ManeMan

Hey Guys- Wanted to give an 11 month update. I've been excited to let my hair grow out - something I haven't been able to do in almost 30 years. Overall very satisfied with the results. Everyone who I tell I've had the procedure responds to me they had no idea - and it's really boosted my confidence. I do still wish that there was a bit more density, but not sure if that's just the way it goes or really more the result of the limited number of donor grafts the doctor had to work with. I think at this point the grafts have taken, but I'm still seeing some lighter little hairs that may still be sprouting too in between the thicker ones. Here's the before/after 11 most post-surgery.

Drum roll please…. 24 weeks after the surgery I feel like I’m a new person. Still waiting for more density to come but overall really happy with the progress. I moved to a new city and it’s like no one ever knew me when I was balding. These were taken mid morning with just a little bit of clay styling product in it.

Now at week 15 and starting to finally see some new growth and think that the worst of the ugly duckling phase is hopefully coming to an end. Redness is going down but still struggling with pimples here and there. Does it seem like the new growth is on track? If interested you can see my original post about the whole experience here:

Quick photo update at 11 weeks. A bit more of the hair I had prior to the surgery seems to have grown in. The redness is definitely going down compared to pictures from previous weeks. Still waiting for the new growth to come in. I’m really struggling with acne with lots of white heads and black heads everywhere some of which are also quite painful. I’ve been washing with T-Sal everyday and using differin acne topical gel a little but neither seem to be helping that much. Continuing to wear hats as much as possible.

I'm hoping some of you out there can advise me on what to do here. About 8 weeks after my procedure I used the magnifying skin camera (which is on a blackhead remover I've used on my nose before) to look at how the healing was going up close in my recipient area. I started to notice that there seemed to be a lot of blackheads and clogged pores everywhere. Some with hairs growing out of them but many without hairs. I tried some light pressure on a couple of them after steaming my scalp in a hot shower and the gunky stuff just kinda slid right out of a lot of them. I want to be careful about causing any damage to the grafts, but I would think that if 2 weeks post-op they are pretty well anchored, that 8 weeks out they should be solidly in there. I've read that having clogged pores can prevent the hair from growing through, so I wasn't sure if it was best to try to free the pores of the blockages to encourage hair growth, or if by doing so I would be damaging the follicles. A few of the blackheads that popped out were quite long, so I started to get afraid that maybe the full graft was coming out, though it seems unlikely at this point. I've emailed the clinic with a lot of detail and photos and got a standard response that pimples are normal and they can be gently pierced and drained, but not much else. I haven't seen much conversation on the forums about this so wondering if anyone's experienced anything similar or any of the experts can weigh in on what the best course of action would be here. I've always had oily skin, which had calmed down a lot after my teens, but it kinda feels like I'm reliving puberty all over again with the amount of pimples and blackheads I'm getting. Any advice on creams or topicals that will help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Week seven update. Just from looking in the mirror I things were starting to look better but outside in natural light I can see there’s still a ways to go. Doesn’t seem like it’s changed much in the last three weeks. Looks like my original hair still growing in the area has come back so now waiting on the transplanted follicles. I have been getting a lot of pimples, especially in the donor area. I’ve been washing with Neutrogena T-Sal every day but guess I just have oily skin.

Thanks. I wasn't told to use jojoba oil. I didn't see it mentioned in any of the post-care instructions. Now that I'm 7 weeks out, it seems like it's getting a bit better. I'll share some more update pics soon. Thanks for all the support, guys!

TBH it's looking pretty bad to me right now. I'm 4 weeks out from the procedure and still have quite a bit of redness that's pretty visible and now with the shedding it is extremely sparse and very patchy with areas where there is no hair at all. I try not to look at it too much in the mirror (and when I do it's with low light) and have been going to work wearing a beanie the last couple of weeks. I'm really hoping this is normal, and it seems like it probably is from the other posts on here, but it's still stressful wondering if I did something wrong or if this is going to ever look like I had imagined going into the process. Hopefully you can give me some words of encouragement. @Mark Wolfer @Melvin- Moderator

Thank you. Already looking forward to month five! Good eye - yes I got about 500 grafts in the crown area as part of the procedure. While getting full coverage back there wasn't going to be possible, the doctor was wanted to make sure that there was a bit of coverage there so that there wasn't such a stark contrast from my mid scalp. For me that was almost "extra". Maybe I'll consider a second HT at a later date to take care of it, but right now I'm just focused on getting through this one.

I went back to the post and increased the text size so hopefully it's easier to read now. In terms of the hairline - Dr. Hasson actually traced my natural hairline which I agreed with - I've always had a pretty high widows peak even when I had a full head of hair. It does look very angular and defined right now, but as it grows out the Dr. assured me it will look more natural. And, no it wasn't cheap, but I felt that this is probably the most important investment I'll make and wanted to make sure I did right.

