Al - Moderator

I've had two repair procedures so far, but I never posted any pictures of the 2nd one. I have another session scheduled for October. The first one used 610 chest hair grafts. The 2nd was 757 grafts split between chest and beard. The next one will also be a mix of chest and beard. The work that was done is growing, but while I have gained a bit of hair in the areas worked on, I'm still losing hair in all other areas, so I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. Do not listen to any Dr who tells you transplanted hair is permanent or that they only take hair from areas that are programmed not to fall out. It's not true.

I think my face looks young for my age. The lack of decent hair is what ruined my look since I was in my late teens. I did wear a hair system prior to the first hair transplant. The hair transplant was supposed to enable me to get rid of the hair system. I actually suggested we just transplant the front first and I'd keep a hair system just for the crown and then later go back and finish the crown area. That would have allowed me to get a completed look much quicker while not making me feel worried that people could spot the hair system as it would be all real hair in the front half. The "Dr" (in quotes because it turned out he wasn't one) shot that down and told me that would be a dumb thing to do since he could do two scalp reductions to eliminate most of the crown loss and then do a HT for the entire area. That obviously didn't work and I'm still suffering from his lack of caring at all about what was required and how fast I was losing my hair. At this point I don't feel I have enough hair in the sides, back, and temple points for a hair system to look right.

JeffC45, I totally agree with you. While I have tried putting on several different concealers over the years to see what it looks like, I have never gone out of the house with any concealer on and I don't think I ever would. I would be too afraid of someone noticing that I have it on. To me that is more embarrassing than just being bald or thinning. I feel the same way about hair pieces (I've worn one years back and was sick to my stomach every time I went anywhere) and even SMP (scalp micropigmentation).

It hasn't worked out at all because hair transplants don't actually work on those who really need it most. It's all a big scam, but it happens to work on a few select people, so as long as they can show a few patients that it actually works on then they keep getting away with all the false claims.

The reason I got a hair transplant is to make sure I wouldn't look like this.

I think he meant "While hair transplant surgery doesn't require the use of Propecia, a hair transplant on it's own does nothing to stop future hair loss."

You just spent thousands of dollars on surgery and you couldn't even stop drinking for just a few days to be sure you're not wasting your time and money or causing complications? Wow.

Shaving it all off will not get rid of the bumps and redness. In fact shaving could make it even more noticeable. However I do think he should shave a very few hairs in each corner since I know one of his concerns was the low hairline at the corners. Shaving a small part of the corners may make it look at least more tolerable. I posted that to Sam a while back in another thread, but I don't know if he has tried it.

Yes this can happen. Most people have more laxity towards the lower back of their head, so the bottom portion of the donor area stretch upwards. However there are some people who have a lot of laxity in the crown area. On these people the crown will stretch outwards and downwards if the laxity in the crown above the linear scar of the HT is more than the laxity below the linear scar of the HT. When you remove a line of tissue from the back of your head, unless the scar is the same width as the area removed, then other areas MUST moved and stretch in order to close the wound area.

I totally know what you are going through. I was told it was just like going to the dentist and nothing could go wrong.There is no mention of even a possibility of any scars on my consent form. It's now 27 years later and I'm still hoping to wake up from my nightmare and be 23 years old with a full head of hair like I was supposed to get.

My hair has been gradually graying since my early 20s. I just dye it. That is the least of my problems as far as hair is concerned. Gray hair I can fix, but hair that is gone I can't. I'd much rather have the gray ones than none.

I think you run the risk of making it look fake if you lower the hairline. It looks good right now. With a hairline too low, it will not look natural.

Depending on how bad it is you may not need to fue them out. A lot of times it can be better to simply plant the new grafts around the old ones. It's easier and cheaper. Without seeing pictures it's impossible to give you a better idea of which one you would want to do.

Why do you have to tell them anything other than you are taking a vacation.

If your beard and chest hair are both rather thick then why be so concerned about leg hair? Just use the beard and chest hair as those areas are both better than leg hair for transplanting.

It looks like he still has a lot more beard hair that he can use later.

Since you're seeing some fine, nearly undetectable hairs growing in, I would simply let them grow for another 2 months and then see where you are.

Are you saying the Dr. removed the grafts from the donor area and then had you come back the next day to implant them into the recipient area? This should never be done because hair transplant grafts will only survive for several hours outside the body. Was the surgery planned this way? I have heard of making the recipient holes one day and then doing the actual removal and implanting the next day for supposedly better and faster healing, but I don't know if that works.

I said in an earlier post on this thread that you received between 400 to 500 grafts and they look to be around 3mm grafts. I've had various ranges from 2mm to 3.75mm grafts years ago and I've had 1mm and 1.1mm more recently. I will stick with my original assessment that these look like around 3mm grafts. Now that he has admitted that you only received 483 grafts, is he giving you a refund of $4034? If you were paying $2 per graft, 483 grafts comes to $966. You gave him $5000, so he owes you $4034. If he refuses to pay you, then you need to do what I said in my earlier post and sue for consumer fraud as that is exactly what that is. He is ripping you off. You have not gotten what you paid for. You don't even need to get into whether they grew or what size they were. Certainly you should threaten to sue first, so it doesn't cost you any lawyers fees, but if that doesn't work, then go through with it and find a consumer fraud lawyer.

My personal feeling is that I don't think the donor dominance theory is 100% correct in all cases. Suppose you have a bald head. The follicles are dormant, dying. Now place some hair grafts in the area. There are going to be at least some of the newly placed grafts that are going to transect the non hair bearing old follicles. It could be a large number of transections since the old follicles can't really be seen as they are not growing any hair. I find it hard to believe that when you combine 2 follicles together in that way, that the newly placed ones are going to be the dominant one that takes over every time in every person. I think in some cases the dormant follicle will be the dominant one and this may depend on how the two follicles have combined to form one, so it will be different for each follicle. The hair will grow initially, but since the dormant, dying follicle takes over, the new hair quickly dies out after one or 2 cycles. This is my opinion, but I have nothing to actually back it up, so it could be totally not true. However, as I said, that is my opinion on what happens in some cases.

I'm curious as to why you want FUE if you already have a scar from FUT. Why not do another FUT? You can get that done for the price you're looking for. I'm not trying to have a debate about which is better, but if you already have the scar I don't really see the point of going FUE.

Rashid, Yes. That seems to be pretty much the graft layout that they are giving you. If you can get that many, it should come out looking rather decent I would think.

You are 36 years old and you have minimal hairloss. Did you think when you get to 90 you would still have the same amount of hair that you had when you were 16? Be realistic. Your hair looks great for 36 years old. I don't even know why you're using concealer. You act like the concealer is doing such a great job of covering everything. Well of course it is.... because there's hardly anything the concealer needs to cover! I wouldn't have known the difference. I haven't had that much hair since I was 16 years old.

You need to decide if you may ever want to buzz or shave your head at some point in the future. If you know you will never want to shave your head, then FUT is the way to go. Otherwise for a small procedure go with FUE. I personally always knew I would never shave my head, so even if I were to be starting out on the HT journey today, I would choose FUT.

Hopefully by this time next year with all the new hair you'll have, they will be stopping to talk to you rather than just passing by