xXFOLICILEDOMINIONXx

18 hours ago, Stewie said:

I know your not having a good time mate and your stressing, all I can say is like others, If you examine what you had versus the pics of what was transplanted and then to the pics now, you are in a good place for sure, the hair has grown. you absolutely have more hair!

The problem is, the 4.5k grafts we're put over the entire scalp and obviously not in a very dense way because of the surface area they needed to cover, so in your eyes it looks like a failure, from an outsider view its obvious its grown and doing well, I had around 5500/6000ish between my first 2 HT and it was sparse over a similar area, mainly down to the fact I have very fine hair, so there is always other factors at play to, 4500 grafts on someone with thick hair would look completely different etc

Honestly I think after another session you'll be in a good place, you might not think this has been good, but you hair at a shorter length now is covering your head a million times better than that mega long hair you had previous, from what I can see its looking good

Thanks for your input! You've been my voice of reason a lot in all of this. I just want enough to cover so with the second procedure I can have full coverage. It sucks that things have been arranged in a way I did not request right now. I do agree that there is more hair, what i'm just questioning is how *much* more there actually is..but there is some time, and i'm a hella slow grower so ...

I would expect the frontal third to be able to tank a gust of wind by the end of this. That's my "yep, okay, this is a success" even if I may not be satisfied by graft yield / placement

20 minutes ago, asterix0 said:

 Did you find these threads, they are pre march 2023. I did about 1 minute of googling:

 

#1 is at 6 months. 6 months is by zero stretch the final result. Patient vanished. Not a valid example. Furthermore the patient even stated that he's a slow grower for sure. (Growth started at 4.5 months)
#2 is definitely a valid example. This was the major one that I saw - but this was really the only one. It sounded like Dr. Yaman was willing to refund in full though.
#3 is a valid example with donor destruction also. I didn't see this before.
#4 is not a valid example. The patient updated at 4 months. At 4 months, it is still possible to be shock loss / growth potentially not even started and then abandoned the thread. How is this a valid example?

14 hours ago, asterix0 said:

Don't take the recommended list here as gospel. The lines are blurred when you think the information here is 100% only for the patient's (you or me or anyone) best interests.

All you can do is be thankful other members had the guts to post their subpar results here, a subpar result is 10x more valuable than a good one. Even a hair mill can produce a great result from time to time.

 

It's not just here. Dr. Yaman was on the recommended list on reddit as well , pretty much everywhere, with no real negative fingers pointing at him pre mar 2023 (when I scheduled my appointment). There was a thread that was edited recently on reddit pointing at him as a hair mill, but it definitely wasn't like that when I looked during booking.

Naturally, there is some level of corporate shilling on every forum, but it's still the wild west and mostly difficult to parse data. ( though as we get more data..that will change ) 

I advised the clinic consultant. I would be reviewing this in visible locations pre-procedure in hopes that I would receive the best techs.(wishful thinking of course) Not sure that happened..

5 hours ago, BaldGuy said:

if you see the post op photos it is clear that the hairline has better implantation density compared to midscalp. So in order to have the bestter looking result you have to change your hairstyle and do not comb your hairs forward.

Also as i said dr yaman implanted grafts between your native hairs and a percentage of them may have been lost due to hair loss progress, thats why you can see some gaps.

Your photos are all with wierd hairstyles seperating your hairs in different directions. As i said hair transplants are an illusion of density and if everyone seperate his hairs in different dirrections it will show "gaps"

Look dude. no matter how many times I style it up or change directions it still doesn't change the fact that frontal third density is just not there despite being in a high density transplant area. This can maybe change and improve but its not super likely. Even if all of my hairs were 100% straight up johnny bravo style there's still going to be huge gaps. In the hairline. I will literally do it to prove to you that the frontal third is still trash looking if I absolutely have to.

HOWEVER, this does not matter because I showed the Dr. what I wanted, he agreed with it, and then rearranged the hair in a way that does not support what I want. 

There is a small line of hairs. And then there is nothing. This looks equally as stupid.

Still..i'm not saying anything can't change with a few months, as i'm definitely the slowest grower i've seen, but things are not looking positive at the moment.

Is there improvement? *yes* , but not 4550 grafts worth currently and that is not the issue. The issue is that I have potentially blown out more grafts than I can use on a possible bad procedure.

