Al - Moderator

I would have thought it would be a lot thicker and cover a larger area for having so many grafts done unless you needed to use a lot of them in the scars. Without seeing before pictures I can't tell. It does at least look natural.

Way below 0. Hair transplants have ruined my life for the past 25 years.

I'm scheduled with Dr Dorin (True and Dorin) for September to use 500 to 600 chest hair grafts.

I went bald as a teenager. I ate the same things the rest of my family ate. My dad had a full head of hair. You will never convince me that it has anything to do with what we eat. AL

It looks like you only had crown work done. It may not turn out so horribly bad as the crown can accept somewhat larger grafts before being too noticeable. You will have to do a 2nd pass with FUT or FUE from someone other than who you went to to fill in some of the spaces. AL

and Well I don't think it was very funny. I started losing my hair at around 14 or 15. I went to a dermatologist who didn't know what was wrong. I eventually ended up seeing a hairloss specialist who said I had a scalp disease which was causing my hair to fall out and that I was already an extreme case and should have seen him much earlier as I was in danger of not having enough hair left to ever get any coverage. I think I had 5 scalp reductions to try to cut it all out. When there was no laxity left for scalp reductions I had a few hundred of 2.5mm to 4mm punches cored out and sewn closed. While that was going on I had HT grafts to cover any other areas and the scars. AL

Wow. I waited less than 2 weeks because they told me it was an emergency and I had to have surgery right away. Every procedure after that was a simple phone call and schedule me in within a week or 2. Of course that was years ago, so perhaps the wait time was different in those days.

This is exactly what I wanted to do - IF it wasn't possible to do a full hair transplant. I had been wearing a hairpiece for a while and the biggest issue was with the fake hairline. I figured if I could at least make the hairline be real nobody would ever think the rest of it is a hair piece. The Dr saw me with and without the hairpiece, so he would know what type of thickness I was looking for. The scumbag insisted that he could transplant the entire area at the same density as the hairpiece and to prove it to me he started on the crown first. I eventually ran out of grafts before getting the front portion completed. They even had to resort to removing grafts in the crown to place them in the front just to try to get some sort of decent frontal area.

I had a similar problem as you when I was young. My hair was noticeably thinning by age 15, so it probably actually started falling out a year or 2 earlier. I have a lot of hair on my chest, arms, and back, but the hair on my legs sort of comes and goes. Right now one side of each leg from just below the knee to my foot is nearly completely bare. It grows back to some degree eventually and then eventually falls out again in a slightly different pattern. It seems to be a larger area that goes bare as the years go by. My front thighs do something similar, but to a lesser degree. Currently I have a nearly bare area on the right thigh and a little bit of scattered thinning on the left thigh. It changes slowly over the years. My head was pretty much completely bald except for the sides and back by my early 20s.

I feel like my gray hairs are the ones that stayed.

No kidding! I think a lot of people who don't lose much hair until after 30 don't really get it. Some of them will say understand because they've been losing hair since they were 18, but you see pictures of them at 35 and they still have some hair. I was doing a combover and getting teased about my bald spot at 16. If I was able to just have some thinning for a few years into my 20's it would have made a big difference. As it is I honestly can't remember having enough hair to not have to do a combover to cover the thinning. By the time I was at the age where boys start caring about their appearance I already was losing hair fast. My mother used to yell at me about my hair fallout when I was 15. I finally had a HT at 22. That was a big mistake!! I thought I was finally getting rid of the nightmare, but turns out it was only just starting and got much worse as the years went by. Now at 47 it's been a completely wasted life.

Just putting my vote in. I am for a repair category. Thanks for bringing it up Wylie

Dos anyone ever take a medical leave of absence from work for a hair transplant? Do any HT Dr.s do this? I get paid up to 6 months of MLOA, so that would be a great option.

Once you lose your hair it's sort of impossible to have both hair and money. You can either have money, but no hair. Or you spend all your money to have hair and end up with hair, but no money.

INeedHelp, How long ago did you have the hair transplant? It sounds like it was very recent. If so then just stop even thinking about it. I know that's hard, but don't do anything else to your hair right now. You will only make it worse. The hair that has been falling out due to shock loss will grow back, but it takes several months to even START to grow back, so just try to relax and forget about it for a while. Just lay low for a few months.

I think I hold the record. 20 strips + 5 scalp reductions + over 180 mini reductions (5mm punches removed and sewn together to eliminate space between grafts). These were all done from 1989 to 1994. ... and I still need a lot of work done to get anything near resembling a half decent head of hair.

