basedHair

Sorry it's taken me a while to respond. Here are Month 3 pics. Definitely in the middle of my ugly duckling phase. The curly beard hair seem to be growing wild, while some of the others are taking their time. Will have a month 4 update soon!

Another update. Safely back in the US now. Been washing my head carefully regularly, and most if not all the scabs have come off. The hair looks pretty good right now, and folks have been commenting on how good it looks. I do have occasional stabbing pains on my scalp. My research says that it's the nerves healing and will eventually subside. Taking painkillers once in a while to manage, but nothing too bad. The Eugenix post-care team is pretty diligent about following up and answering questions - even getting on the phone to talk whenever necessary. I've resumed some physical activity now, and I was worried that perhaps I was too aggressive with shampooing to get the scabs out, or resuming exercise too soon (went on a tiny run, a mid size hike and some strength training) but so far so good. I haven't noticed any hair falling out yet. From my conversation with Eugenix, it sounds like the first 6-7 days are the most critical and after this, the grafted hair has pretty much taken root. It's still important to be gentle up to the 2 week mark, but post that point it sounds like you can start functioning completely normally. Here's some pics from Day 11. I live by myself so it's been hard to take pics of the back of my head, but will share some of the back soon! As you can see, it's really hard even for me to tell that we took 2000 grafts from the beard. It doesn't really feel thinned out at all!

Sorry for the delay, here are a couple of updates. First update is from Day 5 post-op. Been very good about spraying saline every two hours and taking my meds. Other than sleeping being a pain, everything else seems to be going ok. Luckily since I've been staying close to the Mumbai clinic I've been going in every day to get my donor area cleaned and dressed. The folks at the clinic have been super nice, and see me straight away as soon as I walk in to get my donor cleaned. Various technicians from my surgery have stopped by to say hi as they've been going in and out of surgery and commenting on how everything seems to be healing up nicely, which has been reassuring. At this point my beard area has completely healed up and they don't even think I need to put any more cream or betadine anymore. I head out back to the US on my Day 7, so they asked me to come for my first wash on Day 6 so I can sleep and travel comfortably after. Here's pics from Day 5.

About 3000 were scalp and they managed to get 2000 from my beard. I used to take fin for my native hair but stopped when I tried hair systems all last year. Getting back on it now. Thanks btw. I’m def anxious about how it’s going to look. Sometimes I look at my face and panic and worry about the temples and hairline design. I’m hoping the temples will not look as aggressively filled in as they do right now while healing.

Update! It's now the first day after the procedure. Day 1 - I went in at 9 and after they took my blood pressure and had me sign some release forms, I went in to get photos taken. Dr. Das came by and designed my hairline. This was something I was the most worried about because I didn't know if I could reliably figure out what I wanted in 30 mins. I haven't had a proper hairline since my 20s. I had some pictures of what I liked best when I wore a hairsystem and based on that she went ahead and designed a hairline for me, but added temple points (which hair systems cannot restore, and I really wanted). I wanted to look realistic as a 41 year old, so I did want some recession. She gave me two options - one was her first design and another with a little more recession. I ended up going with her first suggestion. She also took a look at my growth at this point and reassessed her graft count down from 6000 to 4500 based on how my hair was growing. I got changed and we got started. Most of the work on day 1 was focused on my temples and front hairline where I got most of my density. It was a long day and we ended at 9 pm. We stopped for a late lunch around 3 and they order you anything you want. I ended up getting some amazing Indian food (you can't get kebabs and roomali roti like this in the US!) and then we went right back to it. On Day 2 we started at 9 again - this time we did the crown and then the midscalp with grafts from my beard. In total we ended up doing 5000 grafts cause they were able to harvest more from my beard. Overall - the staff and technicians were excellent. As promised Dr. Das did the slits and some of the work, and then kept coming in and out as she monitored the work being done by the sr. technicians. There were two patients being worked on at a time - me and someone else. I'm not going to say that the procedure was absolutely painless. The local anaesthesia was painful, but the techs are really sweet and use vibrators and needles to reduce the pain. There's no way around this, but its temporary pain and it makes the extraction and implantation work painless after. Whenever possible they allow you to play your own music and watch TV that you like (you can cast and airplay) - it just depends on what position you're in at the moment. In general, the staff is very concerned with your comfort and safety throughout. Both at the end of day 1 and day 2 I was given supplies (meds, surgical caps to cover my head, saline spray, neck pillow etc.) and detailed instructions about how to take care of sleeping overnight and my care plan over the next 7 days which are most crucial. Luckily I am going to be in India for a week so I plan to go into the clinic every day to get my donor area cleaned and the day before I fly back to the states to get my first wash - all of this post care is complimentary if you are local, else their post care team is very diligent in following up with you and giving you what you need to manage yourself. I have to say that sleeping has been a bit of a challenge since you're not supposed to rest on your recipient area at all and with implants in my crown, temples and hairline it means I have to sleep face up with a neck pillow and a rolled up bedsheet under my crown. It is what it is - no pain no gain right? Overall I was nervous but have had a good experience with Eugenix. I still worry that the hair design won't look good! Esp with the temples looking so filled in, but Dr. Das reassured me that it will look good and that it looks like a lot cause of the scabs, but the transitions will be quite natural. I'm excited to see how it all turns out! Attaching some pics from the day of and post-op. Will add more as the week continues!

