davidjosepha

Thanks, ALittelTeal! I'm quite happy with how it's going. It still feels a bit thin on the right side, which has become more obvious as it's grown out -- not the thinness directly, but more so that due to lower density, the hair doesn't stand as high compared to the left side. It feels a bit wiry which I think is typically a problem that resolves itself over the 9-12 month range, but we'll see. Either way, I'm extremely pleased with the result. Ten months (4/20/24) Had to try on a suit to make sure it still fit for a friend's wedding coming up and figured I'd take update pictures while I was at it. Please ignore the up-turned collar, as I apparently did until cropping the photos just now. Also need to clean up my beard, it's been getting rather disgusting lately.

Nine months (3/31/24)

Quite late updating, but I did take pictures monthly, just kept putting off posting because I've been wanting to add comparison pictures of hair at certain lengths prior to the surgery, but it's a whole lot of work finding pictures of me sober (and also show my hair at a given length) for the few years leading up to the FUE and I don't really want to put up pics with that dead look in my eyes. Still might find and post comparison pics at some point but I don't want to wait till I do to continue posting updates. Eight months (2/26/24)

Thanks Gatsby and baddecisions! Agreed that natural-looking is best. Upon looking a bit more, I think the notch in the front right isn't a problem, although I still do hope back left fills in a little more, even if it's not completely uniform density with the rest, particularly because it's the 'focal point' of how I part my hair when it's long. But whatever happens, happens! Yep, I've decided to allow the top to grow longer after the 6 month mark as suggested by Steeeve. Going to continue to cut the sides and possibly trim the top just to even up growth, but planning to allow it to get significantly longer. Good point. I've been trying to find some pictures of myself pre-transplant with hair length comparable to the updates so far (2 guard and 2 guard + one month of growth), but I'm not sure I have any that show things clearly. For several years, I was mostly trimming to 1/2 guard all around, or 1/2 on sides and 1 on top, then last year after scheduling transplant, I started growing it out just to get an idea of what I'd look like with hair, but I may have missed taking any pictures in the period where hair was at around a 2 guard. I'll keep looking, and I do have a decent number with it a bit longer that I can add to future months' updates for a more direct comparison.

Thanks guys, and apologies for the delayed update, but here it is. ~Seven months (1/31/24) Haven't trimmed my hair (or beard) since last update, meant to clean up the sides a bit before the update pics but since this isn't a beauty contest, I figure you can still see progress on top of my head regardless. Still some weakness on sides, most noticeably the larger indent in back left and the smaller indent on right near the peak which I'm hoping will fill in more, but even if progress stopped entirely today I think I'd be quite happy with the results (although I'm glad that I've still got several months of progress to look forward to!). Apologies for the inconsistency of my head angles in the front-facing shots from update to update.

I would say it's a quite good result. I understand it not being everything you hoped for and I don't blame you for being disappointed, but I think it still looks quite good, and definitely a huge improvement from before the surgery. The 'bonus photos' are interesting, they're not what I would have expected seeing the other photos, which look significantly better. However, your hair is 'combed' (by means of the hat) in a way that doesn't look as good as it could, even ignoring the hairline issues, so imo the problem there ends up being 'if I don't have my hair styled optimally, the thinness of my hairline is more noticeable'. It'd be great if you didn't have to think about that at all, but I wonder whether you can work around that just by being careful about how you style your hair, and when wearing a hat, put it on such that your hair is pulled back, rather than to the sides. You also may want to consider keeping the sides shorter so the contrast does some of the work for you. There are folks on this board who put in a whole lot of work every day to have their hair styled such that the thinness isn't noticeable, and unfortunately for many, that's just the reality of the situation (see Melvin's post on transplants being an illusion of density). You're lucky to be in a position where you could likely make the density a reality with another surgery, but I understand if that's not the route you want to go down. If it were me, I'd probably look into filling in the front a bit more (particularly the front left), but I also wouldn't feel self-conscious about where it's at now. Congrats! And I'd also be interested to see an update in 3 or 6 months to see if there's any change. I wouldn't count on it, but sometimes there are still improvements to be had past the 12 month mark.

Thanks, guys. I'm slightly worried the right side is weak in terms of number of follicles that have 'sprouted' near the hairline. I realize that each follicle will strengthen / thicken over time, but supposedly around 80% of the follicles should have broken through the skin by this point, so unless the growth is quite unevenly distributed, seems like even with potentially ~20% of the follicles left to go, it'll probably be a bit weak. But that's the side I combed over when I still had hair, so probably won't be too noticeable. Overall very happy with progress and excited to finally let the top grow out a bit!