Pulpedfiction1 I know you're talking about me, so I figured I'd clear a few things up. The actual amount of time was 5 years and 3 months. In my other post I was adding an additional 9 months of waiting for the HT to grow. My first HT was on September 7, 1989 and the 25th one was December 2, 1994... an average of about 2.5 months between sessions, ranging from about 6 weeks to around 4 months. There was a total of 1393 grafts in sizes between (I think) 2.5mm and 3.75mm. 90 of those were grafts that were removed and redistributed. These were grafts that were originally placed in the crown and later redistributed throughout the frontal zone when they realized they weren't going to be able to create a reasonable frontal area. I also had multiple scalp reductions. For sessions where actual grafts were done (other than just a scalp reduction), the least amount performed was 12 in a single session. There were 4 sessions that had 50 grafts or less. Also note that they did not reuse the same scar back then. A new scar was created for each surgery, so my entire head is now a mess of many rows of scars.

Just wanted to answer a few questions that were asked of me. I have a lot of body hair. Some of my chest hair grows about 3 inches long if I don't trim it. Yes, I've been looking into doing BHT, but there's a small matter of between $40k to $50k that it would cost for between 5000 and 6000 grafts which I think I would need... so I haven't been able to do it. Have I spoken to a lawyer? Yes, back in the day I certainly did. I think I went to 5 of them before one finally took the case based on consumer fraud. The ridiculous laws in NJ don't allow a medical malpractice lawsuit against someone who doesn't have a medical license, so it's actually better for someone in NJ to practice medicine without a license! There is apparently nothing illegal about it. The only thing we could claim was consumer fraud for not providing the service that was promised at a cost reasonably close to the estimated price. There were other lawsuits against them as well. One was a class action with about 120 claimants. The HT company claimed bankruptcy and sold the client list to another company started by the same people using the same offices and phone numbers. So we had to file motions for the right to sue the new company claiming they were actually still the old company. Once that was allowed, the 2nd company simply did the same thing over and started a new company again. At that point it was obvious they would keep doing it forever and there was nothing we could do. They've since merged with other Drs and changed names several more times over the years.

Yes that's true, but You have to realize that no matter how long ago mine was done, I still have the bad look. If someone sees me today, they see a bad hair transplant. They don't know it's from 25 years ago, they only see it as today. If you didn't know about HTs, but knew me and then knew a friend who said he was going to try it, what would you tell him? It's not moronic to say "Hey I've seen a really bad one with doll hair and thin all over with scars showing, so maybe you shouldn't do that." I agree that techniques these days are much better, but you're being too hard on people trying to give advice to a friend based on what they may have actually witnessed. You could have just said that those kind of results are not the norm these days and your friends are thinking of older HTs without calling them idiots. Believe me, I wish someone was telling me about the possible down sides before I went.

It was some of both the scars and the hair thinning naturally. Much of the transplanted hair on top has since fallen out because that's what it would have done if it hadn't ben moved. At least 2 of my older uncles had almost no hair on the sides and some thinning in the back since as long as I can remember, so when I was around 20 and realized I had the same sort of pattern, I was pretty sure my sides and back were going to be gone eventually. That's part of why I had a HT! So I wouldn't be bald like them!

