Bandit90

Without understanding the full picture. I would suspect, given that your discomfort was specifically felt during the final half-hour on your third day of surgery, you suffered tachyphylaxis,, as the anaesthesia became ineffective due to the repeated doses. If this was the case, the clinic could have considered pausing the surgery until the following day, however, I also suspect because you had the grafts removed at this point, the medical team were up against the clock to implant. Three-day surgeries are not the faint-hearted and what you have documented raises the complexities that come with such prolonged sittings extending over multiple days. @Gatsby documented having similar issues with the anaesthesia rapidly wearing off during the final days of his marathon surgery. It would be interesting to know if Eugenix could fit these types of surgeries into two days, as opposed to three, or even modify it to do most of the heavy lifting on day one. I know there is amount of large amount of manpower required to execute these procedures and their growth yields speak for themselves. But it could be that some simple efficiencies could be made, which could improve the patient experience. However, despite the pain experienced towards the end of these marathon sessions, we patients do keep coming back for more, so the trauma does fade out (or maybe we all just have Stockholm syndrome 🤣)

Very true mate! Probably lost my perspective a tad. Feels a big step back, to go forward. But like you said its just a needle in the haystack

Cheers man! Good tip to buzz the sides down 😉 Sure is. Its reassuring to see all the hair for the first two sittings come in!

Cheers Myles! Very true. The Ugly Duckling phase, is natures way of keeping me humbled lol! We will be both rocking a morirssey quiff come late summer time!!

Thanks Oliver 🤙

Month 2 Update Not a huge amount to share, I’m very much in the ugly-duckling phase. It is generally just growth from the first two hair transplants growing in. Positive signs for me this month, are that the donor area has seemingly recovered well, which I factored in to take longer. I did a DIY shave on the sides a couple of weeks back which certainly helped take the edge off, as it was beginning to look very untidy. Also, the redness is fading, albeit at a glacial speed. I'll be honest, it’s all felt frustrating, mainly because I got so used to having hair and now, I’m waiting for it to grow in and for that all-important illusion of density to kick. It's all part and parcel of the ugly duckling phase but certainly can be mentally draining. In hindsight, I probably should have put a bit more consideration into doing unshaven FUE, that saying hopefully, in a couple of months, it will be all behind me.

Disappointing to read about the last 30 minutes on the final day of your procedure. I would expect the clinic to conduct a root cause analysis and provide a surgical de-brief based on the investigation. I have had three surgeries myself at the clinic and certainly noticed more discomfort towards the end of the final day on my first sitting in March 2022. I attributed this to Tachyphylaxis, as my body was gaining tolerance to the repeated doses of lidocaine applied over three days. One thing I note is that the clinic uses dull-needle implanter pens for their method implantation (which has advantages for growth yield), but I feel a disadvantage of the method is that it is more invasive than the traditional forcep insertion method, as you are having to push a dull-needle implanter into a recipient slit. Nonetheless, I believe the clinic, should conduct a review to ascertain why their pain management fell short of expectations in that final half hour, as you should never have been expected to grin up and bear it. Thanks for posting your honest feedback, I hope the results come off for you, as you have surely gone through the battle. I do hope that you begin to feel comfortable enough to share your growth journey on the HRN, especially as it has been pointed out we have similar hair characteristics.

Very nice result so far! Huge improvement on your before pictures. Also no detection of the previous FUT surgery on the back of your scalp on your recent update.

Short blonde hair can be very deceiving, my donor looked similar post-sitting one and I went on to get another 4k grafts from it. The OP has stronger donor than me, so on that logic alone, the 5k estimation, appears completely plausible. Also with FUE I find there is length (similar to OPs latest update) when the FUE is more noticeable. When I buzz down, its much less noticeable and grown longer its hard to detect. But the one-two weeks after shaving down, there is more noticeable patchy appearance. Another observation I had is the OP FUE scaring reminds me of Rolands' result - to a lesser extent.

Oh wow - This is a fantastic result for eight months! Taken years off you. Looks like your going to be one procedure and done as well. But donor looks in incredible shape if you ever wanted to go back and add more density!

