Al - Moderator

I am a NW 7. I was taking finasteride for 11 years. The first few years I saw some minor improvement. The next few years I was probably stable. The last few years I was losing hair again. After 11 years I was at the point where I obviously had less hair than when I started. At that time I stopped using it.

Numbness in the transplanted area is normal. It will slowly lessen and get back to a normal feeling, usually after several months, but it can take longer in some cases.

It also helps you save money for the hair transplant since you won't be spending it on smoking and drinking.

Over 8700 grafts. You will look completely different a year from now.

If you have a recliner chair, I found it easier to sleep in the recliner than it was trying to prop up pillows on the bed. I always end up turning when in bed, but it's much harder to turn on your side in a reclining chair. I do use a neck pillow which also helps to keep you from turning on your side and it makes sure the back of your head doesn't touch the pillows. EDIT: A chair like below is what I'm talking about.

It's definitely low density that can use another transplant through the area. Try not to worry about the pitting very much. It's very minor and it will probably smooth out over time, so that will probably be a non issue soon.

I agree with just about everything everyone else has said. I wouldn't use scalp hair. If you are going to do it then use some beard hair from below the chin. You won't have any noticeable scarring, you won't use any scalp donor that you may want to use for a standard hair transplant at some time in the future, and the beard hair under your chin will match the rest of the beard hair. One thing I noticed that I don't think has been mentioned is it looks like you have some lighter colored beard hair on your cheeks, either blond or possibly graying. The first thing I would do is try coloring your beard, so it's all the same color. This may go a long way to making the entire beard look fuller. See the photo below to see the area I circled. You can see there are some lighter hairs there that would give you a fuller look if they were darker to match the rest of your beard. Take a look at JustForMen hair color and go to mustache and beard and pick your color. I'm thinking M27 Light red brown seems to be your shade https://www.justformen.com/mustache-beard.html

This is the proper way to do a hair line. Notice that it is not a straight line of hair. It has irregularities which makes it look much more natural than other transplanted hair lines. Very good job.

Probably too late for Gatsby, but for anyone else, in the USA I can temporarily switch my cell phone service to an international service plan for an extra monthly fee. You just change it before you go and then change it back when you get back to your home country. Depending on when the billing cycle is and how long you are gone, it would only be a one or two month extra charge. I don't know if that is available in Australia.

Hard to say. That really depends on how many grafts you get, how thick the hairs are, how many double and triples you get, how far back they decide to transplant, etc. You have a bit of a base of grafts from previous transplants, so that will help you out a bit. They will probably go into temporary shock loss, but they should grow back in a few months. I haven't had any issue from shock loss of transplanted hair not growing back in. They are only planning on using 1000 beard grafts, but I think you have much more than that to use, so you may be able to do another session in a year later if it the 1000 from the first session seems to be growing well. You also have a lot of chest hair. I know Eugenix doesn't like using chest hair because it's not as reliable, but I tink in some people who have really long, thick chest hair it should act very similar to beard hair. I would ask them if they would be willing to do a small 100 graft test and transplant them into a specific area in the crown, so that area is only chest hair. Then you can see how well it grows. Then when you go in for another session, you will have some beard grafts to use and if the chest hair grew in satisfactorily you will be able to use that as well and hopefully get several thousands grafts total on that 2nd session which should give you some crown coverage. I don't use it either. I'm 54. I did take it for about 11 years, but I stopped because it was thinning out my body hair, so my feeling is if you are going to end up using a lot of body hair then it may not be worth holding onto or improving the scalp hair just to hurt the transplanted body hair. I don't think everyone experiences a loss in body hair with finisteride, but I know I did. Yes at least somewhat. You need to ask Eugenix what they prefer because some clinics like it to be longer and some clinics prefer it to be shorter (but not shaved).

You are in the same situation I am in. Shaving your head isn't ideal because of the multiple FUT scars and you don't have enough scalp donor to get any real coverage anywhere. You certainly have a good beard and it looks like you have some thick chest hair that grows long and somewhat straight. This could be useful if that's the case. I had nearly 6000 body hair grafts transplanted to my head. It was just about an even split of roughly 3000 beard grafts and 3000 chest/abdomen grafts. Most of what is growing on the typical recipient area of my head is now body hair grafts. I haven't had any issue with it not growing long enough. In fact most of it grows faster and longer than my scalp hair. It is slightly kinky, coarse, wiry, whatever you want to call that, but it's not anywhere near as bad as what some people think body hair grafts will look like. I'm not trying to match any existing hair because there wasn't any there to being with which probably makes it easier to accept any differences from scalp hair. I imagine if I had a lot of scalp hair and was trying to add some density and the beard hair wasn't quite as soft as the scalp hair then perhaps I would not like it as much, but when you have nothing to match or blend it with there's no issue, at least for me. Everyone's hair is different, so it's not like anyone can tell it's not my real scalp hair. It does soften up a lot over a period of 2 or 3 years to the point where it is just about as soft as my original hair was anyway. You just have to wait it out a while to get to that point. That's how it's going for me anyway. I don't have any huge "WOW" factor improvement because I was still losing hair as we were adding some over several years, so a lot of it just replaced what was falling out. However I know if I hadn't had any body grafts done I would be in such a bad place. I don't know how I would have been able to deal with it, so even though there is not a tremendous visible improvement from where I started I am so glad I did it. There is noticeable improvement though and some people have commented that my hair is looking a lot better and asking me what I'm doing to get it to grow in, so that makes me feel good.

