Hi All,
Having gained a lot of information and knowledge from the forum, i thought i owed it to post my experience and journey. Many thanks to all the folks prior to me who have shared their experience, it really is a wealth of information.
Background
I'm 39 years old and I started losing my hair about 12 years ago. For the past 8 years i have been clean shaven and whilst accepting of it, i never was fully confident or comfortable with the slick look. It was also a pain in the you know what having to shave every three days and also hated the occasional ribbing I'd get from my mates. Having seen the great results on this forum and growing acceptance of hair transplants i finally picked up the courage to do something about it earlier this year. I had narrowed my choice of Doctor it down to Dr Bisanga, Dr Lupanzula and Dr Feriduni . Off course Covid then struck but thankfully i was still able to have online consultations with Dr Bisanga and Dr Lupanzula (I never got a reply from my enquiry to Dr Feriduni). I don't have any particular reason for choosing Dr Bisanga over Dr Lupanzula other than maybe coming across more similar cases to myself that Dr Bisanga had handled. From the online consultations they both agreed that i would need approx. 3000 graphs to restore the frontal hairline. Going solely on an online consultation is difficult but I reckoned I owed it to myself to try and do something about my hair loss. My goal was to at least reduce the NW number and anything after that is a bonus, If this goes well, I plan on a second procedure to target the crown using my abundant beard donor and possibly chest hair if required. In the main I plan on keeping the hair short until I get the second procedure, if all goes well I may then grow it out.
The Procedure
Not the wisest choice to pick a November date during the pandemic as cases soared all over Europe but with other things going on, it was the earliest I could have got it done and I really didn't want to wait until next year so ahead with it i went. Having thankfully got a negative PCR test three days prior to the procedure I was able to get my flight (I'm in Ireland). I arrived in Brussels the day before the procedure. I had booked an Airbnb close to the clinic, I thought an Airbnb was best as i wanted to keep my contacts as low as possible and I was able to do a shop on the day i arrived meaning the only place i left the apartment for was the clinic before flying home four days later.
At the BHR clinic Dr Bisanga, examined my donor and drew a hairline which i was happy with. It is conservative but it sort has to be considering the area that has to be covered. Also my donor is not the best as over the years whilst being shaved i had progressed to a NW6 and I am patchy behind my ears. The hair measured 70 microns on the sides and 80 microns at the back. Thankfully I have a good beard donor which will be required. The pre procedure photos show 1 month growth, the longest I had let it grow since i started shaving the head.
The procedure was carried out over two days, day 1 was the scalp, day 2 was the beard. The injections were a killer in the scalp but the pain is only momentary, i did not find the beard ones as bad except maybe around the front of my chin. Another thing, I have a really low heart rate, so i didn't get a valium to help me relax, the alarm on the pulse reader kept going off all through the 2 days. I am very bad with names so can't remember the lovely ladies who done the extractions and graft placements. Dr Bisanga did the punching and cut the channels for the grafts. Dr Costa was also there but mostly just supervised ( he did punch 50 grafts on my beard).
Post op I was a little sore and did take the pain killers going to bed each night but apart from that just had a little tenderness of the donor. I did have swelling around the eyes but again it wasn't too bad and subsided in about 3 days. Travelling back was straight forward, I had my bandanna on and security and passpaort control were happy for me to keep it on. I guess they are used to seeing them at this stage.
My numbers:
Head
Ones - 558
Twos - 1287
Threes - 917
Fours - 237
Beard
Ones - 644
Twos - 452
Threes - 109
I am now at day 11 and everything is going well. Photos to follow. My beard healed really fast and you couldn't tell it was touched after 3 - 4 days. I have decided to also take finasteride to give this the best chance i can. When I started losing my hair I didn't take anything as we were just starting a family and didn't want any chemicals in my system. Since then on occasions I thought about it but was afraid of the sides, I have been encouraged to try it due to the evidence that micro dosing likely reduces the chances of them. I'm also taking Biotin and MSM (thanks to Zoomster). For 6 months prior to the procedure I was taking Saw Palmetto but did not see any benefit.
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