Al - Moderator

I was always a very shy person especially when I was younger, so I know how you feel. I have a job that requires me to see and talk to lots of different people every day and with both my shyness and my horrible hair issue all my life it is not an easy thing to do. I never took any medication for depression or anything else because I never felt that taking something to try to fool myself into thinking what was happening wasn't really happening was never going to help me. What I did do was decide to be the best at everything else instead of the small talk with the customers. I did a lot of office grunt work that nobody wants to do (and some don't understand how to do). Certain reports need to be done? No problem I already have it before it was even requested. I'm somewhat good with Excel, so I was able to automate some reports and files that need to be updated regularly, etc, etc. Doing those things has made me valuable and I can get away with not being the most outgoing person as long as I don't seem distant to anyone. In your case I'd say always make sure patient files are organized, if someone has a problem with insurance then try to take care of it for them instead of telling them they need to speak with their insurance company. These days you can do a lot of stuff online or by email, so you sometimes don't even need to talk to anyone to fix things for them. Find out what types of injuries or problems your patients are dealing with and read up on them and learn about them. That gives you some insight to what they are talking about when they discuss their problems and you won't feel so lost. Not only does keeping busy with other things make you valuable with those parts of the job, but it also keeps your mind busy and less able to focus on the anxiety. As far as the small talk that you do need to do, I found over the years that most people who are chatty just like to talk and be heard and aren't really too interested in what you say anyway, so if you just have a bunch of standard sayings to add in to the conversation at the right times you can get by. Inserting "Oh yeah?", "Wow. That's something isn't it", "That's how people are these days.", "I know, right?", "That's terrible.", "I would have done the same thing." and comments like that at the right time will make them think you are engaged with them and they won't think anything about it. You can get good at it after a while.

I thought about this a lot over the years and I honestly don't know what I could have changed or done differently that would have made much difference. I did everything correctly as far as I can tell, but even if I would have done things differently I would not have any more hair than I do now. That's the really depressing part of all this. I feel like my life has been pre determined and no matter what I do there is nothing that can change what is already set to happen. This is why I keep at it and don't stop trying even though many people tell me I should just give up and quit. I want to feel like I actually do have some say in what my life will be.

Some scalp laxity naturally comes back over time. If you had a few FUTs and your scalp is tight you may still be able to do another one some years later.

A lifetime nightmare. More surgeries than anyone can imagine. Todays hair transplant patients are so lucky they aren't having a hair transplant in the 80's dark ages of hair transplants. The entire industry was so shady back then. They could lie all they want and there was no place to get real information. They all told the same lies, so it was believable and lawsuits got nowhere because in those days you were considered on your own with a hair transplant.

Once you get past the first week you don't have to worry about it anymore.

It all depends on what type of hair you have. Body hair varies a great deal from one person to the next and from one area on your body to another. I'm thinking about trying a small test of using arm hair as I think my arm hair would be great for creating a realistic hairline. It's fine and straight and grows pretty long for arm hair.

I started my hair transplants way back in the 1980s, so there is no real comparison to how it's done today. I'm redoing it all with body hair the past few years. If todays procedures were available 30+ years ago I would have gotten a 3000 to 3500 FUT plus maybe 1500 to 2000 beard and chest grafts. Then in a few years possibly another 2000 FUT and continue getting another 2500 body hair grafts as needed over the years. Doing that would have given me a basically full head of hair for the past 33 years and counting. Some of the FUT would be thinning the past 5 years, but with all the body hair mixed in I would have still been OK and could still add a few hundred body hair grafts to refill some spots if I had to.

I mentioned something like this to people in your situation several times over the years. You've been wearing a hair piece, so you know what that is like. I was going to mention this in your other topic. I wouldn't do it the way the person in the video did though. I think your plan was to have two procedures, covering the front half first and then as much of the crown as possible on the 2nd procedure. I would suggest you go for the first procedure as planned covering the front half and up to two thirds if possible. Once it starts growing in you can wear a hair piece for just the crown and see if you are OK with that. Then you can decide if you want to go back for the 2nd procedure or not. You have several options at that point depending on how the first transplant grows and how much donor you have left. You may decide to stop there and continue with the crown hair piece. You may decide to have a small 2nd procedure just thicken up the front half and still continue with the crown hair piece for now. You may decide to go ahead and fill in the crown with a transplant even if it will be a bit thin. If you go with keeping the crown hair piece you can always go back to finish the transplant a few years later when you are older and maybe more willing to have a thinner crown. Or you can then go for some body hair into the crown. Or you can eventually just get rid of the crown piece and leave the crown bald once you get older. The point is if you think you don't have enough donor to get enough density throughout the entire area the way a hair piece gives you then you have some options if you transplant the frontal half first. Once the first transplant is done you have as much time as you want to think about it while you are using that partial hair piece. This is what I wanted to do when I had my first hair transplant because I was wearing a hair piece for about a year at that point and the biggest thing that bothered me was the fake front. I knew I was heading to a NW 7 and as I was very young at the time I wanted thick hair. Unfortunately the clinic talked me out of that and told me I could easily have a full head of hair with transplants.

For me I feel like it's maybe a month behind scalp grafts. Whatever growth there would be if it was scalp grafts then the body grafts will be at that point a month later, so it's not that big a change. I can say after 13 months I was still seeing some minor improvement.

