Colter

Forgot to mention: about 10.5 months post surgery as of today.

Updated Photos for you guys. I just got it cut short today for the first time; I've had it long for a few months now (I included one photo before I got it cut that I had). I wanted to see if any scaring was showing (there's almost none) and see how consistent the thickness was in the new areas vs the old areas. I have fine hair (thanks mom!) anyway, so any unevenness or inconsistency in the follicle placements will show more than average. Overall, I'm super happy.

I got around to shaving my head again tonight. 51 day post op. I'm pretty happy about the donor area, seems to be healing up rather well. Now if the redness in the recipient area would finally go away and, of course, impatiently waiting for steady regrowth. Waiting game..

The younger brother did the extraction while the older did the implants.

Hey Guys, Super sorry, I didn't realize this post got this much traffic. Here's an update, and I'll try to be on the forums more often: My hair almost completely shed out in a couple days (I may have encouraged it a bit once it started) around week 3 and the pictures here are from today, 7 weeks post. I've had a hat on all day, so my hair is a bit matted. The one thing I've noticed is that the center peak is thinner than it was before the surgery, but I do know they filled in that area pretty heavily with new grafts as well. So I'm sure there's some extra shed loss with the native hair in the area as well. Overall, I'm just playing the patient game from here for a few months. Straight up "Ugly Duckling" beneath my hat, haha.

Today:

Post-Op Day 5:

Day of Surgery.

After researching for 5 years into FUE (lurking this forum as well), I finally had the surgery 12/14/2021. Took about 8 hours all together. Experience was fantastic, very professional, clean and comfortable. They put me up in a hotel next door (4.3 star rating on google the day of this posting and I would concur). There are two brothers that run the clinic and I got the attention of both the day I went in. While in surgery, there's the doc and at least 3 nurses in the room all working like a well oiled machine. Would 100% recommend HMR, especially given my results so far at 14 days post op as of tomorrow. I'll post before pictures to this parent post and progress photos will follow as replies. What I've done for after care: As I mentioned, I've been researching for years. I've accumulated more than 100 bookmarks and 20 pages of notes. I owe a great debt to this forum for helping me with some of the niche information many reviews, web site write-ups, and public conversation threads where missing. I was able to get a lot of broad stroke information from reddit, google, other forums, and more that all contributed to a fairly comprehensive plan that I put together for myself. In the end, I followed pieces of my post-op care instructions from Dr. Cortez but also subsidized it with the results from my own research. Days 1-3: Sprayed both donor and implant area with Avene to keep the areas moist several times a day. Slept on my back with a rolled up body towel under my neck and over my shoulders to help keep my head straight. I was very cautious to not disturb the implant area at all in these first 3 days. No hats or otherwise touching at all aside from spraying Avene on it. Days 3-7: Switched from Avene to pure Aloe Vera in a 3-ounce spritzer bottle. Soaked my head 3-5 times daily. Took a shower daily, but didn't let the water hit the implant area directly. I stay in the shower long enough for the steam to wrinkle my skin on my hands and soften the scabs on my head (they'd turn white). I wouldn't touch any of the implant area, goal was to only allow for max moisture absorption in the area from the steam. I did grit my teeth and start massaging and washing the donor area using this swiss-made Hair Transplant Shampoo. After my shower, I used the lotion in the kit on the donor area. Day 7: Cortez sent me instructions that I would be safe to rub off scabs using a tongue depressor. This seemed a bit too rough for me, so instead I did the shower routine as normal, allowed the scabs to turn white and soft, then lightly washed the area using the transplant shampoo. Took 5 or 6 washes, but with some light rubbing and help from the steam, all the scabs came off clean without irritating the area at all. Day 7-14 (current): I wash my head (still using the Transplant Shampoo) and let it sit on my scalp for 5 minutes before rinsing daily. After my shower, I soak my head with the lotion from the kit. In the morning, I apply a mix of Mederma oil and Aloe Vera to the donor area and just Aloe Vera to the implant area. Because it's super cold where I live and I have a shaved head, I do wear a beanie all day. I plan to continue this routine until the transplant shampoo and lotion kit run out. From there I'll switch back to my Keeps shampoo and just apply lotion to my head daily. --- Cortez sent me an email on day 10 that I responded to with current pictures. They then responded saying that I've healed a lot faster than they expected and "practically already fulfilled the most important period of indications we expect to see in the first 30 days normally." That made me feel super validated and I'm very excited for everything to go back to normal soon. I'm still expecting to potentially go through the shock loss/ugly duckling phases, but I'm hoping some of my care plan may have helped me avoid it. Time will tell. Other than that, I am super happy with how it's turning out. I hope my story here can be of help to anyone looking for information like I was. Thanks.