ciaus

Hey Sean, and then the Gillenator came along with a worse case anecdote and all is darkness again. So reading his reply it certainly seems to be a possibility -though I'm not sure how much of a learning curve and difficulty he had effectively applying the foam when he first switched, which may have lead to or at least contributed to his shedding. Maybe he'll come back and comment on that. Personally, I jumped on fin and minox as soon as I started to notice the first hints of loss so that may be why I never had any dramatic sheds, and I had to stop the topical minox about a year in due to skin conditions and irritation. Something else you can do, if you don't already, is to apply the foam when your scalp is dry but your hair is still a little damp (not dripping wet) so that it has less absorbing capacity. And when its already a little damp the hairs naturally clump together exposing more of your scalp area making it easier for the foam to make that direct skin contact. Hopefully you are in a work from home scenario during the lockdown, or you can conceal your head with a hat or something just in case while you do the switch.

I didn't do it back during my procedures, but I've read on here about guys tying their hands down to their sides so they can't reach up to their head and touch/scratch unknowingly while they sleep. Depending on how much you move or roll around while you sleep you may want to look into positioning pillows etc around your body so you stay on your back while you sleep too.

If you are using any exotic or harsh styling products or shampoos I would cut those out if you haven't already, and schedule an appt with a dermatologist. You could have something more serious (but not life threatening), like a scarring alopecia - diseases where your hair follicles are attacked by your immune system that could lead to the follicles being destroyed.

yea, alot of us have to settle for Burger King crowns...until you sit down or stand next to someone taller than you and they look down. Then what good is it to be the king??! Count your blessings and good day to you MrPeacock.

I don't want to make applying the foam sound harder than it is or impossible. Finasteride and minox are like brakes in the hairloss process, more or less slowing it down depending on your genetics. Finasteride is the far more important of the two, since its doing the heavy lifting of protecting the hairs from DHT, so that the minoxidil has something to even work with. But since Finasteride doesn't block all DHT, over time you'll likely continue to lose some as your body chemistry changes from aging and the continuing assault of the remaining DHT that does still circulate. The younger you are, the more important the brake system is, and since hairloss is a lifelong process I would argue brakes will always be a valuable and welcome thing to have where possible. In your case, since you are already willing to apply the minoxidil daily (alot of guys are just too lazy), you should give the foam a try using one hand to part/spread/lift the hair while rubbing the foam into your scalp with the other hand for a few months. Even if some of your hairs are still in the way, they are not going to absorb all that minoxidil. The alternative is cutting into your head and moving hairs around to give you the fuller appearance that the minoxidil is still able to currently do -and that's never a guarantee, there's always a yield risk inherent in any procedure where something(s) can go wrong and a substantial number of grafts fail to take root. And then there are the things that are guaranteed -having less donor hair which leaves less for reacting/planning/procedures down the road, and of course the financial cost.

You should try the foam minoxidil if you haven't, though the more hair you have the more careful you have to be when applying it, parting and moving your hair to expose as much scalp as possible in each spot, because it does absorb and dry real quick, potentially even into your hairs before it reaches your scalp.

While minoxidil does make your hair thicker and have longer growth cycles, it doesn't block DHT, which is what causes most of the hair loss for most guys. If you are already taking a DHT blocker like finasteride, that's the one you should worry about quitting. Once a hair follicle has been completely ravaged by DHT all the minoxidil in the world won't be able to save it. Some guys do try the hair transplant journey without any meds, and its definitely more risky in terms of your long term results. You have to weigh factors like how old you are, how aggressive your loss has been, family history, how dense your donor area is.

Looks fine, wouldn't expect much of a change in a month but go ahead with a pic like Shifty says. From there maybe a pic every year and keep them in an archive to have an objective record (same lighting/camera angle) for you and your doctor should things ever progress down the road. But you have a great head of hair now. I'd be more worried about one of the guys here seeing this pic and showing up at your door to try a frankensteiny cross-transplant from your head to theirs

As long as your doc and his assistants weren't bathing your grafts in chemicals before they put them under your skin your fine. But even at 2 months ...smells can still hurt your chance with the ladies.

just hand the thread over to voxman, he's here all night!