I always hear that one reason you don't get as much density from body hair grafts as you do with scalp grafts is because body hair grafts are almost all single hair. Here's an enlarged picture of my abdomen about a week after having body hair grafts removed. I circled some of the two hair grafts still remaining and this is after a lot of grafts were removed. You can see all the redness from the FUE.

I think they just give the percentages that are the basic averages. 68% chance you won't have hairloss by 40. 32% chance you will. Probably the standard average chance of the population. 84% chance you don't have a bald spot. 16% chance you do. Again probably the standard average of everyone your age. More peoples hair loss starts with receding rather than in the crown, so at your current age that is probably the % of people who have crown loss.

Yes. I forgot about those reasons. Thanks.

A few years ago I had some test grafts taken from my back, but I think out of about 20 attempts we only got maybe 3 good grafts, so we stopped.

Hair envy... I guess it depends on how I look at it. For me I think it was only partially hair envy. Mostly it was age envy. I was never trying to look like anyone else or have anyone elses hair. I wanted the hair I had. I lost my hair very quickly and very young. I never wore a hat to cover my hair loss (until I started having transplants, but that was to cover the surgeries), but I played baseball, so in my late teens and early 20s when I wore a baseball hat I looked like I was a 15 year old kid, but when I took my hat off I was suddenly a 45 year old bald man. In high school all my friends knew me for years growing up, so when I was losing my hair they thought something was wrong and asked what disease I had, was it contageous, did I have cancer, etc. They knew I was only a teenager. But once I graduated high school and went to work in another city almost an hour away nobody there knew me so they didn't think anything was wrong. They just thought I was much older than I was, so I basically went from 18 to 45 over the summer in peoples eyes. So my age is what I had a problem with. I was envious of guys who were 20 something and dating hot, young women. I wanted to be able to live my 20's and date those hot 18 to 25 year old college women, but the only women interested in me were the 40+ year olds who were at least twice my age, divorced, with several kids. When I did get a date with a women my age I was told I was robbing the cradle. One day we all had to wear a baseball cap for a promotion the company had going on and you wouldn't believe how many people told me I looked like I was a young kid, so I knew all I needed to do to be a good looking 20 year old (my actual age) was to have a lot of hair.

Some of us don't have to imagine it 😒 Back in the 80's the only men who shaved their heads were neo nazi skinheads if they were younger. If you were older and shaved your head then you were seen as a rapist, pedophile, or convict. Shaved head bald guys just weren't going to be getting dates from any good looking normal women. You either had to have the combover, horseshoe fringe hair, or a hair piece.

There can be several reasons in my opinion. (my opinions based on what I've seen, heard, read over the years) 1. Punch size. Smaller grafts will generally look cleaner, obviously because they are smaller. 2. The actual cleaning by the clinic. Some clinics just do a light spray over the grafts once they are done and leave it alone to let it heal mostly on it's own as their philosophy is that too much pushing around of the grafts while trying to clean you up immediately after the grafts have been inserted can cause too much trauma for the grafts. Other clinics clean the patient up much better and believe if you have less scabbing later it gives the grafts a better chance for survival and growth. Some clinics cover the grafts with a surgical cream and leave it that way. Dr Sanusi Umar's immediate post op pics are an example of the use of a surgical cream. 3. Some clinics who do FUT like to cut their grafts a bit larger leaving more flesh on the grafts. They feel a bigger, fleshier graft can survive better. Dr Lindsey's immediate post op photos are a good example of this. There are probably other things as well.

Your donor hair doesn't seem too bad from the pictures, but it's always best to get an in person evaluation of donor area on higher NW cases. Pictures don't always show everything the way it actually is due to lighting.

Hair color can also make it easier or harder to spot early growth. Dark hair on light skin is much easier to see small hairs coming in as opposed to blond or light brown hair on light skin.

If you know the hair was there and growing after the procedure then you already know it can't be over harvesting, so obviously it would be shock loss.

Not unless you are really desperate to get more hair for whatever reason, but this is something that would be discussed with you. If you need a lot of hair do a session from below the chin first and see how well it heals. If you still need more hair then you can decide if you want to move further up into your chin and sides. You can also opt for chest hair if you have good chest hair. I chose to try chest hair first to see how well it heals and if it would grow because I was worried about scarring in my beard area and I like to be clean shaven too. After that I went for both beard hair and more chest hair. I had over 2300 taken from my beard and we didn't move above the underneath area. I also had over 2900 from my chest and abdomen. The beard area heals really well and I can go back to work in a week without anyone knowing. The chest leaves lingering red dots on me that takes 6 months to fully fade, but then it's not noticeable after that.

His crown filled in really well for just 5 months.

Where do you live? Since you were happy with your first procedure with Dr Feller, I think you should call Feller and Bloxham for a 10 year follow up and to see what they think of doing more work at this stage. They would probably really like to take some good pictures of a long term case of theirs. They should at least have your previous info and be able to know exactly what was done and can compare what you looked like then vs now.

My dad is maybe a NW2 at age 90. I was a NW7 by age 30. My dad at age 90 vs me at age 22.

They are very good at utilizing body hair from the start on severe case rather than many other clinics which will not using any body hair until your donor is completely depleted or never use any at all because they don't deal with body hair. There are some other places that are good with using a lot of body hair from the beginning such as Dr Sanusi Umar in CA, but since Umar is in the USA he is more expensive than Eugenics.

If you have some decent beard and chest hair then that look should be achievable.