Berba11

I don't mind throwing my name in the hat but seems there's a few that are super keen already who I'm sure would do a fine job.

Would love to see how this turned out!

I explained this in the very next sentence. Read again (and I said "something of a rite of passage"). It's objectively not actually miserable at all; nothing happens to you when your hair starts to go - it's not a disability or terminal illness. It doesn't prevent you from doing anything. You may not like that it's happening, but how you reflect on it and process/deal with it internally is a choice. I didn't say mental illness. Again, calm down and read what I actually said and take some time to reflect on the words rather than immediately jump to the defensive. This question arises from your incorrect understanding of my previous comment. Acne is curable in most cases (even if sometimes it requires very strong medication), and therefore temporary. It's a much more straightforward and short term fix compared to HT surgery. I can almost guarantee I had more hair loss than you at 22. If you can't pull with some receding hair then sorry to be the bearer of bad news but the issue isn't your hair. This is exactly the kind of dumb thing I'd expect a 22 year old to say, and exactly why kids shouldn't be getting permanent surgeries on their heads. If you remember this comment in 20 years time, you'll look bad and give yourself a slap at how ridiculously wrong you were. Why does it not surprise me that you don't know what I mean by this? Botched = any bad surgical outcome. HT's are not guaranteed to be successful, and can leave you looking worse off. If you think shaving your hair off means "living life at a worse standard" than having hair, try living life with a bad hair transplant.

I didn't say you can't (though you most likely shouldn't). I asked you two questions (which you haven't answered yet). In most cases you're too young. Even if you're taking finasteride, your hair loss will be at its most aggressive so it's vitally important to stabilise hair loss first and demonstrate this over a statistically significant period of time. Secondly, in my experience on these forums, we often see young guys wanting a HT and, when they bother to submit photos, we see they don't really have enough hair loss to justify a HT in the first place. Thirdly, good HT's are expensive. Most 22 year olds don't have the spare capital to fund a HT without loading themselves up with debt (bank loans), so there's a question of whether a HT is in the best financial interests of a young person (it mostly will not be). Lastly - and don't take this the wrong way - but at 22 you're not going to be making the best long term decisions for yourself and to want a HT so young is an impulsive and reactionary approach to early hair loss. I had enough hair loss myself to easily justify a HT at 22, but am very, very happy that I didn't do anything so daft at that age. If your first port of call at the sight of hair loss is to prematurely jump to surgery (which should always be the last resort), then there exists real questions about your mental fitness for surgery and how you're thinking about your hair loss in general. Getting a HT is something of a rite of passage. You have to go through all the necessary steps first - one of which is learn to deal and live with your hair loss for an extended period of time. Most blokes make their peace with their hair loss and save themselves from a life time of medicine and surgeries. You mathematically cannot have given yourself time to do that at 22 years old, so you're self-evidently trying to skip the most important steps and get straight to the surgery part. And if you can't find any peace with regards to the current state of your hair/hair loss, just consider how much worse you would feel if you went ahead with surgery and got botched at 22.

Hard to say. Some miniaturised hair might shed due to the competition for blood flow with the newly transplanted grafts. They may grow back (likely will if the hairs are strong enough) or they may not. Good clinics will not overly pack areas of your scalp that have a lot of native hairs so you'll be fine either way as long as you place yourself in good hands.

Why are you getting a HT at 22 years old and which doctor has agreed to that?

Whether they liked their results or not doesn't actually tell us whether the HT looks natural or not. I've seen so many videos on YT of people documenting their journey and who have gotten loads of pluggy, multigraft hairs in their hairline and... they love their results too! The reality is they don't know any differently. They lack any of the basic fundamental understanding of good hair restoration to actually be able to identify what is wrong with their own HT. The fact of the matter is that the people who you know who have been to such clinics would not have gone there if they knew their stuff. So we can deduce that from their lack of research that their interpretation of their own results will be suitably flawed as well. If that's the basis in which you yourself want to proceed with a HT then you're setting yourself up to fail.

That sounds more viable than having to get creative with your sick leave. Hopefully you can sort it!

I get that. Obviously this is 'by the way' given we're past the 15th of Jan now, but I was rather suggesting that you have a few dates in mind *with the clinic*, and then put in for your first choice at work. I assume if those dates are rejected by your work, you can then request different dates. So the idea would be to have backup options with the clinic in case your initial request at work is declined. But only getting one week paid per year + no guarantees you'll get your desired dates sounds very brutal to me. What do you do?

Is it that hard to coordinate? Can you ask your prospective surgeon to hold two or three dates for you whilst you put in your time off requests? That way if one gets rejected you have others dates to aim for. You’ll surely be given one of your preferred dates.