Ha. Good question! If I knew when to call it quits when I was up I would have paid for 500 of my grafts, but of course I wanted to go bigger. Ended up leaving even at the end of the trip.

Since I’ve been lurking these boards for a year or so I wanted to try to give back to the community and share my experience. After rescheduling three different times due to the Canadian border closing over COVID, more than a year after scheduling, I was finally able to make it to Vancouver in early October, 2021. I decided on Dr. Hasson after reading through the message boards here for a while and doing a few remote consultations. (I previously posted that I had chosen Dr. Wong mistakenly.) From the pictures I sent in for the original consultation, Hasson planned for 4,000 grafts over two days. In the in-person consult the day before the surgery, I had a little bit of a rude awakening. Hasson said that my mid-scalp had thinned more than what he had seen in the pictures a year ago and that the sides of my would-be donor area weren’t as dense as he would have liked. He said he would maximize what I had as much as possible, but that meant trying to get to 3,500 grafts and focusing on the hairline and mid-scalp (and foregoing any temples or much crown work as well as a bit of a higher hairline than originally planned). I went in their thinking I was maybe a NW4 at worst, but he told me I was near a NW7! Shot through the heart! This was definitely disappointing, but I’ve read on these boards that this type of thing can happen, so just tried to go with the flow and hope for the best. Honestly, any improvement would be better than what I was working with. H&W tell their patients to stop using minoxidil 6 weeks before the procedure which I did, and I really think that it caused some shedding and made my hair look a lot thinner than it did a few months before. I asked Dr. Hasson about this in detail and he explained in his experience that Monoxidil breaks down the collagen in the skin, so it’s not as elastic, making the skin more difficult to work with during the procedure, especially for FUT. I have to trust whatever this guy says as he is such an expert in the area. Quick hairloss history: I have always had a high hairline and widows peak, but it wasn’t until my early 30’s that I started to become concerned about the receding hairline. I put off starting finasteride as long as possible to avoid the sexual side effects but started using monoxidil about age 30. I finally decided to go on finasteride 1mg/day around age 35, which in retrospect I regret not doing sooner. I was hopeful that looking at your mothers father was the best indicator of future hairloss. Not true. My mom's father died with a full head of thick white hair at 81 while my dad has been NW7 since his early 20s. So while I didn’t have the same drastic loss as my father early on, I am definitely following his pattern. Since September 2020 I’ve been taking 1.25 mg of proscar daily and continuing to use minoxidil 2x’s a day. The experience: I felt the overall experience was clean, friendly and efficient. I always felt like I was in good hands with the team at H&W. Dr. Hasson himself was definitely a straight shooter and like I said before was honest in his assessment and also what would be possible, which I really appreciated. I ended up getting the full 3,500 grafts in one day which was about 14.5 hours total in one day. 7am arrived at clinic, got changed, Dr. Hasson sketched out the hairline and marked up my head. I was given a valium and another relaxing pill before my head was completely shot up with novicane. I was then face down in what was almost a massage table for the next few hours during the extraction phase by a tech from Bulgaria. I was able to actually fall asleep for a while. That went on for maybe 5 or so hours. Then Dr. Hasson came in and punched all the holes in my scalp as we counted together every 100 punctures up to 35. Then a quick lunch break of Japanese food before starting the implant process. At that point it was already about 3 and I was concerned about timing given that it seemed pretty late to be starting 3,500 extractions. But there were two fresh techs that had just arrived and they made me feel confident that they could get it done effectively, just going a little late. Luckily I had become friendly with a guy in the next room who was getting the exact same number of grafts so we seemed to be tracking along at the same pace every time I got up to stretch or go to the bathroom. The next 8 hours or so were bearable. I ended up watching most of Midnight Mass and Squid Game on Netflix while two women worked on my head. Any time I felt anything at all they would shoot me up with more numbing solution. We finally finished sometime around 11:30. It was a long day. I got in an Uber and went back to the hotel and propped myself up to sleep at a 45 degree angle after taking a sleeping pill. Final tally: 3,545 grafts: 1 follicle: 300 2 follicles: 2535 3-4 follicles: 710 Total hairs: 7,500 The next few days were alright. I went each morning to get my hair washed, then put on a cap and did a little walking around the city. Stopped by the casino to play some blackjack and then just relaxed at the hotel and watched Netflix. Vancouver is a beautiful little city and the area I stayed in had a lot of great ethnic restaurants that I ordered from during my time there. I flew back on the fifth day after the procedure. The swelling was a lot worse than I had thought it would be. It took about two days for it to get really noticeable to the point I looked disfigured and peaked on the third and fourth day with my eyes totally swollen. The itching in the donor area in the first two weeks was really bad too which I was unprepared for. Right now I’m about 2.5 weeks since the procedure and feeling pretty good about it. I’ve gone back into my office for a couple days which is pretty casual so wearing a beanie didn’t seem to raise any eyebrows and I’ll probably go in without a hat next week. I just wish the redness would go down a bit more which is the thing I notice most now that the scabs are gone. Welcome any feedback from you all and will continue to update throughout my journey. Here are some pictures from the first two weeks. (And it's a lot harder to take a good picture of your own head than I realized.) Thanks! Two months before procedure with longer hair: Day before the procedure with shorter hair and 6 weeks without monoxidil: Immediately following procedure: Day 3 Recipient Area Day 4 donor area: 1 Week Post Procedure: 2 Weeks Post:

