Al - Moderator

The frizzy, kinky hairs will probably soften and straighten over the next 6 months or so. It can take 18 months for the softness to go back to normal.

Once all the scabs are off you're probably OK to start using Minoxidil again.

Now that I have a lot more hair spread out all over my head it can probably work OK at this point. In the past I had so little hair on my entire head that I had to put so much DermMatch on it (DermMatch is the only one I tried) that it looked so fake. I could probably get away with it now. You have to realize that I would have had to cover the back and sides too as I had many strip scars all over. It ends up being a full head of DermMatch and to do that every day and spend an hour or two each day trying to make sure it's not too noticeable just wasn't something I wanted to do. I'll try it just for fun after my next hair coloring, but I always figured if I actually had enough hair where I only had to spend a few minutes sprinkling/spreading something on then I'd rather just not use it and have a bit of thinning hair instead. I've had thin hair since I was 15, so I can deal with it not being so thick, although I'd love it if I could ever get to that level for real.

Yes. I've been on this repair journey with True & Dorin for almost 9 years now having 8 transplant repair sessions totaling approximately 6000 beard, chest, and abdomen grafts.

Sorry I missed this before. I hardly get any ingrown hairs on my beard, so it hasn't been a problem. I did get a bit on my abdomen when we did a session from there, but since nobody really sees that area, I didn't really worry about it much. It eventually all clears up.

I think I am going to do a before and after with hair fibers and post it here just for fun though .

I have tried them at home a few times over the years and yeah my hair looks totally full, especially now that I have enough hair to use it with. I didn't have enough hair in some areas before. What a difference it makes now! However, I just can't bring myself to actually go out with it in my hair. I know me. I'd constantly worry about whether someone can tell. This is what happened to me when I had a hair system years ago. I got sick to my stomach just being around people. It was awful. I wouldn't do that to myself again. And actually I worry more about how to explain one day being bald and the next day having a full head of hair.... and then what? Then I have to keep up the charade every day or else everyone sees me bald again. No thanks. If everyone I work with is going to know it's fake, then why bother? What's the point. I wouldn't be fooling anyone. It's like a guy you may see who wears an obviously fake hair piece and you think "OK. We all know he is bald. He may as well just get rid of it."

I have my next hair transplant scheduled for March. I wanted to go much earlier, like in December, but life got in the way and I was working 6 days per week all Summer and wasn't sure when we'd get (and keep) new hires to lighten my work load, so because of it all, I wasn't able to get a chance to have a follow up consultation and decide what to do next until just a few weeks ago. I did let my beard grow a few days last month when I had a few days off to see how much hair I still had left there. I don't have time right now, but I'll come back in a day or two and post some pics.

I don't think I've seen this thread before, but now that Melvin pointed me to it I read through all of it and I'll add a few questions and comments. @Tony711 you said you had about 2300 (I think that's what I read) grafts done years ago. Did they grow at all? Did they fall out within the first few years? Did they fall out slowly over the years as your donor area thinned? Either way I think there should have been a much smaller HT done on you to see how it would turn out. I'm thinking it should have been half of what you got, about 1500 grafts. The area covered could have been the same as you have, but the grafts should have been spaced out more. Why am I saying this? Because since you had 2300 grafts done prior and no real hair to show for it, you needed to (1) Find out if there is any other cause of the hair falling out and (2) since you now have a lot of scars from old grafts, you need to allow some extra room between grafts to allow for better blood flow and nerve reconnection which may both not be optimal from previous transplanting. That was my thinking when I started my own repair, but I had a lot more scarring than you as I had multiple scalp reductions, hundreds of spaces between grafts punched out and sewn closed to try to eliminate space between grafts, and many many punch grafts. I was very reluctant to use up half of my beard and chest hair just to find out it didn't grow in and then what would I do next. I know this doesn't help you now, but I just wanted to comment. Yours is a very depressing case, somewhat like my own. I hope you still have enough grafts left to get a big improvement. If you decide to try again, I suggest you only put a small amount of grafts in the area that didn't grow rather than try to dense pack it again and get the same results. It's tough having to wait just to see if a small amount of hair grows, but it's better than waiting and still only a small amount grows, yet you wasted all of your donor and paid a lot more money for it.