https://www.goodrx.com/drugs/side-effects/is-your-medication-causing-hair-loss-these-11-drugs-are-common-culprits https://besthairlosscure.org/causes-of-hair-loss/what-medications-cause-hair-loss-list/#Which_medications_cause_hair_to_fall

Dr Sanusi Umar has done a couple of transplants using some leg and arm hair, but I don't know/remember what areas he specifically used those grafts in. EDIT: Actually @AB2000has used some arm hair with Dr Umar to improve the lower back of his crown and/or nape area I believe.

Are you on any blood pressure medication, blood thinners, or something like Lipitor to lower cholesterol? Some of those and other medications can cause hair loss, so if you are on those post hair transplant I think there could be a higher graft failure rate. I would seriously take a look at any medications you are on before going through another hair transplant.

It looks like a chemical burn or an allergic reaction to something he was putting in his hair. As @ciaussaid it looks suspicious since it follows a nice hair line pattern on the front.

His temples look so much better now. It was obviously fake before. I don't see any scars from where the grafts were punched out in the corners. Very nice.

If you had mild symptoms then it should be much less likely that you will experience any temporary hair loss.

From what I've seen, Dr Resul Yaman has been putting out some very good results lately. I would have been hesitant to suggest him a few years ago, but it seems like he has improved and I think now he's probably a good choice these days if you are on a budget.

You said you first noticed it around age 25 and it hasn't gotten worse since. Could it be that it's always been a weak spot and simply got more noticeable as your beard hair around the area matured and grew in more through your late teens and early 20s?

If you are transplanting to a different area then you may be able to get away with waiting only 6 months. Waiting less time then that will not give the donor area enough time to heal and even 6 months may be pushing it, although if you only have 1500 in the first procedure then it shouldn't be too big of a deal. With that said, you really should wait about 12 months so you can see how well the first transplant in the front grows. You want to know if (and how much of) a touch up you may feel you need to bring the front to the density you desire. Most people have a few spots they want thickened up even if the growth was 100%. Waiting the full 12 months lets you be able to add a few hundred or however many to the front during the 2nd procedure. You don't want to have the 2nd procedure and then a few months later notice that you really would have liked a few more grafts in the front. It's worth waiting a few extra months for the 2nd one so you don't feel like you need a 3rd one for touch up to the front.

Having some pimples when the hair starts growing in is normal, but not everyone gets them. If you don't have any then consider yourself lucky with that part of the process.

I'm with the others in that this doesn't look like 2500 grafts. Did they charge you per hair rather than per graft? That would probably make it in the range of 1100 grafts if it was per hair. I guess the somewhat good news is that you haven't really wasted any grafts because it looks like most of them probably grew. You just didn't get enough of them put in. How long is the FUT scar? A short FUT scar that doesn't go from ear to ear would be one good indicator that they didn't do many grafts, although they could do a very thin, long strip if they wanted to fool you into thinking it was more than it was. Clinics like this usually advertise a lower price than the competitors to get you in the door, but you actually end up paying more than you would at another place. Once you're there they tell you that you may need a 2nd hair transplant to add some density (just like you said they did) and then give you just enough so you can see that you got some coverage which makes it easier for them to convince you to go for the 2nd procedure to finish the job. Don't go for another procedure with them.

He may be in the process of moving right now, so you may need to just wait a week or two and try again. He and his staff may be too busy with the move right now.

Cold weather here, so I just wore a hoodie when I went out.

I think the lower down the neck you go the hair doesn't usually grow as long as the hair a bit higher up. I know some guys would rather use the lower hair because they shave that off anyway and would not mind having it gone, especially if they like keeping a beard and are worried about not being able to grow a decent beard after using grafts from just under the chin and jaw line, but I think on most guys that is probably the better hair to use. On using the entire beard or not, It may be more down to how many grafts you are trying to get and how much beard hair you have. If you only need a few hundred grafts and have a very good growing beard than it makes sense to me to just use a small area under the chin, but if you need thousands of grafts then you may need to expand the donor area. Of course each Dr may have a different philosophy of whats the best way and best hair to use. For example if someone was very worried about still being able to grow a good beard than I can see taking grafts from all throughout the beard to keep it even and not noticeably thinner anywhere.