Just looking at your recent update. It’s surreal because you have the same progression of hair loss as I did. Similar to yours mine just seemed to thin out, wish I kept some old photos to show. It’s the first time I’ve seen another user have this pattern on HRN. Also looks like we have a very similar final hair loss pattern and hair characteristics too. I know you’ve mentioned previously that you’re not the biggest advocate of beard hair on the scalp, but I feel they could do a lot of mileage in that mid-scalp area when intelligently blended (I struggle to distinguish between scalp and beard in my midscalp), freeing up those precious scalp grafts for those humps, crown and areas just behind the temples. Fortunately, with your head shape, I don’t think you have a huge crown area to cover so this should help make those scalp grafts go further. Appreciate, that it has been a stressful couple of years for you since your first surgery and has not been the outcome that you hoped for, but genuinely wish you the best outcome in your next procedure, it's clear that you are making all the right moves within your consults.

Out of all the criticisms you can put at Eugenix, their techs being terrible, is surely the last. Even the staunchest critics praise the techs. The techs all come from Dr Sethi’s village in Odisha. Though probably not the most educated, they clearly have a high work ethic and loyalty. There is no coincidence that eugenix have good donor management when they have the same two techs doing nothing but extractions for 14 years. Also, the high growth yields, are down to those techs. I counted six OTs last month, which spread between Drs Sethi/Bansal/Das/Somesh/Vineta I didn’t think was that bad. The 20 surgeries a day is just a nonsense claim.

The only stupid question is the question that is never asked!

Those first two questions, I was a bit like you, thinking they was asking the obvious here... has affected me enough to want to get a flight to India. But reflecting on it they are perhaps trying to understand if patient is in a sound mental state to undertake a cosmetic procedure. A scenario a can think of is If a patient has never left the house since balding a teenager without wearing a cap, you may need to counsel them about what realistically can be achieved with a hair transplant. However, I can imagine 99% of patients give the same answer to this question. Occupation question I totally get. Because anything that involves a hard hat, helmet ect you would need to give a heads up well before the transplant that they may need more time off work.

Thanks for sharing. It's nice to see some lower grades of baldness cases from Dr Pitella's patients. Your implanted density is on another level, won't be far off your pre-balding density. Are you on finasteride btw? Happy Growing and please keep updating.

Holy smokes - that is a lot beard hair transplanted, reminds me an old school Dr Umar case. Interesting to see how this turns out. Beard grafts generally make a good filler on the mid-scalp, but they can be limiting beyond this. That said i'm really interested how this turns out!

Thanks. Eugenix is certainly not for everyone, but they clearly have their strengths, which have served a lot patients well.

Cheers! Just need to get through the dreaded month two peak ugly duckling stage! I told myself I would never be the person with hair greed! Though, I do think the third sitting to add grafts to the crown area was needed as the area had a thinning (though natural) appearance. But the hairline & the temples work, was probably a case of hair greed, but I was comfortable using a few hundred grafts there to improve things . Spending my 20s as a slick bald Norwood 7, has probably given me a bit of a YOLO attitude towards hair restoration. Although, that said I wont be doing anymore transplant, its certainly me all done now!

Thanks Karl mate - It certainly feels liberating to have rid of the MPB curse!

Tommy, I’m seriously routing for you in this upcoming repair. It’s been frustrating to see your having to do a third surgery for your hairline when this should have been to put to bed in your previous sittings. But Dr F is a meticulous surgeon, with an eye for detail, which god willing will get this one over the line for you! I’ll be following this journey and supporting you from the sidelines!

Cheers Armen! Thanks for the reassuring nudges to go and get a widdows peak!.. i'm 18 months late to the party, but cant wait for it all this to kick in! Thanks as always Adam! Just had a look over your thread, seems that 3.5 months is the safe haven! I might actually do this, think it will take the edge off, good advice - cheers mate!

Thanks Melvin. Just need get that hair long enough to get the old illusion to kick in!

Cheers Myles, appreciate the kind words.. . you & me both will be rocking that quiff this summer!

Month 1 Update Nothing really to update , in the full-blown ugly duckling stage at the moment. I’ve opted to just let the hair keep growing, to get it back to the length where the illusion of density kicks in. I‘m certainly finding the recovery from this transplant a lot harder than the previous two, which is probably down to the fact I was enjoying having hair, and this feels like a big step back to go forward. From what I can gather most of the shed seems to have happened. With the hair from the previous two transplants is growing in. Lots of redness from the procedure lingering, which will likely take a few months to calm down. The donor is also going through the motions and I’m just trusting the process that it will recover. Also the beard surprisingly looks ok, given there has been over 3.6k grafts taken.

Generally a court would apply the black & white litmus test of 'did the patient leave the clinic in a worse way than they arrived'.