It's what I always say. Crowns do matter even when you think it won't bother you so much. Once you get hair in the front and see a bald crown, suddenly the crown is a much bigger problem to you then it was. A few hundred beard grafts in a U shape along the crown hairline would really finish this off.

Wow! Incredible results, Melvin.

You've had a pretty good improvement from where you were at the start. I don't think you could ever hope to get anything resembling dense hair with how much loss you had to start with. If you've got it stabilized where it's at then perhaps it's time to look into a hair transplant.... unless you are happy with the improvements you've had and staying at that level. There's nothing wrong with that. If you feel fine with it then that's all that matters.

There's always going to be some degree of these, but it's going to be much less with better Drs. It depends on skill and how much they actually care to do quality work. For example, a clinic doing multiple HTs per day and just trying to get them done as fast as possible is probably going to have more issues. It also depends somewhat on punch size. Smaller punches make it harder to get grafts out intact, but this goes along with skill. There is also a factor of the patient physiology. I've seen some patients where the grafts just seem to pop right out on there own and on the other end, some people's donor grafts need to be dug out.

You need to wait several days or else you risk grafts coming out or getting infected. You can/should spray the area every few hours with a saline solution using a spray bottle to keep the area from getting too dried out and also help remove any dried blood. You should ask your Dr for exact instructions. They should have told you or given you written instructions of what to do.

A few days after surgery your head is going to be swollen, so you are not going to look right. There is nothing to worry about. It will all go back to normal shortly.

Wow. Even your crown is starting to look pretty good at this point. Another session may make you look completely full. Good luck.

I live in the USA, so I'm not sure how it works exactly in the UK, but it's probably very similar. Here you would go to your primary care Dr and just tell them you need blood tests done and give them the list. They may say you need to have a complete physical as they may only do some of those blood tests as part of a physical which is fine. It should be pretty easy. It's not like you'd be the first person to need blood work done for pre surgery.

He had a lot of grafts. I really wonder what the donor area looks like.

I agree with all 3 of your statements. However if it grows well then the patterned placement may not matter because it's dense enough that you won't be able to tell. The hair line too low and the angling to one side will both be issues for sure though.

The short answer is it will most likely be easily noticeable. However it really depends on how much area you are covering, how many grafts you will use, if you have enough hair to hide the area, etc. We would need to see pictures to give you a good answer. You may be able to get away with it simply because they haven't seen you in years, so they don't really know what you looked like before the HT.

5 days sounds about right.

For everyone who feels this site should review Drs yearly, I say this is already happening. That's what honest, actual patient accounts of their hair transplants are all about. We get real reviews of the Drs. If there seems to be too many verified actual bad reviews we can suggest the Dr be removed and the moderator/owner of the site should make the decision. This is what happened with Dr Diep. If the site owners decide to keep bad Drs then it jeopardizes this entire site and thus their entire income flow, so it isn't in their best interest to keep bad Drs I know there have been other Drs removed from the recommended list over the years as well for the same reasons, which is that they got sloppy and were no longer producing consistently good results, so it works. Did it take too long for Dr Diep to be removed? Perhaps, but there is no perfect way to ever do this. In fact there were several people still voting to keep him, so it's hard to say if this site should have acted sooner if there are members who post here who are happy with their results from him. How would you do yearly reviews of every Dr anyway? You can't force people to post reviews. Is it right to remove a Dr simply because nobody posted a review of him/her in the past several months? that doesn't make sense. Sure there is a lot of mention of certain Drs but I've seen that change over time. You get one or two people who post a lot and had a great results and that Dr gets mentions for the entire year about how great they are which keeps more people going to that Dr because the name pops up all the time and the cycle keeps going. Does that mean that Drs who people haven't gotten all excited about aren't performing great work? That's crazy to think that.

Are you suggesting we recommend or not recommend Drs based on how many people post reviews of them? All you're going to do is make this forum be filled with paid fake reviews to make Drs look good, so they can be on our recommended list. Once that happens this place is useless.

Don't assume the pattern is going to stop at the point you are at now. The area can expand to the sides and down the back of your crown. You still have a lot of hair in the crown area that is thinning. It would be best to keep that if you can.

Cocaine is fine. Just don't take Finasteride. That stuff can kill you. 😆 Seriously though, I never understand why anyone wants to take illegal drugs.