20 minutes ago, asterix0 said:

It's pretty simple, unfortunately this was no the doctor to handle your case, you have naturally thinner donor hair, it is trickier to handle than thick grafts, perhaps there was some transection which affected your yield.

With a high Norwood case like yours only the top clinics should have touched your head if you wanted a true home run result.

Nevertheless, another procedure can solve your problems, but do your due diligence this time and go to the right clinic for your case. 

Dr. Yaman has succeeded on multiple high norwood cases. The problem is he fails as often as he succeeds from a glance around the forum (which the results were skewed positive when I originally booked. I scoured everything on reddit, and here.) There is no single post here that says "Dr. Yaman cannot handle higher norwood cases" in 2023. There was no amount of due diligence that could have saved me. If Doctors are not recommended to perform certain procedures, they should probably be removed from the recommended list here.

I sincerely hope my donor has enough to handle a larger second procedure due to a potential borf up of the first one. 

1 minute ago, BaldGuy said:

I think your result looks pretty decent compared to before and taking in mind your huge area to cover. You cannot expect high density in all of this area with a hair transplant.

If you change your hair style and comb your hairs to the back it will look better than combing your hairs to the front. That happens in all of hair transplants because doctors tend to put higher density in the frontal part.

Also keep in mind that dr yaman implanted hairs between your native hairs in the midscalp and because of your hair loss progress you may have lost some of them...thats why you can see some "gaps"...

Finally, all of your pictures are in pretty harsh light and condition with you sepeterating your hairs in different dirrections. Hair trasnplants are an illusion of density and all of the candidates if they would seperate their hairs in different directions like you, they would show gaps.

It becomes frustrating to have to say this over and over again, but I did not get a transplant to comb my hairs back. I told the Dr. what I wanted, asked if it was achievable, and was said yes. Every single doctor I have consulted with said it is achievable.

Furthermore, again, I will repeat, this is not a "me combing my hairs back" issue. This is a "stuff isn't growing well" issue.

Here is a low effort me combing my hair back to appease the crowd. You see this giant gap? There are multiple of these in the hairline still. At 8 months. This is the issue. Not the direction of my hair.

5 hours ago, Broni said:

Can you be more specific as to "slight"? How much time was needed to actually grasp whether Fin is working to stop the hair loss?

The problem is I don't even know if it's working to stop the hair loss. I have had very very slight loss over time ( though I think part of it was shock loss initiated when I microneedled that never came back - my scalp HATES microneedling, thusly I will no longer do it. It just makes me shed and causes nasty shock loss that takes a long amount of time to grow back.)

The problem with finasteride is there's no way to tell it's working or not until you go off of it. Being that I don't want to risk losing my hair any more, I'm not willing to take the risk and get off of it. I've been scared into meds , basically. If you're hearing this merck, you've won, customer for life.

27 minutes ago, BogdanNn134 said:

@xXFOLICILEDOMINIONXx Thank you for the update. I think you should've focused only on Hairline and Mid scalp on your first hair transplant, after that you could do the crown. Seems like Dr Yaman have 50/50 results some are good some are bad. 

I perhaps also agree with this. I think at best I can hope for an "average" result from this. To be fair, Dr. Yaman is a relatively low cost doctor compared to others on this forum, perhaps the lowest cost recommended Dr. That being said, final results aren't totally locked in yet because i'm an insanely slow grower ( growth in the hairline really only started at 4 months for me ). also it is difficult for me to notice new growth due to my hair being blonde, and the new growth always coming in transparent.

However there are still gaps in the hairline and it still looks like trash at 8 months so i'm tempering my expectations.

12 hours ago, Broni said:

As for your medical regime, have you experienced any side effects of finasteride?

I have. I did feel a slight libido drop and watery you-know what. For me, the libido drop is welcome..it's amazing what I can accomplish without that monkey on my shoulder all the time. No impotence though. I have remained on finasteride even with sides because the sides are welcome. lol.

12 hours ago, Al - Moderator said:

I think the issue here is that you comb your hair forward to cover the front. There's nothing wrong with doing that and I'm not blaming you for it. That's how you're been combing your hair for a long time. The problem is most HT Drs try to create a thick hair line and then put less grafts behind it because they have to put less density somewhere in order to get a thick front line. There's a limited number of grafts. This is fine with most people because almost everyone wants a dense hair line. In your case however, it would have been better for Dr Yaman to transplant at a more even density, putting a bit less than he did along the frontal line and more throughout the mid scalp. Doing that would have made more of difference on you due to the way you comb it. 

