notinprint

Long time lurker, finally posting as it happened!! I am a 28M who has hair loss throughout my family line and I am the dreaded diffuse thinner. I’ve always had a big forehead but started noticing very bad hair loss in my early twenties. Started doing topical fin and min about 3-4years ago, now on oral fin and topical min for over 2yrs, may switch to dut as I do not think fin has helped much. Also I am gonna post my face so be nice and admins let me know if that is what i shouldn't do, I see a lot of people do NOT post face but whatever lol. Choosing a doctor Since I don’t feel like I started treatment early enough, I settled on doing a hair transplant. I have an acquaintance who got his hairline done by dr. Pekiner in Turkey and it turned out pretty good. This immediately put him on the map for me and so my journey began. Starting from r/tressless on Reddit, I found this website. Pekiner is a name I saw pretty often on Reddit but not really here. But this website gave lots of really great testimonials of much higher quality than you would find on Reddit, so I was able to select a couple more docs that I thought would be a good fit. I settled on 3 doctors: Dr. Pekiner, Dr. De Freitas, and Dr. Biçer, whom I ended up going with. All three doctors responded to me and gave me about the same quote for # of graphs (2800 +/- 200). All prices were the same. Therefore, I can really decided without that factoring in. Pekiner’s assistant Alex was super helpful, but would only let me get in the waiting list and even up to about 3 weeks ago is not taking bookings for the second half of 2024….kinda weird so unfortunately the one result I could see in person was out. I did have an initial preference for de Freitas (I speak Spanish, his work looks good, very responsive) and Biçer seemed a bit less enthusiastic to take me on as she believes I will need a second HT. Eventually, Biçer did send me the offer letter and her appt date was much better than de Freitas by about 6-8 months, a pretty big deciding factor as de Freitas was about 16-18 months booked out. Biçer work looks great, and her assistant Özen is a force of nature (responds at the oddest of local times, is very helpful). I sent in the down payment and I was set for aug 2024! I actually got offered 2 earlier dates due to cancellations, but both were too short notice. Finally got one that was about 2 weeks out for may ‘24, and jumped on it. The experience So I took extended time off from work so I could vacation and sight see Turkey. I did about 9 nights in Istanbul with the surgery taking place on the 6th day. Transfer and rooming is not included in the price with Biçer, and they can offer accommodations in the same building that the surgery will take place in. This is a great thing to do in my opinion, they served me breakfast the day of my operation and the days I stayed afterwards. BUT if you are doing what I did and are vacationing a little before, I do recommend to stay closer to the city and then take the room for the operation days. You will be a bit out of town, 30-45 mins by public transport or 20ish by Uber to kadikoy, which still isn’t at the tourist destinations you might want to get to (it’s then ferry or train) so you’re looking at an hour to get to say galata tower. This isn’t a problem with them just advice if you want to sight see too The transfer and room was exceptional though. Özen will give you all documents needed to review. Another person mentioned getting these in advance to really read through them, I agree. Maybe even very early in the process, definitely a lot of fine details and things I wish I knew beforehand like stopping minoxidil 2 weeks out. Day of, you will come up, have breakfast, and meet all the staff. Everyone in the staff is really exceptional, made me feel very comfortable. You’ll get blood work done, EKG, all that good stuff. You then meet with the doctor to draw out your hairline and ask any questions. Biçer helped me out with my hairline, suggesting only to go about 1cm down and just pack density, which I agree with. I challenged it only a bit to fill out the temples a bit and she was great at helping get that to come out. She will explain the whole process, that she will be directly involved in the extraction and incisions, and will be monitoring for the placement. Definitely one of the deciding factors for me was her involvement and the fact that she takes only one patient a day. You get to the room, and as others know, the anesthesia part is the most brutal part. Once you’re past that, it’s smooth sailing, but mannnnn lol. They also give you a sedative, so I wish I had more to say past here but….i slept the full time only waking up when my body would jolt which is an unfortunate quirk of mine when dealing with something like this. They will serve you a delicious lunch between the extraction/incisions and implanting and then you will be down for a veryyyyy long time will they place the graphs. All in all, was finished around 7:30pm, about 10hrs full procedure. It went smoothly other than my jolts. They will give you the medication and explain the post care to you, and the next day you will get some time with Biçer to do the same thing before they take your bandaids off. Really appreciated all the face time I got with the doctor, seriously makes you feel like a patient that she cares about and with something like this it goes such a long way! The results What I sent in, so this is my starting point technically. I will reply on this the pictures that were taken the day of the operation by the staff which would be better but dont have them yet. Day of operation Day after with bandages removed Day 3: Some complications I got was very bad swelling as the fluid moved down my face, I’m on day 6 now and it’s completely gone but wanted to show it on my flight back on day 3. It’s completely normal, and thank you for Bicer and this community for helping me keep calm lol Day 5 I still have minor pain every now and again. Also the graphs were CHONKY I was worried about the extra skin but found out that is normal, once again the community here is banger. Still have that extra skin that grows when it is wet lol. All in all, great experience with them, always willing to make sure all my questions were answered. I didn’t have many because of this great community, so really thank you to everyone here! I am hoping to continue posting updates to continue helping this community make informed decisions. Since Biçer wants updates too, I think I will let them coincide with updates here.