Hashi

5 minutes ago, BeHappy said:

 

Yes. You are being too gentle. Shampoo your hair like you normally would, rubbing your fingers all through it.

 

Alright, gotcha. I'm probably worrying too much.. I'll start off with some conditioner and give it a shot. Thank you!

3 hours ago, StillAlive said:

My doctor gave me a medicinal foam and instructed me to let it soak on my head for 15 mins before washing, in order to soften up the scabs. Then, during the wash, I'd massage with my finger-tips to get the scabs off. When i still had scabs on at day 12, they asked me to apply the foam for 15 mins post wash as well and massage a bit harder. That did the trick. If you have any doubts, please contact your doctor and they'll be able to instruct you on how to proceed. 

To set your mind at ease, at 12-13 days post op, your grafts are pretty secure, there's almost zero chance of you dislodging a graft by scrubbing. 

Do you think I could also let the water hit the recipient area directly from the shower head? Like full force and everything? So far I've been avoiding that, just having the water run down from non-transplanted area to the transplanted area.

14 hours ago, ray35 said:

I think the recommend method is to place some conditioner  on the the areas and let sit for 10 or 15 then scrub and wash off... should loosen up doing that.

Would any conditioner work or do I need something special to not hurt the newly transplanted hairs?

(Day 12 post-op FUE)

So I've been looking around on other people's results, and I noticed that most people have had most of their scabs almost completely gone by day 10 post-op.
I'm on day 12 and this is what it looks like. I've washed my head seven times, two times per day on day 8 & day 9, and then once per day on day 10, 11, 12 as instructed by the clinic.

How come I still have so many scabs left? Am I doing something wrong? Is this a bad thing?

I was told to increase the friction day after day when washing. I'm trying to be really gentle, but still I feel like I'm being pretty rough and I don't want to damage the new hairs/follicles. Any advice on how to get rid of the scabs?

Alright, thanks for the helpful insight.

6 minutes ago, shiba1985 said:

stay on finasteride and if you want add topical minoxidil. 

Understood! But is it not the same with topical minoxidil?

On 1/13/2023 at 8:55 PM, shiba1985 said:

from personal experience, i have noticed more hair loss from starting stopping meds. then staying on some consistently or not starting them at all.  They say if you stop you go back to what you would have been if you did not take it at all, but how can one truly measure that? whether you were going to progress all the time you were on meds... or not progress.. ahh too complex to explain but get what  i am saying?

Yeah no hard to explain but it makes sense, I get what you're saying! There's no way of measuring that really, and even if they tried there's too many factors in play..

And I definitely don't want to take minoxidil for life and since it's doesn't affect transplant whatsoever, I'll just stay on finasteride.

What about dutasteride? Is it the same that I should only take it if I plan to use it life long - and that it'll be noticably bad once I stop it? Or would it be ok to take duta two days a week for 3 months like the clinic recommended?

20 hours ago, drawdownfx said:

Yeah I know what you are talking about but I wouldn't worry about it now. You will get more of an Idea after your 2nd/3rd head wash, see how it is looking then. Also am not too sure on the science of scabs maybe someone else can chime in @Melvin- Moderator but the work looks good. How many grafts were put?

Thank you, I'll be patient. Worrying is never good I suppose!

I'll be doing a proper post later with all the information and update my progress, for now I'm just resting and randomly taking pictures every now and then. I can't find the paper with my exact graft count right now but it was a little over 3000 grafts.

56 minutes ago, shiba1985 said:

This question is difficult to answer but i will try. 

Oral minoxidil is not necessary for surgery itself to be successful. a good surgery should stand alone by itself without minoxidil. 

If you take minoxidil your results will look more "wow" since it will beef up your hair both the transplanted and existing i.e. Each strand will be thicker. so for eg. let us say your average hair shaft is 65 um, with minoxidil it maybe 75 um. this small difference can result in a big visual difference cosmetically. Also more % of follicles will be in Anagen phase. 

However when you stop taking the minoxidil, it will go back to the way it was going to be without minoxidil. Meaning if you dont want to take it forever, no point in taking it and stopping. 

5 mg is a hefty dose. I would not take it forever. but that is just my personal opinion. 

Medications are more a strategy to combat further hair loss. That is the main use for them, not so much for the success of surgery. 