If you decide to go for another HT in the future, make sure you let them know that you are interested in thickening the mid scalp more than the hair line based on how you style your hair.

With that said, it does look like you got some improvement and it seems like you can get a similar look that you had before without needing to grow your hair quite as long which makes it look more natural and less like you are trying to cover up a balding area and more like you just like styling your hair that way.

 

No. This is not the issue. 

The very first thing I did when I entered the consult with Dr. Yaman is go. "Hello. Please look at this image of my hair. Can you help me get back to this? Is this realistic." , to which Dr. Yaman responded it is possible, but I will need another procedure for the crown. You can see that, honestly, with even little density here, you can still see the see-through gappiness of it. I'd be fine with that. My hair plays with my skin color, too. I've been scamming hair for a while, lol (Pre-op, 2018) Furthermore, I even came into the office looking like this. ( though with a little bit less hair )

After this, Dr. Yaman then implanted in my crown. In hindsight, I should have asked him why he did so. Perhaps Dr. Yaman was trying to align with my coverage scamming.  Perhaps he saw more follicles than he thought previously on consultation? May never know..

Even if * I wanted * to style my hair up right now, it is impossible, as previously mentioned, due to poor density in the hairline. Again, referencing gaps.png from the last update post - there are parts of the hairline that are still pretty empty. 

I've scoured tons of people at 8 months and see lots of people starting to panic about this time though and turn out still semi-OK, so i'm trying to keep patient.

This has absolutely nothing to do with my choice of styling my hair up.  I gave the doctor a "this is what I want, can you help me", I got "yes". If the grafts are implanted wrong, that is a doctor or technician issue and should be rightly called out as a failed procedure because the doctor either didn't listen or understand, which would be a red flag for future clients. 

The issues right now are that

A. graft survival rate appears to probably be poor (I have more growing time, this can change, please, lord of hair) (Possibly me, more probably a clinic issue )

B. Implant locations did not align with my expectations and were given with clear communication to the doctor. (I will say this is also a strong "maybe" right now still, because I am confused by the graft implantation in the crown) (If this is the issue, 100% a clinic issue)

Graft survival could be on  me and my body just hating my own hair for some reason, but I had pretty much all the ideal conditions for this to succeed. (I'm on all smart medical therapies, I can afford quality supplements and use them, and i've been hyper-vigilant about trying to make this succeed because I -REALLY- wanted to have hair again. I work from home in a non-physically demanding job but only did light exercise for the time the doctor prescribed, followed all post-op procedures to a T, no blood pressure issues, no diseases or disabilities), making graft survival much more likely a technician handling issue than a "me" issue.

I could still maybe consider this successful if the hairline fills in. I understand most doctors do it like that - but I can't do the hairline up due to low density or maybe immature hair, AND I can't quite have it my normal requested way either currently, that is the issue.

But i'm still content to wait it out and see. My best case scenario is, Dr. Yaman aligned with my ideas to help me coverage scam and things will actually turn out great. My worst is the hairline remains full of holes, and directly behind the hairline also remains full of holes that I remain in this limbo where i can't either style my hair up, OR style it forward comfortably without another procedure.

I honestly expect Dr. Yaman was on board with my coverage scamming, which is why he transplanted everywhere - but I really need to see some more grafts popping up / thickening soon to make me feel a little bit better about all this..

Yeah, if I do another one it will definitely be with a doctor-only procedure. I don't want to declare this as a failure yet and look like a dummy at 12 months or something where some voodoo happens in the next little bit and hair magically appears, but if I hit anagen desynch soon and it starts looking worse i'm in a VERY bad position.

Also, my donor can really only tank one more procedure per Dr. Yaman(including using beard grafts), so if this transplant failed I have some interesting choices to make. I expected on 2 transplants, but if I need 3, i'm kind of fked. kind of holding to see what would come of verteporforin. Would consider Laorwong - contacting Pekiner is an absolute nightmare, I tried to originally with this one. I really have to wait out the final results though because it's going to play a big portion in how i play my cards.

However, being a diffuse thinner - I will say that in the moment, I am still very disappointed. I'm definitely sure i'm a slow grower though, so I haven't lost all hope.