Hey folks, lurker here for a while and now first time poster. Background - I’ve been losing hair since my 20s. Honestly back then I didn’t think or realize how bad it was getting and didn’t think there was much I could do about it. In my mid 30s I started fin for a few years which helped maintain some density in my crown but by then I had already lost most of my front hairline. I convinced myself I was feeling sides. Mostly a loss of libido, but frankly speaking I think it was stress related likely. I stopped fin and experienced an accelerated loss of hair in my crown. At this point I reached out to a doctor in LA and did a virtual consult (start of pandemic). He looked at me and said I was not a good candidate for HT cause my donor wasn’t good. This really discouraged me. I ended up trying hair systems for a year. While they looked good, honestly I was never happy with the process, the constant maintenance and reapplication (I run and exercise 5-6 times a week and this just broke down the bonds frequently) and more importantly it was always stressful when it came to travel and dating. I also wanted hair that looked natural for my age (41) and not like I was 20. My primary doctor recommended I get a second opinion. This set off a series of strange events. I went down this rabbit hole of research, found Eugenix, amazingly enough Dr. Sethi was going to be in San Francisco where I live for in person consults in a couple of days! I met him and as I had a completely shaved head at the time he quoted me a high number of around 7000 grafts. It was good to meet him though and I felt like I really had a shot at this. I started communicating with the Eugenix team and while I wanted to go with Dr. Arika, she wasn’t going to be available in Mumbai where my preference was (I have family that lives there literally 10 mins away from the clinic!) What’s more, I had to be in India on Aug 6 for a week for personal reasons and turns out they had availability to schedule me on the 7th! This series of happy coincidences really made me take the leap and go ahead with Dr. Priyadarshini Das. I’m the kind of person who would usually spend a year or more doing research and feeling comfortable enough to do this, but some personal events in my life over the past year have encouraged me to remind myself that life is short and when the signs are pointing to something, just go for it. Overall, barring a couple of minor hiccups the Eugenix team has been great to work with. I was mostly in touch with Mohit who was always very responsive and kind. I also had a video consult with Dr. Priyadarshini who was very sweet and patient. There was a bit of dropping the ball between different teams (for example had to contact often to get info about my preop procedure and timings) but overall they were all super responsive and nice. On the preop day we got photos taken and Dr. Das looked at me and said now that I have hair (I let it grow for the month since I saw Dr. Sethi) she did not think I needed more than around 4500 grafts, since she was seeing areas that were growing nicely and would respond well to finasteride. I really respect Eugenix’s integrity in this. She also noted I had some reverse thinning which would also respond well to fin, but it reduced the donor she had to get grafts from. We decided to get some beard grafts for the remaining. Sharing some pics of my hair pre-op. Note the very clear separation of my crown and donor is because of the hair system I wore till June. In my next post I’ll share some pictures and my experiences over the two days of surgery.