last one to fix the scar and then if I ever need more I will do FUE.
  19. Agreed Hassler and really appreciate the comments. I think this could be a long drawn out issue and frankly isn't worth my time to get back $3500 or so. It's not the end of the world financially for me, it was more so the annoying waste of time. I would have liked to have had my hair fixed by now, not be looking at another transplant. The main issues are that I was nudged into FUT by this clinic (you want a lot of hair and this is the only way to get it was the explanation), along with the poor growth I received and frustrating scar I now have. I'm going to take my 50% refund, which I still am unsure if I will get (he was really pushing for a second surgery and did not seem happy about my refund request). Then I am going to go to Cooley or Shapiro and hope it can all be fixed. To be perfectly honest, this experience has been so horrible that I wish I'd shaved my head many times and almost feel silly for going this route. I do hope it works out okay. Another question, has anyone tried Cooley's help hair shakes? Am confused why he somewhat pushes them as I do not see much documentation stating they work. Further, does anyone use oral minoxidil? Cooley prescribed this to me (I get sides from fin and take a very low does), but am concerned about impacts on the heart. I have naturally low blood pressure and am not really comfortable lowering it even further with medication.
  20. Hi everyone, Appreciate the feedback and comments. Honestly I am not sure of the best way to ask for a full refund? I have no idea if blackmailing by saying I'll post your name everywhere if you don't give me a full refund is the best idea to go about doing this. At this time I'm researching other surgeons to fix the scar and the transplant area. Any recommendations on doctors? Right now I'm leaning toward Cooley or Shapiro (likely Cooley though because of prp specialization)
  21. Yes sorry about the pictures. I tried to get much better quality with all future ones. Here are pictures at 11 months. I'm at 1 year now and had my follow up call the other day. The doctor stated he is not happy with my result himself and wants to fix it free of charge. He stated he is not sure what happened here and why my growth is so poor, but that he wants to fix it and he rarely ever sees this. I declined to have a second procedure and instead asked for a refund to help pay for a procedure with another doctor to fix this. He said he wants to wait 4-6 more months to see if I get late growth, but if by then there hasn't been much improvement. He will give me a 50% refund.
  22. I want to wait till my full 12 month result before sharing the clinic. They have been very kind and say this is a rare case for them, but I don't know. I've spoken to 3 other patients that are also dissatisfied. Not to the same degree I am, but for sure not super happy about their result. Will post new pictures next month. The original doctor just stated I'm likely a late grower and to be patient.... They said if I'm not happy they will give me more hair free of charge
  23. Thank you very much for the feedback everyone. It is invaluable. I am dedicated to keeping this updated and showing my progress See attached for what my hair looks like at 10 months. I have setup a consult with Dr. Jerry Cooley to see if they can help me fix this frustrating situation I have found myself in.
  24. Yes, not a problem. Are you able to PM me? I can't seem to PM for some odd reason.
  25. Hi, I can't seem to pm you for some odd reason. Can you please pm the 3 surgeons your recommend? Thank you!
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