John1991

It looks to me like hairs are sprouting in the recipient area. At just past three months that's all that can be expected. The truth Is you're going to look pretty off until at least the 5 month mark or so. And even at 6 months the length isn't going to be up to par if you want to rock medium length/Captain America style hair. And the thickness and texture will probably be lacking until February/March timeframe for you. Give it until around New Year's day and you'll have a better sense of where this is headed.

I'm 12 days into taking .625 mg, so I'm too early in the process to see changes. I'll let you know in a couple months where things are.

That clinic is an abomination of a clinic and performs mini graft surgery. They're literally the worst of the worst. I'd be interested to see post-op pics, but I honestly wouldn't expect much man. No point in asking how many grafts he had implanted as they don't even count them like real clinics do. Definitely contact a reputable clinic and think about your next steps, but at the same time your result is bound to progress and obviously this isn't the end result yet. Is the area they transplanted into all virgin or did they mix those grafts in with your native hair? If all of that recipient area was bare scalp (and that isn't mixed in with native hair), they absolutely didn't put enough grafts in the area to give you even a modicum of density. Also, you need to give your scalp more than 6-8 months to heal before you get another procedure. The next place you go to needs to be actually good, which virtually guarantees they have a 6+ month waiting list minimum. That will give you a year or so between the next transplant and the last one, which is generally the minimum time recommended you wait from one procedure to the next.

He said 6 months was the 80% range, which I think is true. Especially if you're talking about grafts sprouting. Probably the vast majority of grafts that are going to sprout will sprout by 6 months. Not even being at the 4 month mark you likely have lots of improvement between now and the 6 month mark. After that, it's pretty much just thickening/maturation and the hair becoming long enough to match the length of the rest of your hair (assuming you're like most and have medium length hair). That all probably accounts for 20% improvement, which is not insignificant, but certainly the bulk of progress is seen by the 6 month mark in most cases. Especially on a virgin scalp when the hair is transplanted only into the hairline. Lastly, given that the first 80% of improvement occurs in roughly a 3 month span, the final 20% taking 4-6 months means the improvement is much slower and less noticeable, which probably lessens the extent that people notice it in real time (which is exacerbated by the rapid growth that immediately preceded it).

Actually, the reverse is true. If you start with larger FUE sessions, you compromise your ability to get a good strip because FUE requires that the grafts be extracted over quite a significant region of the donor area. Whereas if you start with FUT - thereby leaving everything above and below the strip scar virgin - you can then move to FUE at a later date. FUT scars that are visible with any considerable length of hair are probably not more likely than getting over-harvested and looking moth eaten from FUE - though obviously each procedure can end up with bad scarring in poor hands. And your claim in your other post in this thread that there is "no any reason" to get FUT is nonsensical. There are plenty of reasons to go with FUT - all but points 1 and 4 were factual statements by OP. And you know very well the FUT scars aren't visible unless you choose to cut your hair very short, so it seems you have even more of an agenda than OP. Either that or - as evidenced by you literally having the above comment back *sswards - you're clueless generally.

Save yourself the money and get a small, long scar that no one will ever see or spend more and have tons of little ones no one will ever see. It's 6 one, half dozen the other. Except the 10k or so you'll save, that's a pretty big deal IMO.

Great result. I don't think you could've asked for much better. See through while soaking wet 1 inch away from a mirror is normal, but for some on this forum it seems they think "see-through" is a necessary outcome in normal conditions. Just a way to excuse for poor work IMO. I don't think you have particularly "favorable" hair characteristics. It appears to be fine hair with medium volume - not bad but not coarse or uber thick. And your skin/hair contract isn't poor, but it's also not ideal. Those two statements aren't me knocking your result or you, I'm just pointing that out because that shows great results needn't only come from those with coarse hair and super low skin/hair contrast. When would you say things stoped improving texture and thickness wise? Clearly your growth was very early.

Likely you'll have no legal recourse as they didn't physically hurt you and there's no guarantee of good growth or a good result. I never would've returned after seeing rows planted like that. What's it look like styled? Sorry this happened.

I think the texture may continue to get more similar to the rest of your hair as time goes on. I don't think that this was an overly "conservative" design. This is just a normal adult male hairline. Especially given that you're only 24 and had a good bit of your frontal third missing already. It looks good bro.

You won't lose all your gains in a month. You'd probably have to stop about 10 days prior and could resume about 2 weeks post-op. You wouldn't lose your gains and almost surely wouldn't even be far enough along in the post-minoxidil timeline to experience the dreaded shed. I didn't start shedding until around 3-3.5 months after stopping. I get your apprehension, but you're in the clear as long as you just start back ASAP/2 weeks post-op.

