Al - Moderator

@tony71 and @Etownone I don't think I mentioned this anywhere, but if you have a good beard and you are only doing maybe 500 to 600 grafts, it would probably be taken from a much smaller area in the center. My first beard graft session was a much smaller area that didn't extend up the side toward my ear so much. That made it much less noticeable than this one. After getting over 2300 grafts already, we had to expand outward more to get more grafts. I knew it would be a little more noticeable while it was healing and I took an extra 2 days off from work to try to compensate a bit. I couldn't take off more than that. Anyway, I wasn't too worried about it because I knew from the previous sessions that it would most likely eventually heal extremely well, so I was OK with it. Just wanted to put that out there for you guys and anyone who is thinking about using beard grafts.

I'm at 4 weeks and 1 day. The right side is almost completely cleared up except for couple of lingering pimples, but the redness is gone. This was the better healing side from the beginning. Now here is the left side. This is mostly cleared up as well, but there is still a slight bit of redness and some very minor pimples. Right now I think it looks more like I had a bad shave with an old razor rather than looking like something was done. It's not bothering me at all at this point. Nobody has asked about it the entire time, but if they did I would have just passed it off as having dry winter skin and the shaving cream really drying it out when I shave.

It's shock loss. They will grow back.

That seems to be the punch size range being used these days. I personally feel that .75 to .8 is too small, but if they do a few test punches and adjust to a larger size if needed as they seem to indicate then that sounds fine.

This is awesome. Honeymoon for a week and then get a hair transplant all in one trip. I guess your new wife didn't get much say in where you were going for your honeymoon 😀 If anyone has any doubt that you are totally dedicated to this forum and hair loss, this should end that doubt. I guess the big benefit to her is she gets a hotter and better looking you in about 6 to 9 months. LOL. Congratulations to you and your wife. Oh... and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone.

It looks like there may still be a bit of pinkish in it that is making it look worse. You could have some shock loss as well. It actually looks pretty good for 3 weeks. Give it more time.

Thank you. I'm thinking about it lately. here is a picture I took a few months ago of the back of my head showing some of the FUT scars to give you an idea of why I never shaved my head. This pic is a bit blurry because it's an image from the mirror. It's hard to take pics of the back of your own head. You can see I have some bad retrograde hair loss now that I obviously didn't have years ago. Since that hair is all gone now, the transplanted hair on top is gone too which is why I had to replace almost all of the originally transplanted area with BHT plus a lot more areas around where the crown widened and dipped and the sides dropped. A lot of the BYT I did previously was to build up the sides and fill in the lower crown which was completely bald.

I had 25 transplant surgeries in a little more than 5 years. FUT strips didn't go all the way around your head in those days because the number of grafts was small, so they would do a strip on the side of your head and then continue from the end of that to the other side on the next surgery. The 25 surgeries includes all the FUTs, 5 scalp reductions, and 147 (if I'm adding the number correctly) punch removals to attempt to eliminate space between grafts. All this while they were promising me that there would be no scars left once it was finished. They were even charging me $150 per session for a guarantee of no scars and unlimited donor.

I'm at 3 weeks post op now. A bit of an issue has popped up over the past few days. I'm getting a lot of little pimples that are very red. It's now more red than it was a week ago. The right side (2nd pic) is not really bad and isn't noticeable unless you are right next to me and looking for it. The left side is definitely noticeable and I find myself trying to turn away whenever someone starts getting on that side of me. It's also been very itchy. I think shaving every day is probably making it worse than it would be if I just left it alone. I have my 2 days off coming up, so if I don't have to go out anywhere important, I'll try not to shave for a couple of days and see if it starts clearing up.

I agree on this point which leads me to believe they may have made a lot of attempts that didn't yield an actual graft. What happens is they attempt to FUE out a graft, but they cut the hair below the skin and don't get the follicle root. If that happens, the hair will usually grow back in, but at the moment it's just growing below the surface. So while it's not really shock loss, it could grow back as if it was shock loss except it may grow back sooner. Let's hope that's the case.

On a full head of hair, the hair on the back and sides does not always match the top. Sometimes the back is very thick and wavy even if the top and front is straight. Many men don't grow their hair lengthy on the back and sides these days, so they don't even know what their hair is actually like in those areas. My guess is that if you were to let your back grow it would probably match the frontal transplanted hair pretty closely. All that to say you probably can't do much about it as that's how your hair was when it was in the donor area. It will usually straighten out some over a few years to more closely match the original frontal hair, but you said it's already been a few years, so you may not get any more changes to it.

You are just starting the really good growth period. Months 4 through 6 is where most people get the big improvements.

He had no hair at all in that area before the transplant. It looks like the section in question was transplanted a bit light from the beginning. If you look at his 8 month picture, you can see there is hair growing and it looks like they may be a bit thin and probably has some maturing to do over the next couple of months. Without seeing a view of the entire result it's hard to say for sure if this is good or bad.

