Gatsby

Personally I would let it go to plan for the next 12 months and then make a decision on how you feel about your results. Also you raised a very good point in your thread in that you were told that you would require 'x' amount of grafts and upon arrival after flying you were then told that you only had 2,200 grafts available. How do people feel about this? I don;t mean to hijack your thread but there is an ethical issue here in that what does one do as a patient? Cancel because the required number of grafts are not available to achieve the goals of both doctor and patient? Personally If I were to arrive at my chosen destination and after consulting via email, phone, skype, videos, etc I think I would cancel as the whole equation of results and expectations are now subject to a different agreement and a potentially different result.

Hey Micky597 thanks for posting and sharing your journey. You're out of the immediate danger zone now and I look forward to following your updates. All the best!

Namsak I'm enjoying following your thread. Your donor looks excellent and at 7 months the results are excellent. Hard to imagine when looking back at your pre op pics. Thanks for sharing!

You chose a great surgeon and that's an excellent write up to follow. I look forward to seeing your journey unfold. All the best!

The problem I'm facing here in Australia is getting out of the country not to mention being able to get back in! 😬 Patience little grasshopper!

Hair_Hunter I no you don't want to hear this but you have all the ingredients for the perfect storm for a hair transplant that you will very soon regret. Your young age, going to Turkey, hair loss pattern, your expectations, etc are just some of the reasons why . You need to do a lot of research and ask a lot of questions (this forum is the best place for that) before even thinking of pulling the trigger. There are drugs that are available now and in the very near future that could do far more to help you. All the best.

Zoomster I have nothing but sheer happiness for you my friend. When I look back to your pre op post you look a good ten plus years younger and you have become a serious threat to my gender preference status! 🤣👍 Seriously, you have one of the most natural and full results that I have seen. The pigment in your hair has returned and everything has blended in beautifully. I hope to be able to share a similar post from Eugenix in the future. Take care!

If you're not happy with the result I would think twice about going back to the same clinic that makes you feel this way to begin with. I think your results look very natural. If you do feel that you want to improve on this I would look for a surgeon that you have more confidence in. You only get one chance at this remember. All the best.

I'm no expert however my worry would be how many of those chest hairs transplanted would grow? Body hair has historically been explored and found to have a lower success rate. My humble opinion would be to stick with what you have if you can live with it (and it looks VERY good and natural). Or consider a lower yield of combined beard and scalp donor hair. When you look at Eugenix, mixing beard hair with scalp hair is an art. Keep researching and I wish you all the best.

In answer to the question a definite no from me. I had a hair transplant at 18! I don't know of anyone who has had one that young. There is no way you can determine who is an ideal candidate for a hair transplant before the age of 25. By around 25 your hair loss pattern can be observed and identified to a large degree so you can plan what direction you need to take. I blame myself for what happened to me but if I was a hair transplant surgeon and an 18 year old with a curly head of hair came to see me I certainly wouldn't start sharpening the knife and getting out the receipt book!

It's definitely possible. But personally I would like to wait and give the whole thing 12-18 months to not only settle, but also to give everything the benefit of the doubt. Over the lifespan, waiting one year from being only nine months out from a hair transplant is really nothing. In fact it will put you in a better position to make a more objective decision on which way to go. All the best.

In my humble opinion you need to look further afield from the UK and do some more research. Some people who have been knocked back as a hair transplant candidate have had excellent results when their expectations are realistic. Look at Eugenix and Hasson and Wong for starters. Wishing you all the best.

Looking for HT I deem your hair transplant both a success and an incredible change to your before situation. I say this because you cannot tell that you have a had a hair transplant (it looks so natural) and your hair has changed your appearance completely. I would still hold out for the twelve month mark. You have definitely been the tortoise in this race but it is now paying off huge dividends. Your hair quality is thick and your donor area in general looks fantastic. Thanks for sharing!

Very natural result!

No problem. I would definitely look at contacting Eugenix with your hair loss situation. They have a solid history of turning out consistently great work (especially in the high Norwood 6/7 range). They will tell you to start with Finasteride but will give you the best advice. I personally wouldn't consider anyone else in India. All the best and let us know how you go.

Hey mate. I live in Australia also (Melbourne). I totally hear you on saying you want a hair transplant ASAP. However at 23 have you tried any meds like Finasteride or Minoxidil to stabilize your hair loss? I know you don't want to hear this but I would wait until you are 25 before making a decision based your hair loss. You need to look at having a hair transplant/s at addressing your loss over the lifespan. If you can stabilize your hair loss now you will know where to go to from here. I strongly recommend that you avoid going to Turkey (or anyone here in Australia) for surgery. I realize that this sounds like a daunting reply but you only get one chance to get this right. All the best!

Azza I looked at a lot of Dr U's work on patients who had horrific results with scars all over their scalps and with little to zero growth. It was an option in my eyes and gave me the confidence to remain patient and keep on looking for options. At the time, in all honesty, the thought of shaving my head was something that I would never do. I was knocked back as a patient here in Melbourne by Dr Bhatti as a repair case. He offered to create a hairline so that it would make wearing a hair piece look more natural. However one of my goals apart from hiding my scars and wanting 'hair' again was to get rid of wearing hair pieces.

Melvin is absolutely on the money. Even if you are able to access up to 13,500 grafts, how will the donor region look? What caliber is the hair? The best hair transplant results are the ones that appear unremarkable. By that they look so natural that it appears that nothing was done in the first place. Covering an entire scalp (if possible) does not guarantee in qualifying for an unremarkable result. All the best.