Its a really important area for a truly natural look and framing the face. Hate to see so many guys get their top front line done nicely while their temples continue to disappear. I've read the area is often avoided due to being very difficult to get a natural graduated look. Factors like the hair placement angulation, having a good enough supply of softer/thinner hairs to blend in from the very front ends of the tips and sides. Remember seeing a procedure over in the results page where the guy's temple points were completely gone, and the doc marked up his head redrawing the temple points. The immediate post op red area looked like he could expect a good result, but the pics over 6 months out look like he will need at least another pass to try to get a decent density, and of the hairs that are growing they are all the thicker kind and still kinky, curled -but at least the kinky/curled characteristics should straighten out with more time.

No need to rub it in vigorously, I stopped using it due to unrelated skin conditions that made my skin more sensitive and prone to irritation. But when I did use it I would have the dobber in one hand dispensing the drops, and then with my other hand gently rub my index and middle fingers around that immediate area to keep it from running all over, guiding and lightly patting to encourage soaking into that targeted area.

I agree your donor still looks great, looking at the back of your head without knowing, I would chalk it up to being a rough-housing boy with some scars to show for it (like me, in addition to my thin little fut ) Great temple points still, widows creep to front hairline intersection, worthy of an HT forum moderator who puts his time and money where his keyboard is. But my question for you is...how much commitment are you willing to make to keep these CRITICAL areas circled? (my emphasis) -would you risk trying to re-create your temple points if you lost them down the road?! Enquiring minds want to know.

Probably too risky my friend. Excellent temple points are awesome, but are very difficult to recreate with transplanted hair. In the HT game its not always enough to be able to see where improvement would be possible, and its not like he doesn't have any temple points to even mess up, what he has is ok. You have to weigh risk/reward.

Well now there's a technically true, glass half full take, that doesn't really take into account how the eyes and brain actually work. Of course while FUE is going to give you more individual scars, due to their very small size its possible with a good donor area and extraction distribution to spread the scarring so that the overall visibility is much less detectable than a FUT scar. The deciding factor is how big your procedure is and how wide of an area the doctor is extracting from in your donor. If the extraction area is small enough -horizontally from top to bottom, you may be able to keep your hair longer above and below the buzzed area so that would give you the concealment. For any larger scar area using concealers, I can speak from some experience with DermMatch and FUT (haven't had FUE). I found it effective concealing my FUT scar down to a 4-guard buzz when I go extra short in the summer - and I have a pretty good FUT scar from what I've seen of others online, a little thicker than a pencil line.

Hi its definitely an important decision and commitment in your life, but not something that you personally should stress out over in terms of causing a bad outcome. The doctor is the one that screws these up the vast majority of the time -when there are screwups. But you've made an excellent decision with Dr Hasson so there's that to help you with your piece of mind. His pre and post op instructions should be your primary reference, even above what you read on this forum. Run your questions and decisions by him too so you don't end up doing something with good intentions that could end up actually jeopardizing your results. You may want to keep a little journal/list of what you pickup/learn from now through to your procedure. And then bring them up to him before the day, or on the day of the procedure when you will be spending up to the whole day with him to make sure you haven't been led astray, etc. If you do take or start any supplements or meds of course tell Dr Hasson -especially the ones that could effect blood clotting. Usually the doc will tell you to stop those up to about 10 days prior and 5 days after the procedure. If you don't already have a recliner/lazyboy, look into one of those pool-side lounge chairs you can lay out on with the adjustable back --but you don't want to use it outdoors, stay out of the sun as much as you can in the days after - You want it so you can keep your head above your chest/heart in the days after the procedure. I used one of those to kick back and watch tv/read during the days after in my living room with one of those. And at night for sleeping, if you don't have an adjustable bed or don't want to sleep in the lazyboy etc, look into 'bed wedges' (search amazon.com for "GERD wedge") -they are what people with acid reflux use to keep their head elevated to prevent excess stomach acid from traveling to their esophagus and mouth while they sleep -different reason from what you need, but the end result is the same- your head ends up being raised above your heart. And relax, stress, especially the nagging chronic type of stress is bad for your mind and your body -which includes your hair. You are moving forward towards solving your problem, this should be a time of hope -just don't set impossibly high expectations. Couple questions for you too if you don't mind -how old are you and when did you start losing? are you planning on fue or fut? and are you taking finasteride or minoxidil?