Additionally - I will say this much. My ability to coverage scam is getting better, and the visual effect is also. This is a picture just from me in the middle of the day. If the effect improves just a LITTLE bit more, I would be okay with it and would say "Satisfied", even though I feel overall graft survival rate might not be the greatest. But there still is time to grow and improve.

This is a picture of me just having my hair fluffed as usual from top down., right now. Looks pretty okay! But..it's same as I used to, growing out hair to cover up. I'm of course, fine with doing that.

However, here's where my issue is - if I move my head a little bit or get hit by a gust of wind, it's pretty ugly in the middle. The middle front there should be a pretty high density transplant area with a good bit of native hair actually left. Either I lost a lot of grafts here, lost some natural hair, or a bit of both. (Maybe there is more to come in the months ahead?)

I would say my mood has shifted from "terrified" to only "disappointed". If I can expect some improvements in the next few months, I think I could graduate to "satisfied/acceptable result" , but if the frontal third / hairline remains gappy, I would probably call this a failed result.

Being able to coverage scam with my transplant was expected, but I could also do it BEFORE..thusly, my ability to do it should be better now. I should be able to tank a single gust of wind before looking like i eat toppik for dinner (Here's a 3-month pre transplant photo)

I want to keep in mind that i'm being quantifiable about this in the sense that i'm judging the satisfaction based on actual improvement that I see, not "is it covered or not" - because I was "covered" pre procedure. I want to see grafts growing in high density transplant areas, and there's still some significant issues in play regarding that.

but hey, still 

live laugh, love, trust the process..etc

8 months

Still on Finasteride 1mg, Minoxidil(topical per doctor's instructions), Ketocanozle

There is little to update from last month. I don't know if I really see anything growing and there's not much of a visual change. Not feeling much more positive. Feeling very scared knowing I blew most of my grafts.

If I move away the hair from the back I am coverage scamming with(growing to cover up the bald ), you can see there is hair there...but not a lot. It still looks basically the same as pre-transplant. The sides are also very sparse still. There is absolutely not enough density to do anything but the usual comb forward still because the visual effect is not good.

Hairline density has improved in the absolute frontal tenth, but frontal third is still poor and cannot be styled up because there's no volume. Still lots of gaps in the hairline where there is just almost nothing in a high density transplant area. Definitely nowhere near the 30fu/cm2 promised.

Does this have any hope of thickening up still? or am I doomed?

I have the same general gappiness to mine too, also Yaman at 7 months Hopefully it turns around. Best of luck to you too. If not, there is a giant wave of Yaman results all from around the same time that seem to be subpar quality. His older work seemed to be more impressive...

The constant parroting "you must comb your hair up for all transplants" to resolve every problem with a subpar transplant is just sad.

Right, it's just that everyone (including Dr. Yaman) set the expectation that I would have full coverage in the front. I'm growing things out as I can but the fact there is still not full coverage in the front kind of ( especially in the middle ) is very concerning to me at 7 months. I recognize there is still some time left for things to change and that I am probably a slow grower, but i am not coming from a place where I was completely gone ( though maybe 75% gone) and everyone I consulted with told me in general 5000-6000 grafts for full coverage. If I can't even cover the front with 4500 , my donor can only really handle one more procedure per Dr. Yaman, so ..that would be very concerning to me as I was expecting one more procedure possibly for the crown, but if I need 3, i'm done.

There is some time to go, trust the process, etc, but month after month goes by and there are still giant gaps in the front of the hairline that are concerning..

11 hours ago, Stewie said:

This is actually looking really good and all seems to be growing, I think you are taking this all the wrong way, I have over twice as many grafts as you and suffer from all the same things you are talking about, its see thru and unless longer and heavily layered then the illusion is not there properly. I think even the best of the best HT on here if messed up I the way you have done your hair would look exactly the same. But in doing that you can actually see all of the new hairs all over, 4.5k across your whole scalp is not a lot in the grand scheme to have great density, but in what you have had IMO is looking good and growing well

Month 7 checkin

There is some improvement, yet it's fairly slow. I am moving to a harsher lighting as the lighting in the pics i've used is now only going to show the same thing repeatedly, I think. ( which also is coincidentally what my hair kind of looked like before my transplant - using the longer back hairs to scam coverage of the front) In cloudy lighting, if the hair doesn't blow, and I don't move, ever - it actually appears OK. I can actually almost scam almost a full head of hair here.