Thanks Steve and hybonix, I cut for the 6 month update but going to let it grow on top from this point. Let's see how it goes! ~Six months (12/30/23)

Thanks for the side-by-side, that's a more dramatic difference than I'd noticed. Seems to be going very well so far! I want to be able to judge progress, which is why I've left my hair shorter, but I'm planning to grow it out a bit, just not sure when I should start that process. Maybe buzz once more for the 6 month mark, then let it grow after that point. Thoughts?

~Five months (11/30/23) Sorry for the delay, had a busy Thanksgiving. Pictures were taken 11/30. Hair cut to a 2 guard a couple days before they were taken.

Thanks for the confirmation on donor area. 'Looks completely untouched' is quite the compliment to Dr. Josephitis and his team, and a great reassurance to me. See below for more. And yes, I'm astounded at how much growth I've seen already this early. I believe I've seen a fair bit even since these last pictures, but I'll wait till ~11/20 to take and share more. My parents were visiting me last weekend and my mom commented on it seeming like my hair was really filling in, and she'd seen me just a month before that, so she had a good source of comparison. Thank you, I've been pretty happy with how it's looked as it's grown out. I've never had a beard get this long before without being a complete mess. I unfortunately took off more than I intended a week or so ago trying to even things up, but it'll grow back. Donor area (11/9/23) After the comments about my donor from jwolfe and steeeve, I decided to just go for it and trim my sides to 1/2 guard and see how it looked, as very shortly it will be prohibitively cold. Pay no attention to the top of my head, in particular the hack cut I gave myself this morning so I could take these photos. I see a couple marks that could be scarring from the surgery, but I have to look really close to see them; to me it's not at all obvious that anything was done there even at such a short cut. All in all, I don't think I'll have to think even a little about hiding anything, which is nice, as a 1/2 guard on the sides can be nice in the summer. But let me know what you think.

Thank you for the kind words, Silent and HairFunk. You got it. Four months (10/22/23) Some progress. The growth is more visible in the side shots than the front ones, I think, and more visible in a mirror than it is in the photos, but there's a decent amount of immature hairs filling in the gaps in my hairline and it looks like a few mature ones as well, although I could be imagining it. I see myself almost every day, so even referencing the older photos it's difficult to know what's in my head and what's on my head. In any case, I feel like my hair looks better than it used to at this length, and it's a nice feeling. (Nonetheless, feel free to disillusion me.) Freshly cut to a 2 guard all around, as was the previous month's update. I'm not going to include these every time, but this time I took shots of the donor area. It does look a bit patchy, but I'm not convinced that's necessarily a result of the procedure—I can find pictures of myself from prior to the procedure with similar patchiness after a trim. It may just be because my clippers aren't very sharp and it's difficult to trim the back of my head. I don't see any scarring, but at around the year mark, I'll trim down to a 1 or 1/2 guard on the sides just to see what it looks like. I believe I was told prior to the procedure that I shouldn't expect to be able to trim shorter than a 2 without the scarring being noticeable.

I am a new user but have been lurking on and off for years. I think this would be useful as a way for people considering a beard transplant to easily find progress threads that go into detail on the process and their results. I've vaguely considered getting a handful of follicles of my body hair (which is excessive) transplanted to a few small weak spots in my beard (where, for whatever reason, the hair is sparse), but it's hard to find details on the process anywhere. Even if the forum is quiet with infrequent posts, it seems useful to have it segmented off from other hair transplant threads to make it easy for those considering such transplants to find. Or, alternatively, is there a way that threads in the normal hair transplant forum could be encouraged to add a standardized tag (or mods could tag such threads) to make beard threads easier to find? Currently the tagging process is easily missed, and even users who add tags might use them inconsistently such that these threads are not easy to find. I would think that, given the relative rarity of even beard transplants, it may be best to combine all non-scalp transplants into a single forum, eg "Beard and Other Body Hair Transplants". (Can't find a way to manually add a quote while editing a post, but this is in response to JasonElva1990's comment around eyebrow transplants.)

The second set of pictures here (in the white henley) is the 3 month mark, or a week shy of it. I'll post an update in a couple weeks for 4 months.

As for number of grafts, I imagine 1000 more would be plenty to fill that out, but if you're worried about still not being happy with it even after a second procedure, and you're going to do the procedure anyway, I would consider doing a bit more on the front and getting some of the crown and maybe mid done as well. I don't know how pricing works with other clinics, but if it's similar to Shapiro (or if you go with them again, sounds like they may give a discounted rate), the price drops off a lot after a certain number of grafts (2000 with SMG). So you may want to consider filling out some of the rest while you're at it to save cost and to save yourself another procedure in the future. You do run the risk of using your finite donor supply in places that might never need it, but if you notice your crown thinning, there's a pretty standard pattern to how that happens that you can use to predict where it'll be needed.