I had a HT from Hasson two weeks ago and in my consult I asked him about the waitlist out of curiosity. He said that part of the reason that theirs seems short is that each doctor is doing 2 a day with the help of all the great technicians they have doing most of the extractions and implanting. He mentioned they average 20 a week at the clinic so they are doing a higher volume than others most likely, and they're able to keep the quality pretty high at the same time.

I like to wear my hair pretty short and really didn’t want the strip scar. I know it’s a personal choice but I had a friend do FTU then wear his hair short and the scar was the only thing I could focus on.

Thanks! Yes you got it exactly right. Mostly hairline and mid-scalp with a some coverage on the crown and some filling of the temporal sides. I think he said he would bring my hairline down about an inch following the natural shape of my widows peak. I wanted to be aggressive. Another only advised 2k grafts on hairline so thought this was a much better option. Thoughts on how soon after the surgery it will be okay to fly home? Is 24 hrs enough time?

Hey All, After rescheduling three different times due to the Canadian border closing over COVID, more than a year after scheduling, I'm finally preparing to get 4,000 FUE grafts from Dr. Wong of Hasson & Wong the second week in October. This forum has been a huge help in deciding to get a HT and which doctor to go with. I had several consultations including Dr. Nadimi who is often mentioned as one of the better doctors for hairline work, but ultimately decided on Dr. Wong who said he can do 4,000 grafts over two days. I am really excited and cannot wait to see the results. I'm 39, started using monoxidil daily around age 30 and taking 1mg/daily finasteride at about age 32. I probably started these a little later than I should have in retrospect. After my consult with Dr. Wong in September of 2020, he suggested I move to brand name Proscar 1mg/day instead of finasteride which I've switched to since then. (he said he sees better results than generics.) I also did 4 sessions of PRP in 2018 but not sure if it really did anything. My hair loss wasn't very noticeable through most of my 20's until I think some stressful life events in my early 30's started to really accelerate the process. My dad has been NW7 since his early 20s whereas my mom's father died with a full head of thick white hair at 81. I've definitely spent a lot of time reading the threads on this forum and really appreciate all the support and commentary that the community provides. I'll be documenting and sharing my experience and progress on here after the surgery, but wanted to post here before going in to see if there was any thoughts or advice anyone has to share. Here are a few photos taken in different lighting and with different length haircuts over the past months so you can get an idea of what I'm working with. Thanks guys.

Are you in the US? I had an appointment scheduled for Feb 15 and they just called to reschedule given the borders being closed and the next appointment they gave me was mid-May. Was hoping to get through the healing process before having to go back into the office.

@JamesSterling Curious to know if you made your decision yet after your research? I decided to go with Hasson and Just booked for mid-Feb 2021. They estimate they can do 3,000 FUE grafts in a one day session. Hoping the border issue is resolved by then!

Yeah - seems Turkey is sketchy. Have you gotten a sense of how long the waitlist is for any of these guys? I sent in the pictures for consult to Konior's clinic and got a quick response from Nadimi with her reco (only said she can probably do at most 2,000 grafts per session but said she would need an in-person consult to know for sure.) She said she's booked out until Feb/March. I asked when Konior is next available and she said to call the office to ask, but it's gotta be a lot longer than that. I was hoping to get it done before end of year if possible, but don't think that's gonna be realistic.

James I have the same situation as yours - Norwood 4 and willing to travel and pay whatever it takes for the best procedure. Spending some time on here I was hoping to find a good clinic in Turkey that could great work for a decent price, but after reading through all the forums it sounds like Konior and Hassan are the best options. I've requested consults with both. Curious to know who you end up landing on. Also if anyone knows just how long the waiting list is for Konior or Hassan would love to know - though I should find out later this week.