I have returned to coverage scamming somewhat.  In fairly harsh lighting we are not there yet.

things are kind of okay from the top down but are still relatively not okay from any front-looking angle if I get hit with the tiniest amount of wind or say, something touches my hair.

The visual appearance is not quite there in less than perfect lighting.  Trying to style it "up" also looks pathetic due to current visual appearance.( see side of head here) It looks like there is actually a decent bit of hair here that needs thickening time?

The visual appearance  is why I don't style my hair "up" - this can be observed from how bad this looks from even trying to move the hair up in this image. ( I admit, I didn't put much effort into moving it up, but a slight more perfect up angle would not change too much)

Image2 is maybe a more fair comparison against my early sweaty hair pic. I wet my hair for this one and just kind of moved things around. There definitely does seem to be more hair here than in the image above - it's just still kind of sparse.

My overall thoughts from month 6 to month 7 are:

There is some visual improvement and change. I think perhaps I might still be waiting on the thickening of all of the transplanted hair? It seems like I have a fair bit of hair in places.

I have heard that blonde hair needs the longest amount of time to thicken up. Also, I am slightly older (37), so that plays a factor in the slowness. I think it's pretty confirmed i'm a slow grower now, but I'm still kind of waiting on results. I continue to take topical minoxidil per the doctor's recommendations ( I was on oral minox before the doctor asked me to switch ), and have been on finasteride 1mg for many, many years now

My current thoughts are not SUPER positive, but I do feel a positive change in appearance. What do you guys think? Some more time for thickening and i'll be happy? Too low density to make a difference? to me, it does feel like there's a good bit more hair there - it's just the visual appearance is not quite what I want yet, and i'm not sure that is a proportion of the density, or thickening that needs to take place. Has anyone also heard the "blonde hair takes more time to thicken" thing and maybe has a source on that?

"trust the process"  is my least favorite phrase in the universe but I keep repeating it to myself..

Thanks for your encouragement / thoughts. I think there is still some growth to come as I can see little dots there in the gappy spot (Also visible at 0:20 ish on the video ) but i'm not sure about density. Also the hairs that are there now really are microscopic. ( the image I uploaded is 108mp and if you zoom in REALLY close you can see stuff. ) I think if those continue growing and thickening there will definitely be more improvement on the horizon.

My intentions with this procedure was getting a big-bang done because verteporforin is (maybe) on the horizon and I wouldn't want to do a second procedure until verteporforin maybe succeeds since I like having a little bit of fluff on the sides of my head to frame my face and a second procedure would probably not allow that. ( I could maybe swing it with beard grafts but it feels very high risk to me). I was told I needed a second procedure for my crown by Dr. Yaman, so the mark of a successful procedure for me would be having a frontal 2/3rds looking "kind of" okay. I was a diffuse thinner and could technically cover my scalp with my hair before. I would think a realistic result is having the front 2/3rds covered since i'm okay with growing longer-ish to cover up. I liked Yaman because he erred a bit higher on side of graft count, and every one I surveyed indicated that I should only need ~5000 grafts to achieve what I want (as again, evidenced from hairmill consultation photo in op).

I know the crown is the last to fill in and my grafts are equally distributed along my entire scalp, which means it will take some time to see the full result I think, since it is definitely confirmed to some extent that I am a slow grower. ( Don't let the photos that had a hairline fool you - I had a hairline before. The growth of the hairline visible even a decent length at month 3 shows you that the hairline was native, because transplanted hairs are generally in telogen until ~90 days. The pcoredure did add some density to it, but the hairline was there(if not a bit pathetic) before. )

Every single HT doctor I consulted said what I desire should be achievable with 5000-5500 grafts. So this should technically put me very close to it unless this is a failure.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10Z370zCmNTaQTZypfz5mS-vgmFuM6SCH/view?usp=drive_link

OK, so I uploaded a video of things kind of running my fingers through the front as close as I can get without my camera refocusing.

I think I see lots of little things here. This makes me feel hopeful - the hairs are just very small and thin still. I think I can see lots of new stuff popping through the scalp around 0:20- 0:23? This is the very "open" patch in the middle of the front of my hairline right now.

There is still a chance that i'm the world's slowest grower. If you feel like taking a peek and have time to give me thoughts, feel free.

I have also attached a much higher resolution image. IT seems like there is stuff going on..but stuff is verrrryryryry tiny. Perhaps...my story is not over yet?