Hi azza786. I've gone through your thread and some of your earlier posts from the start of your journey. If it's any consolation, at the age of '18' I had not one, but two punch graft surgeries. It was the worst decision I've made in my entire life and I'm 53. I had both surgeries relatively close together, thinking the second procedure would hide the 'doll's hair look.' Before the first surgery I actually had no real idea of what a punch graft hair transplant would look like? I was lucky (or unlucky) in that I had long curly hair and so it would hide the plugs but the wind was always my enemy and I was paranoid that someone would touch my fringe and reveal the plugs. Then after one year I decided to have the plugs removed as they looked so 'mechanical.' I went to a plastic surgeon and over the next three years I had about 4 or 5 small strip procedures along the hair line to remove the plugs. Each strip removal was done in the attempt to let it heal and see how bad the scarring would be. Eventually I was left with a long wide scar across my forehead which I have until this day. As well I have scars in the back donor region as well. At age 25 I wanted another hair transplant as my hair was receding back even further revealing the scar running along the top of my hair line. Thank God I was rejected by a Dr Richard Shiell who performed the first hair transplant in Australia in 1967. He told me that I was never a candidate for a hair transplant in the first place and that even if I was to 'hand him a million dollars' he still wouldn't touch me (I remember those words so vividly even to this day). He suggested that I look at getting a hair system which I rejected straight away. However I did agree to come back in a week to meet a patient who was now wearing a hair system. Long story short - I ended up wearing a wig for 25 years. To be honest I actually liked the look of the hair piece for quite a while and I 'owned' it and I told all of my friends, old and new. However as you have stated it became a real drag and by the age of around 40 I just wished I could get rid of it and be free of it. About four years ago I started to do my research into SMP (as well as hair transplants) and after a year of researching I went with SMP and I never looked back. I took a holiday to Thailand straight after and it was the first time in 25 years that I went to the beach without wearing a hair system. It was like being born again. Now that was me and my psychology in relation to my hair loss battle/s since I was 18. I honestly believe that you can get out of this and move forward with your life. One of the things I did do at around the age of 19/20 was to see a therapist. The depression, social isolation, anxiety etc as you know is relentless. Therapy really helped me to put things in perspective as well as being cathartic. There were no hair loss forums back then for advice or just to unload your worries onto. The first thing If you haven't taken part in this option is to really consider it if that's something that you are open to doing. The second thing I would do is to shave all the area of your scalp that is covered by the hair piece and just see how it looks. Are there any scars there and how do they look? Take some pics of them if you can. Before I became a full Norwood 6/7 I used to shave my scalp down when I wore a hair piece in the early days. You have a very youthful face Azza. I personally believe that with an excellent artist that SMP would not only free you from wearing a hair piece and hide your scars, but it would also take advantage of your looks and highlight things like your eyes. People focus so much more on your eyes when you have shaved your head/had SMP which is counter intuitive to what we worry that they will be looking at. I realize that this maybe something you really don't want to hear or may be a o path that you do not want to go down. The day I finished my last SMP session I put my face up on my Facebook profile and I had nearly a hundred comments from people saying not only how much 'better I looked' but also how much 'younger' I looked. The other option would be to look at going to someone like Dr Umar and other hair transplant surgeons that have a strong body of work in repairing donor areas and hair transplant repairs in general. But personally I am with the consensus of others who have chimed in on your thread that SMP, when performed correctly with the right artist, can transform your situation. Please feel free to PM me if you would like to discuss anything and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter. Onwards and upwards!

Azza my apologies for not jumping on this thread earlier. I am currently at work and I won’t finish until tomorrow morning at 9.30am (it’s currently 10.30pm the night before). However I will give you advice and options from my experience from being butchered from the age of 18 (with two unnecessary ‘punch graft’ surgeries and six further operations). You will be able to move forward and out of your current situation. Take care man and I am thinking of you and I will post when I get home from work. kind regards, Gatsby.

The transplanted hair can fall out if it was taken from outside of what's called the permanent zone on the donor area. If hair has been taken from a DHT sensitive area then it can miniaturize/shed.

At 6 weeks are you sure that the changes and the shedding are not just part of the hair transplant post op? Have you contacted your hair transplant surgeon and raised this issue with him? All the best!

SMP looks great at about the one - two week mark after the final session and remains that way for sometime. If you keep your scalp shaved every second day then you reduce the contrast between the ink and the shaved native growing hair. Also to slow the speed of fading always wear a cap in Summer to prevent the sun from bleaching the ink. Ultimately the liver continues to try and break the ink down as it is a foreign body in your dermis. As SMP is 2D it is never fool proof and undetectable (especially over time). The success in SMP however is in how good the artist is who performs it in mimicking shaved hair folicles and the fact that people are not looking for SMP when they see you. In fact most people are confused just by the look of your head shaved. All of my friends love it and have said I look ten years younger. I've had people who had no idea I've had SMP until I told them, to a girl in a bar standing next to me under bright lights telling me that I've had a head tattoo. Finally, the ultimate disguise is in your attitude. If you like the look then who gives a f@$k. All the best!

All the best MNIK. Looking forward to your progress!

In my opinion you could have beard hair transplanted into the scar. If you are not happy with that then you could later have SMP as well. In fact the combination of the two may be the best option if you choose to shave your head. The other option is to let your hair grow out and leave it and/or have more hair transplanted on top (if that's your choice). SMP alone is great. Over time though it will fade. The scar will never appear as bad as it was but over time it will require another session in say 3-5 years (depending on how your liver breaks it down, how much exposure your scalp has had to the sun, etc). All the best.