They actually didn't specify how long I'd need to take it for. But definitely at least 3 months, since I got a prescription for 90 tablets. I've been on Finasteride since October 2021 and absolutely nothing else. My initial plan was to simply resume Finasteride 10 days post-op and not take anything new, but now with all this Minoxidil and Dutasteride talk.. I don't know. Would it hurt to take Fin/Min/Dut for 3 months until the 3 month checkup, and then stop everything except Finasteride? I get what you said about noticing a difference once I stop taking Minoxidil, but stopping won't make it worse than before I start Minoxidil.. right?

Thing is, I absolutely don't want to do anything to make the transplant in any way not go as smoothly as possible. So if Minoxidil and Dutasteride are a must, then I'll definitely take them. But honestly if they have NOTHING to do with the transplant or the survival of the transplanted hairs, then what's the point? I'm perfectly fine on my Finasteride treatment..

25 minutes ago, drawdownfx said:

I think it's more so no scabs being there instead of 'missing chunks' of grafts. What day is this after surgery and do you have an immediate post op pic?

This is the earliest picture I could find with decent quality, even then it looks less dark in that area than the rest. Do scabs have like a percent chance of appearing and they just happened not to appear there?

Good to hear about the donor area, thanks for the reassurance. Yeah, it was Yasmin. She was incredibly nice and kept asking me like a million times if there was any pain to make sure I didn't suffer in any way.

I took some better pictures, it's more noticable here. Will this missing chunk not make my hairline asymmetrical? I had no hairs in that area before the transplant.

20 minutes ago, drawdownfx said:

oral minoxidil has some really good before and after results and the medicine clearly works. It's still not as important as finasteride/dutasteride but its the next best thing. Have you tried alldaychemist? I am not sure if it will deliver to sweden but that is where I get it from and the medicine works because I had puffiness in my eyes for the first 15 days before my body has gotten more used to it now. How did your surgery go? I had mine with Dr Freitas just a month before you

The surgery went really well actually, everyone was so nice and I was comfortable throughout the whole procedure. The only thing that has me worried is what I wrote just now in another post I made. I've always been really impressed with Dr Freitas' work.

But so, I'm not saying oral minoxidil is in anyway ineffective, I'm just wondering if it's absolutely necessary. Is it worth making a quick trip to Spain for like ~100 euro just to buy it?

Hello, I'm worried about two things after my transplant with Dr Freitas.

It looks like the left side of the Donor area has been harvested more than the right side. You can see near the top that the donor area on the Left picture is closer to the recipient area, and in the Right picture there's a bigger gap from donor to recipient. Same thing if you just look where the harvested area stops, on the Left picture it looks much closer to where the forehead begins than on the Right picture.

This leaves me worried that the right side of my head will have more hair than the left side, or am I wrong?

For the second thing, it's about my new hairline. On the left side, I feel there's an area where fewer hairs were implanted compared to the rest of the hairline. It's more noticable IRL than in the pictures, but you can see it in the picture where I've written "too little?". Just follow the hairline, look at how much has been implanted, and how little in that particular area. This worries me that the end result will be a weird looking hairline in that area..

Comparing these two thoughts I'm kind of wishing they would correct this by taking more hairs from my right side donor area and filling in the spot they didn't plant enough in, especially since the surgery was so recent (3 days ago). But I don't know. I'm not exactly the kind of person who tells people they might have done something less than perfectly so I'm here asking you guys instead. What should I do here? Is it possible to have them do something about this or am I being stupid?

Hello, I had a hair transplant on the 9th and 10th of January in Valencia Spain with Dr Freitas.

One of the post op instructions is that I need to take Oral Minoxidil 5mg starting from the 3rd day, every night. The problem is that this medicine is not available in my country (Sweden). I've tried 3 different doctors and all pharmacies and they all say this medicine doesn't exist in Sweden and they won't order any from abroad.

I was thinking I'd go back to Spain and buy the Minoxidil from there and then come back, but my question is..

Is the Minoxidil really essential to the success of the operation? Do I really have to keep taking it for the transplant to not fail? I've noticed other clinics don't have it as part of their post-op care, so why is it important?

Freitas' clinic also mentioned that it's ok if I'm a bit late in starting Minoxidil, even if I do it after 2 weeks it's fine. But would it be fine to skip it completely? I rather not go all the way back to Spain just to buy a medicine if the medicine is not neccessary. How is Minoxidil related to hair transplant?

Please help ease my worries. Thank you.