6.5 months, here.o

On 3/27/2024 at 4:23 PM, wembley said:

Well you are showing us more the crown area in the photo "one year after hair transplant", while the clinic did not implant grafts on the crown.

Most grafts had been implanted implanted in the frontal area which has been changed a lot and it has good growth, and less grafts had been implanted in the midscalp thats why it looks less dense than the frontal part. You did not have hairline before, but you have now and the frontal area is quite good, while it was really bad before the procedure.
With the photo you uploaded now we cant see the result in the frontal area, where the most grafts had been implanted.
If you comb your hair backwards it will look like this and it will show difference with the pre op pics. In general yes it could be better than the result you got, but you are a norwood 6 and you need 9000 grafts for full coverage since you have a huge area to cover.

 

The combover photo is never a good comparison to a straight down photo. I don't think graft yield is awful.. This is not @Lirti's fault for not doing a combover. Graft yield is looks rather low in the front.. Directly in the front of the hairline, in high implantation spots, there is extremely low yield here - so there might be a yield issue.

Granted, medication (maybe?) have made the result better but the patient cannot take it.

This does not look like great planning. It is the doctor's job to measure hair thickness, and assist the patient in planning and design phase.  Placing things extremely sparsely behind the hairline in a way that only works assuming 100% yield is very strange. I think this could be planned better. (why not tighten up the graft placement rather than place things extremely sparsely behind the hairline in a way that makes no visual sense? Was this a gamble on things maybe looking "okay?" like this? Could this really have looked OK with 100% yield, even?)

19 hours ago, Jayhair said:

Did you contact Yaman on where you lost 10% of grafts yet? Cause I know they offer a free HT if 10 or more came out.

It's still a bit too early to declare if 10% of grafts are lost yet or not. I'm obviously going to wait and see because hair growth continues for some time,but I don't feel hopeful at the moment, as you can see there is much of the hairline where there is 0 grafts still, and I felt that density was good after the operation( see last pic for my "Scabs off" image in more detail) - and the hairline is among the first to grow in usually.

If it does fail, I will only return to the same Dr. if there is a clear and plain explanation of why it failed. (was graft handling bad by technicians?). I am on every medical therapy that I can basically be on(and have been for some time) and dermatologist has confirmed that this is male pattern baldness and nothing more. So the reason for failure would either be bad graft handling by technicians or something unknown. I will not accept "your hair is thin which is why the result seems bad" as a reason for a failed transplant, like @Lirti received. (This is a warning sign regarding this Dr.) The doctor measures the thickness of hair before the operation. If my hair is thin, density should be different / potentially the implantation of grafts should be shifted to compensate. Truly, a doctor cannot possibly estimate all outcomes, but the mark of a good doctor is being able to plan for the most of them. ( Especially because FUE is generally 90%+ success rate).

I followed post-op instructions to a T and I was so nervous about leaving my hotel room after surgery and possibly damaging grafts that it is 100% not possible that I did anything to compromise the transplant in the first 96 hours. I then followed all post-op instructions after that, taking recommended vitamins, using required shampoo like I was shown, ultra-gently, avoiding physical activity, etc, etc, and so on.

What I expect and what was communicated to me is full coverage in the front. So i'll wait and cross my fingers...i'm riding on hopium because the Dr. says growth looks good and he can see and understand something I don't, just need time for hairs to thicken up due to blood flow. Things can still change and turn around...(please..)

The "before" photo isn't really a 100% fair comparison as I was very sweaty there. If I fluffed out my hair, I would have full coverage also. Very wet so some of the strands stick together and create larger looking ones.

I asked the Dr. at 6 months, who said "Transplant is growing well, the front will also be full" - I'm assuming this is about the newer hairs that are smaller-ish?(I don't observe that many of them) I certainly hope so, and i'm putting my faith forward but I'm not feeling too great. There are some hairs sprouting, but not enough to make me have confidence this is not a failure yet - there's still way too much of the frontal third that is 0/cm2 past 6 months.

Here's an image of March ( 5 months before transplant , first image) with hair pretty maximally fluffy after a shower. The pre-op photo on the first page was taken with my hair overall much longer and with the consultant parting my hair hard in the middle( marple.jpg)

My main concern right now is the ultra-low density in the front. Even if I styled my hair up covering this empty patch would be ridiculous. This is also a high density area of the transplant and there is definitely nowhere close to the 30fu/cm2 promised in the exam here yet. Still, I recognize that there is time to grow and turn things around, but I don't usually  see people with failed hairlines at month 6+ turn it around. Who knows though ?Maybe i'm a miracle?