I was 15 when my mother was yelling at me every time I needed a haircut, blaming me that it was my fault my hair was falling out. I was teased about my bald spot from friends beginning around 16. I got turned down for the prom at 17 because she thought I was sick with cancer or something because all my hair was falling out. From 17 to about 20 I got lots of people asking what disease I had or what was wrong with me. Around 18 or 19 my mother would criticize my combover telling me I look like a 40 year old bald man, but by this time she was no longer saying it was my fault. She was now trying to convince me that I had a scalp disease and wanted me to see a dermatologist because a skin/scalp disease was the reason my uncle's hair fell out when he was younger. After seeing a dermatologist who couldn't figure out why my hair was falling out, I went to see a group of specialist physicians with 5 clinics in NY, NJ, and PA. They were "physicians who specialize in hairloss" (from their brochure). I had a HT with them because the "Dr" (found out years later that he was not licensed to practice medicine, although SOME people in their other clinics were) confirmed that I did have an "excessive hairloss disease" (his words) and that I "need surgery as soon as possible or else you won't have enough hair left to work with. If you wait any longer, you'll never be able to have any hair." (his words as close as I can remember). It just went downhill from there. He gave me an estimate of about $8000 and 3 sessions each spaced 6 weeks apart plus a possible 4th free session for any touch-up work if needed. The entire process from start to full had of hair would take about 1 year. I decided to leave my job for 6 months to a year and wait for the HT to grow. That was the easiest way I could think of to handle the ugly duckling stage because my job required me to be out in public every day. I basically lived in my bedroom waiting for the hair to grow.... for 25 HT sessions over 6 years. Now 25 years later I'm still waiting for the hair to grow and the ugly duckling stage after the HT to be over. I always wondering what I could have possibly done differently and I honestly don't know. I didn't go into it lightly. I did whatever research I could at the time (no internet). I read medical books that said a hair transplant can be used to eliminate scars, which is just the opposite of creating them, so when the clinic told me there would be no scars, of course I believed it. There was no mention of scars in the consent form. I was worried about future hair loss down the back of my head and sides as that's what my older uncles have, so the "Dr" told me I could pay an extra $150 per session to double the hair on the sides and back which would guarantee I'd never run out of donor hair. When I said OK, he even said I didn't have to do that because he didn't think it was going to be an issue since I had good donor quality, but I wanted to make sure there was no way to later say I should have done it differently and made sure of it, so I gladly paid the extra $150 per session. I don't remember exactly, but I think I paid that for about 7 or 8 sessions. I refused to pay more once I paid double the original estimate. I originally wanted to do just the hairline and try wearing a hair system behind it. I was already wearing a hair system at that time and the biggest problem is the fakeness of the front. However, he insisted that it was better to cover my entire area with a hair transplant and that there would be "no noticeable difference" (his words) in thickness between the HT and the hair system. To prove to me that he could do it, they started at the mid section first rather than create a hairline. They drew some hairlines, so I knew where it would be, supposedly, but he didn't start there. Looking back I'm sure he did that to make sure I went through the whole process thinking I'd stop after doing just the front and he wouldn't make as much. When we did finally get to the hairline several sessions later, 2 people drew a hairline on me that even I thought was too low, but I did like that they had the temples (sides?) filled in, but as I said I thought the hairline was a bit low, so they gave me the pencil and asked me to draw what I felt it should be. I started drawing a line and they said OK, we can put it there. I never did get the temple sides filled in though. Some people ask me why I kept going so many times. What was I supposed to do? They kept telling me I had a disease and I was an extreme case and had to do exactly what they said because I was in jeopardy of losing all my hair and it would be my fault if I stopped going to them before it was completed. I also had scars which I kept complaining about since just after the very first session. I was ready to stop then, but their answer was always that they remove the scars when everything else is done because if they removed them now, they would just have to make more anyway and the hair growing in the scars wouldn't be as good for transplanting, so I had had to wait until everything else was done. I really had no idea what else to do. I dreaded going there, but felt I had no choice. Over and over they kept telling me to give it time and eventually it's going to turn out to be a full head of hair. I still find myself checking my hair in the mirror to see if there's any more growth. I know that probably sounds crazy to you, but when you go though that for 25 surgeries and nearly 6 years, that's what you do... keep checking to see if there's growth. I'm still waiting for my hair transplant to be done, so I can date 20 something year old women who all ran away from me because they thought I had some kind of disease when we were in our teens... sigh...

I took it for around 10 or 11 years I think. I stopped maybe 2 or 3 years ago because it was no longer working and my hair was continuing to thin. I decided to stop and let my body hair grow in order to do a body hair transplant. So far my body hair growth has improved since then.

Hmm... well my HT didn't "take", I went bald anyway, the little bit of hair that did grow has the doll hair look, etc. So you're saying I'm an idiot for pointing out what happened to me? Perhaps that's why there aren't many people who post negative results here. View my pictures on my profile. Now you've seen it instead of only hearing about it.

I really wish you guys would stop saying it only happens in men in their 60's and older. Please go back and read the first paragraph from Dr Konior where he states "men in their twenties, thirties and forties may experience it too. You can also view my photos for proof. The latest ones that show the sides are from 2009 when I was 42. I should ad some new ones as the entire area has thinned noticeably more since then. It's easy to pass something off as rare as if it shouldn't matter to anyone, but you don't know if the person you are telling that to will be the one with the condition. When you are the one it happens to then the "chances" are 100%. What I mean by that is no matter what the chances are, each single individual is concerned about if will it happen to them. For the sampling size of 1 (me) the rate of occurrance is 100%. It really doesn't matter how rare anyone else wants to think it is. It is not rare for the one who has it. AL

If you can tell he had it done just by looking at him, then I'm wondering how successful it really was. Or am I missing something?