That makes sense. People do that with everything. I was on a car forum when I was having trouble with my car and trying to fix it myself because the shop said the part needed wasn't made anymore. While I was looking for help I also responded to a few others asking for help because I had gone through those issues and knew some of the answers. Once I sold my car I never visited that forum again. There was no reason to after that. I never even thought about it again.

You should post anyway. Just because people don't respond doesn't mean they aren't looking at it. I certainly don't respond to everything. It's also good for people who come to the forum later and are searching for results from a certain Dr. It's good if they can find ones that post updates throughout the entire year to the final results. So don't think it's not helpful to anyone just because nobody is responding. I get it though. It makes you feel like nobody is interested.

Also check out Dr Parsa Mohebi in that area.

My personal feeling is you need to wait at least 10 months unless you are transplanting to another area. Then you may be able to do it in a little as 6 months afterwards.

If you are near Redondo Beach CA then check out Dr Sanusi Umar.

This post was from 14 years ago. Certainly someone's skills can improve a lot over 14 years. That doesn't make anything that anyone said about the Dr 14 years ago crazy.

I'm not affiliated with Dr Wesley, but I'll give you my opinion. Most USA Drs are on the conservative side. One reason is cost. It's more expensive to have a HT in the USA than in some other places, so a 6000 graft session would not be affordable to most people. A lot of guys who need very large sessions will look to other countries to save money as they can't afford to do it in the States, so it's not easy to compete with other countries on the amount of grafts placed. Another reason, and this is the one you are actually trying to get an answer on, is that they feel it's better to leave a lot of grafts and donor area for later use as the years go by and you lose more hair. The good thing about getting 6000 grafts with a low hairline that's densely packed is that it gives you a huge improvement and a much more youthful appearance. Who wouldn't want that? But it doesn't leave much room for further work down the road if you need it. The hair mills in some countries don't care about your long term satisfaction. They just want to show a big improvement right away for the WOW factor especially with social media these days. That makes even the good clinics in those countries have to push the larger sessions with low hairlines and dense packing too since they need to compete with the hair mill down the road. Someone like Dr Wesley who goes conservative with a higher hairline and not as dense will try to make sure you can maintain a decent look for many years by keeping a lot in reserve so you can go back periodically to add more as your loss progresses without as much worry about running out of donor grafts.

FIRST DAY BACK TO WORK This is Friday December 17. This is 11 days post op. I took two weeks off (16 days). The first 5 days was for me to let my beard grow. I don't want to grow a beard at work. The redness is a bit less than it was, but it's still there. I'm hoping I can get by without anyone noticing. I'll try to hide in the office as much as I can. Luckily this is a low week at work with everyone out Christmas shopping. The top looks fine. Nobody will see anything up there. My hair is still a bit wet in those pics as I just showered and getting dressed for work.

Yep. An in person consultation is always going to be better than online. I think most Drs who only see you online are going to be much tougher on who they judge to be candidates because they don't want to say OK and then you set up a surgery date, you get there for the surgery which is the first time the Dr sees you, and then you turn out to not be a very good candidate in person and he has to cancel the entire surgery. That is bad for everyone. If you are getting rejected online, try going to a quality Dr near you and see what they say.

FIRST SHAVE! Saturday, December 11. This is the first shave post HT. This is 5 days post op. I tried to shave gently, so it isn't an extremely close shave. And here is a few minutes later trying to show you what it looks like in a normal situation. Oh no! I look more my age now. Those lights in that hotel room were really good to me. LOL. Or maybe these lights are just really bad... yeah that's it. A couple of top pics, so you can see how the recipient looks at 5 days post op when you don't have to shave it all off for the procedure, although I know I only had a small session and it probably wouldn't be as easy to hide it as this is if it was a large session.

We tried a small test of back hair a while ago, but the amount of good grafts the Dr was able to get for the amount of attempts was maybe 10% to 20% of useable grafts and the area was getting torn up a lot. I think the issue is that the flesh is more mushy or maybe less dense is the way to say it, so what was happening is the flesh just falls apart very easily and it was basically just disintegrating as they were pulling the grafts out. The tech showed me what was happening. She showed me a graft that looked OK on her finger, but then she rubs her other finger over it and the flesh around the hair just rubs away like water and all she had was a hair with nothing on it as if she just plucked a hair out. I may try a test of arm hair since I seem to have a lot of that.

I vacation for a week on the beach at the end of every Summer and I've had no issues being on the beach with no shirt after using a lot of chest grafts as well as the beard grafts. I'm also at several other beaches each Summer for one to 3 days at a time. I don't think I ever get a really dark tan, though, but certainly darker than I am in the Winter. Once the Summer comes around and my grafts start growing in I'll be sure to take some pictures out in the sunlight. I will gladly volunteer to take a week vacation on the beach for this important research 😀