You’re going to struggle to find a good clinic to cover your scalp with that budget. You’ll likely need somewhere close to 5,000 grafts and the best lower cost clinics will be charging around £2-3 per graft (which I guess is about $3-4 p/g). If you just focus on the frontal third of your head and deal with the crown later then that becomes a lot more viable budget-wise of course. Depends on your goals. Your best option is to spend some time researching proper clinics (not LHC & HOI 🤦‍♂️) and to save up more money. There’s good lower cost options in India & Thailand that are better than 99% of what you’ll find in Turkey.

Very curious to know who this surgeon is. Interesting that he wants to do some extractions from the hairline itself.

I don't think your left and right donor look worse before and after the Bisanga surgery. Your hair styles on the sides are different which creates a different visual appearance. The reality is that extracting such a small number like 50 & 100 grafts from an area that is already overharvested simply isn't going to make much difference at all. Where the hair is shaven down we can clearly see how bad the original extraction work from the Turkish clinic was and that's the issue. Bisanga simply hasn't extracted enough grafts to do any damage here and the extractions are nicely spaced apart. What I would say is that I'm surprised you didn't have any punch outs from the hairline. You have a lot of thick multigraft hairs and covering that up with implantations alone will require something in the region of 300-500 singles and some softer, finer doubles place amongst and in front of the existing hairline (which would probably mean lowing the hairline beyond a desirable position).

You've still got a load of dense native hair up top and really strong forelock so a conservative surgery that looks to temper the recession points without radically altering the hairline shape would probably give you a super natural result and a really good enhancement from where you are. If you add finasteride into the mix to retain the rest of your hair long term you could be a rare case of "one and done" given that you've got to your mid-30's without major hair loss.

It’s hard to say exactly, but it sort of looks like what was implanted did in fact grow (not all of it, but certainly some), but you had so few hairs implanted to begin with that it’s hard to see what the actual plan was here.

You have better options than 90% of that list in India & Thailand at comparable price points and, I assume, cheaper flights/more convenient travel for you. There are zero good options in Australia though. Also… have you booked flights *before* settling on a clinic? That seems an odd approach and unless you’ve already secured tentative dates with the clinics you’ve been in contact with, you run the risk of them not being able to book you in on your dates of travel. You absolutely don’t want to compromise- always best to pick your clinic, get dates booked, then sort your travel. Could you get a refund on the flights? Or could you accept just having a holiday in Turkey and getting your HT elsewhere another time? These are all things to consider.

Brussels is just a nice (if slightly boring) European city. It won’t be radically different to any smaller, older city anywhere else really. English will be spoken fairly typically and definitely at restaurants, hotels and so on. If you have a few days pre op, hop on a short train to Brugge for a day trip or a short stay over - beautiful little city easily explored on foot over the course of a day or two. You’ll have no issues whatsoever in Belgium.

I never said it was mandatory. It’s not, obviously. But it is generally speaking in the spirit of the forum to “pay it forward”. You’ve been to Couto, one of the top surgeons and there would be enormous interest in your case I’m sure. You would be helping others in the same way you’ve been requesting help. I’m not trolling and never have. I’ve not interested in trolling (and I’m not “bothered” by your threads). I’ve had two HT’s myself, however I am confused as to how you can be this far post-op and not actually know the process or some of the basics and reading your thread history, there are questions around your mental fitness for surgery (as has been pointed out to you before). Nevertheless, you’ve done it now - great! - but I’m also not sure why these questions aren’t being directed towards your actual surgeon. You’ve presumably paid a pretty hefty price for Couto’s services, and no one here is better able to assist you than him (certainly with no details or pictures of your surgery to go by).

How are you only just learning this *after* having had a HT? Also I notice you've done a million threads full of pure panic and asking for help, but as far as I can see, haven't paid it forward by creating a thread documenting your journey...?

Would be great if you could share your journey with a thread, especially as your case sounds quite unique with such a high number of beard grafts. Possibly a HRN record, @Melvin- Admin?

It says in the article that she didn't want to have to wait years being on the NHS waiting list for such surgery, so seems that she could have gotten it done here with more patience. Not that it's the same surgery or that anyone rushing off to Turkey for a HT is likely to end up in an early grave, but that does rather hammer home the point about why it really is best to wait and not dive into the deep end of the pool so young with these things; bad decisions are often made in haste.

What’s the date of your first session with Dr Feriduni mate? I know it’s April sometime. Not long now - how you feeling about it?

The issue with only taking out the first couple of rows is that you're only really getting 300-500 grafts out. That's fine if the hair immediately behind that is flatter, but if it sticks up as much as the first few rows then you'll have a similar problem. Ideally you'd just remove as much of the offending grafts as possible (you won't get all of them) so that everything blends when new grafts are added. The answer probably sits somewhere in between option A and option B in all likelihood. Ideally you need to seek some in-person consultations with excellent repair doctors, but at the very least get some emails fired off with good quality pictures for an initial assessment.

Things don’t really kick off until after the 3 month mark - usually around 4 months is when you’ll see the first major changes. Nothing to panic about just yet! Who was your surgeon?

Still too young.