For example, the density looks really good here. ( see graftz.png ) a better vision of pre-op. But in comparison, see the areas highlighted directly in the front middle of the scalp.

There are many areas where there is just 0 grafts /cm2. lol. I'm not saying that they couldn't be sprouting soon, but the hairline is usually first to come in and that there are just huge chunks of zero grafts/cm2 or very close to it makes it ridiculous to try to style my hair upwards because it'd be like putting a bunch of wooden cardboard cutouts in front of an empty lawn ( which is exactly why I got the transplant - to be able to do things with my hair other than just keep it in one direction and pray the wind doesn't blow to expose my scalp. )

11 hours ago, Al - Moderator said:

You didn't have any hairline at all before and now you do. You were growing your hair extremely long and combing it all forward from the back to cover the top. Now it's not as long. Let it thicken up over the next few months and you may feel a bit better.

You can also try some different hair styles. As I said it looks like you ave a hairline now, so you may not need to comb it all forward to cover the front. Try combing it back or maybe a bit to the side. You may be able to get better coverage with different styles.

 

I had a hairline pre-op. In fact, you can see it in the very first image. I also attached another pre-op There is almost no change in density so it is very hard to comb it back to achieve any result.  This is a not-great image of things when I was very , very sweaty.(attached image) A hairline is one of the only things I actually had(lol) well pre-op ( and now. It wasn't a great hairline, but this image captures it while I was extremely sweaty. When fluffed out, it was a full hairline. Just like it is now. If I fluff it out, it is a full hairline..but it should require less fluffing because there should be like 1k grafts there at least. ). The hairline is visible in Stewie's photos below in the fact that it is native - the length says that it must be native, not transplanted, to be that length at 4mo.

I was lacking density in the midscalp and I see almost no change in density in 6 months from what I can observe. I recognize this is a 12 month process but the fact that there is very little visible change at 6mo where typically most of is concerning, when almost every major publication indicates somewhere between 30-50% of result by 6mo, where I am scratching my head and going "is there actually progress?"

17 hours ago, Stewie said:

I think like others have said, you was covering up how diffuse you head was with the long hair from the back, for the amount of grafts you had over such a big area it looks like its all growing well, and yes if you want good density then you will need at least another session

To put in context I had a similar sized area filled over four sessions and have now hit around 12k grafts and I am still worried about what the density might be, it'll never be perfect but you can definitely get in a place you want to be

And maybe if growing it forward is your ultimate goal and you don't mind having your hair long then maybe starting toward the back and moving forward with density to allow the thicker layers might be better?

But from this pic just two months ago to the one from today its obvious how well its growing, and me personally on my 3rd one last year, I think it was month 9+ for me when I thought it was starting to really look good

The difference between these 2 photos is almost nothing imo. Just the lighting.

Plus, furthermore, the hairline is already there before - this was at 4 months. The length of the hairline that is present tells you that it is native (blue).I gave Dr. Yaman an image of me with my hair down prior to the procedure to ask him what is achievable, and he said it is, but I may need an additional procedure for the crown. I was prepared for that. As for now, I don't feel there is barely even a change in the hairline. It still looks like there is nothing there ( black ). You can see the same identical gaps. It's like nothing is growing.

20 minutes ago, Napoli said:

Well i do think you were a diffuse thiner before the hair transplant, so you were not a simple case. In the pre op photos, you had a lot of thinning hairs  and you were growing hairs from your donor to cover the front!
While now these hairs have been replaced with donor hairs, and you have better coverage than before. So there's definitely improvement from your pre op photos and it will be thicker till the 12 month. So just be patient.Dr yaman is a great doctor and you should be happy with your final result!

One suggestion is that by combing your hairs backwards, you would have better coverage...

Yeah, I think one possibility is that my hairs using to cover up were making things look better. I agree I was diffuse thinner beforehand but the complexity of my case is slightly irrelevant - the doctor accepted my case, which means he was confident in his results. I hope that the thickening will make a difference over time, but what is concerning is the same sort of "gap areas" from before i'm still seeing are very gap like. I do not want to comb my hairs back as I have an awkwardly high forehead and want some bangs - which was advised when I did my consultation with Dr. Yaman, and I think part of the reason why I have grafts all over despite Dr. Yaman telling me I would likely need a second procedure for the crown.