Good write up. I think you'll end up looking good - although I actually think your hairline was solid prior. I laughed out loud when you said the surgery was your penance for waiting too long. You look young for 28.

@track_rat

This thread makes me miss Schofield. I lived in the quad across the street from the Nehelani Club and the Inn at Schofield. I assume you're long gone from Hawaii by now, OP? Fun place to spend time.

It was a minor part of the video and he's a black dude and like most black dudes he honestly doesn't really look worse bald.

Given that you're 7+ months post-op, I still think it's reasonable to expect some straightening of the hair. That seems to be one of the last things to change. For now, I'd say it still looks good as is.

More irregularities that make it look natural. It may only be minor "zig-zagging", but if it were a straight line it wouldn't look quite as natural IMO.

I honestly think the best advice is to just put a hat on and don't think about it for a few months. Maybe you don't get the 100% perfect result you were hoping for, but almost certainly you will be better after this than you were before. And regardless of the outcome, it's completely out of your hands. I'm not saying you sound like you're hyper-stressing - you don't - but I've come to the realization that this is the best advice anyone can get up until around 6-7 months.

Everything Melvin said is correct. When you stop fin you will slowly revert to losing whatever hair you would've lost without fin in the first place. When you stop min you lose all the gains from min and then some to the point where you end up worse than baseline/before min. Now, to be sure, you should recover back to baseline after a time, but I think it's safe to say between those two drugs stoping min will have the more drastic "holy sh**, what's happening to my hair!" short term effect. And, as I stated before, you may stop min for a few months and think you're fine only to notice 3 or so months after stopping that you're shedding like mad. Once that shed starts, you can't stop it and even when it stops (it can last 4-8 weeks) it will take probably yet another 3-4 months at least to cosmetically recover from its effects. My cold-turkey shed lasted around 5-6 weeks and while the number of hairs I find in my drain catcher and comb post shower is back to normal, the areas that I applied min to the most still have a ways to go until they're back to pre-shed levels. Trust me, you're better off not starting then starting and stopping. It isn't too horrible a commitment, it only takes 3-5 minutes to apply, but it is essential you don't cold-turkey it. lol As far as its utility, it can definitely be a needle mover for some. Thicker, fuller hair is the name of the game after all and if you're willing to pony up many thousands of dollars and recover for half a year from a surgical procedure just to improve your hair, it seems hard to justify not also being willing to apply some foam to your scalp for 3-5 minutes every night before bed. If that sounds like too much, low dose oral min can be a game-changer as well and you'll be more likely to respond well to it.

It kind of appears to me that things peaked around 7 months. Perhaps the texture continued to improve after that and it's just not picked up on camera, though.

Min (if taken orally or applied to the donor) can strengthen your donor. While you could say all of these drugs are life-long, perhaps none more so than min. When you cold-turkey min you will likely shed and end up in a worse spot than you were to begin with (though you'll recover, those 4-5 months won't be enjoyable). Sure, you may make it 2-3 months before the shed begins, but begin it will. Min will help overall thicken your hair and will help regrow hair in areas that perhaps are weakened - but it likely won't really bring back "dead-zones" so to speak.

I agree that micro irregularities are pretty much necessary for a result to look natural in the vast majority of cases. Otherwise you end up looking weird. In this case, even the hairline has irregularities. Yes, it's "straight," but if you look at it closely, it has a very minor zig-zag design.

I thought topical dutasteride went less systemic. Given that, plus it's increased effectiveness, wouldn't that be a better option?

How is it torture to have a scar that no one sees? Even stretched, it should be pretty easily coverable by even medium length hair. I'm not saying I wouldn't be annoyed if mine had stretched - I would be - but I'm not sure I'd call it horrifying. And FUT + FUE combined still is considered to be the best way to maximize lifetime graft availability. How is you calling FUT "old tech" not every bit as much anti-FUT propaganda as Feller's videos are anti-FUE propaganda (your words, not mine)? If anything, a bad FUT scar is less likely to be cosmetically damaging than a badly harvested FUE donor...

Yes, probably 2000-3000 more grafts can be gotten if you combine the two and generally that seems to mean starting with strip. Don't worry about Bloxham and Fellers take on it on top of that initial point. They're correct in some instances, but some surgeons are skilled enough at FUE to get comparable graft survival rates to those achieved by FUT. Bottom line, yes, you maximize lifetime grafts combining FUT and FUE. Period.

My advice would be to figure out what you need to figure out to travel and what not (potentially advice from here) then put it out of your mind until the time of your procedure. After the procedure, listen to your docs instructions and don't post or spend time on here. Once the surgery is done, it's done. Nothing anyone says or thinks will improve or worsen the result (including your doc at that point honestly). Just go live your life and 6-8 months after you should look considerably better.