Wow, 3 yrs! that's crazy. In terms of planning someone could end up needing additional consults to factor in the impact of further loss on your goals/expectations/budgeting, or whether to even still have the procedure. Personally I wouldn't wait more than a year for any doctor.

How many days post-op are you? Some guys are extremely careful afterwards and so their scabs stay in place longer before falling off, I don't see much of any redness in the area where your grafts were placed, but maybe you are a quick healer, or maybe you just didn't get alot of densely packed grafts. Have you noticed alot of scabs shedding, falling off as you do normal washing etc each day?

He's wearing what looks like the same dark blue shirt in all these, different wall/door/floor views of the same room in the pics, probably a few minutes apart where he combs his hair and then takes the top two pics.

You're ok, the scalp that is showing in the top two pics looks to be more due to how you are combing it. While you are letting the crown 'swirl' area kind of lay naturally, you are combing your top hair in front of it straight forward. If you want to show less scalp blend your crown and top combing areas better, more in line with the directions your hair naturally grows.

Glad to help, I know how anxious this time is. Following the doc's instructions to the T not only gives you some piece of mind, but a clear conscience if you are not satisfied with the results and want to confront or hold him accountable. The bottom line though is like @ShadowMoon said, leaving the shampoo on for that long is ridiculous, but at least it doesn't harm the grafts.

I agree with some of the previous comments about how they determined only about 10% yield -how was your loss progressing before the procedure? Was the area they were transplanting into already very thin? When hairloss starts real young, like in your teens/early 20s, usually indicates you have alot of genetically vulnerable hair and a higher chance for a more aggressive loss rate over time. You may also want to consider getting smaller procedures, maybe your physiology/blood circulation in the scalp area is not optimal for rooting large numbers of grafts. Like @Sean said get checked out by a dermatologist and make sure you don't have anything unusual going on. While I would recommend using a different doctor for your next procedure, if you decide to go back to the same surgeon, see if he would give you a few smaller procedures for the same reduced price as the larger procedure. And being in your early 20s I hope you have at least considered finasteride and minoxidil.

Yea I'm thinking concealer like dermmatch/fibers darker than this natural hair. I did some experimenting back when I used them to find the best color match, ended up settling on the medium brown, but the dark brown made my hair look closer to that first pic and would have been too much of a pain to apply and blend consistently every day. He's buzzed on the sides in that top pic, so if he has any crown thinning in the back that overall shorter hair around the sides back there may make it more visible. So maybe he or his team of stylists put some concealer on to thicken it up -and/or maybe he just wanted to give himself a slightly different hair color for the night, easier to wash out than a dye job.

I've linked to this topic a few times in other topics when suggesting guys check it out -and now the preview image is no longer the one from the first post, its this goofy "The BABES are back!" jpeg that loads. So from now on I'm just going to link to this forum section and tell them its the top thread so they don't just blow off my suggestion based on the pic.

Yea wait, 25 is still very young. You should look into DermMatch and Toppik, great for when you are in a 'wait and see' middle period, they are topical concealers that work and are easy to apply especially when you still have a good amount of hair like you. Toppik is the easier and quicker of the two to apply, and that may be all you want to do. There's a forum topic created and pinned by the forum moderator on DermMatch over in the "Shampoos, sprays, and concealers" -I would post the direct thread link but the moderator posted a later comment about some other questionable product and referenced a goofy commercial it made him think about -that preview pic of that goofy commercial comes up and I don't want guys to see that and think its not worth looking at. Go to this link and its the first thread named "Pros and Cons to DermMatch" https://www.hairrestorationnetwork.com/forum/28-shampoos-sprays-and-concealers/