36 minutes ago, Jayhair said:

During the first week and proceeding 1-2 months did you scratch your scalp much. I know it can be itchy and tempted to scratch and scab scalp.

 

All you can do it bring it to Yaman and hope for the best now. Keep us updated, btw did you think about visiting Yaman when you were in Antalya recently , i know its like 2 hour flight but you did travel all the way from the states so another 2 hours shouldn't been an issue

I did not touch my scalp even once for 21 days aside from the extremely gentle pats that were instructed by the clinic for hairwash procedure. I did some light scratching after 1 month, but not much. I did not suffer any hits or injuries or bumps to my scalp during the initial period.

Visiting again during Antalya was not an option - flight is not possible during first few days after surgery, and I had surgery almost soon upon arriving. But even then, it would likely just be hundreds of dollars for them to tell me the same things they tell me on whatsapp. 

1 hour ago, Ajamilo said:

The only thing you can do is to be patient. Six month is still early and you can be a late grower. You have to wait 1-2 more months to see it out.

i just want to add: Dr.Yaman is a hit and miss doctor. So is a really high probability that this is a failure. 

Most of the results from yaman looked pretty good initially when I looked at this forum. I did not see Tope and Lirti, who are both failed transplants imo. If I saw them before I went to Yaman I would have bailed as they are both kind of similar to my loss and had garbage results.

My official 6 month will be this weekend. I will check in then and ask for input. There's really no meaningful things I can add to my routine that aren't already there as without a scalp biopsy or something they are just guessing. ( My scalp doesn't play nice with microneedling - so I won't do that. I've already seen a dermatologist that insists it's just normal MPB and all of my bloodwork doesn't insist there's anything obviously wrong.)

This is an image of me shuffling my hair to look versus pre-op. You can see almost no difference.

Either less than 10% of grafts survived or i'm a magical late grower. But people with no growth don't turn around at month 6 and become a succesful transplant. They just get maybe a little bit of growth and become a failed one. There is a difference between slow growth and no growth. Maybe native hair was murdered by the transplant? I really don't know. I'm willing and literally trying 100% of all medical therapies at this point but it's looking pretty grim.

I think I might have got excited when I was on vacation. I'm like..constantly desperately checking to see signs of growth but I just don't see it.

I realized when I was on vacation the back hairs were getting longer so I could hide and cover up again...exactly like I was pre-transplant. This got me excited when I stopped to do a double-take.

We're just a few days shy of 6 months now. I'm still following the clinic's directions, i've been on medical therapy for years.

Is there any improvement? I see basically all of the same gaps that I saw pre transplant. I feel that there's still almost nothing happening and we're just shy of 6 months.

My old native hair is back and helping to cover, but I feel like i'm gradually losing my mind. Each passing month is a "is there some improvement?" that I scamper for. 

I mean, hell, it looks worse than pre-transplant still. I think this 6 month update is just about game over. I shouldn't be struggling to see growth at 6 months. This is just sad.

I included a bonus pre-op picture before this.( 2 months before the transplant)

I had always planned on 2 surgeries, but now i'm not sure because I didn't bank on 1 surgery being pretty much a failure.

Today

2 months prior in slightly different lighting than op post, and without hair parted in the middle

today. Looks worse than pre-op still.

OK boys, this is 5months, 1 weeks. I'm just back from Antalya, Turkey ( Got lower blepharoplasty to get rid of my undereye bags! Antalya is so beautiful!)

This was my finally "we are turning this ship around, boys" moment. Just a few weeks ago, I was like "can this shazbot really turn around in two weeks?!" and by the power of the Great Gatsby, the answer is YES.

Harsh overhead lighting..we are not there yet. But I am now officially past telling friends "no, my hair transplant didn't fail, i'm busy growing, leave me alone" over and over.

In cloudier lighting? We are now looking pretty good. Especially if I fluff my hair a little bit after a shower.

I hope for things to thicken up and get denser, but now i'm starting to feel pretty good! Thank you for your support! Like Son Goku, I have taken all of your prayers and began growing.

I think my hair just might grow slow in general. I still haven't got a haircut since the procedure, lol.

STAY TUNED BOYS, THIS IS MAYBE GETTING GOOD