Al - Moderator

I'll try to get a picture up here tomorrow

The lower back part of my crown is 100% beard and chest hair. I was completely bald there before. It doesn't look any different than other hair and it grows several inches long if I let it. There are no issues with length or appearance. For the first two years there is a difference in how it feels if I run my hands through it. It feels a bit more coarse, but that slowly goes away over a few years. I can't tell the difference anymore in the oldest ones that were transplanted.

I'm glad you had more put in the front as I felt your hairline area really needed a bit more. I can't wait to see this once it's grown in.

It should continue to thicken up at least a little bit over the next few months.

A bad hair transplant can certainly end a relationship, but rapidly going bald can do that also.

If it's women your age who are telling you this then tell them to stop shaving their legs, dying their hair, putting on eye liner and mascara, etc. Listen to what their answer is. I'm 100% sure you'll hear them basically tell you it's important for them to look good, but it's not important for you to look good. Then go and do whatever you want to do to look your best because you are just as important as anyone else.

A couple of the ones I think were removed were ones that turned out to be fake. For example person A posts how he had a bad experience with Dr Z. Then person A creates another account, lets call it person B, and posts a response to person A saying he also got a botched hair transplant from Dr Z. Then person A/B creates a third account and also adds to the messages as if he is yet another recipient of a bad hair transplant from Dr Z. I think there was even one time when a Drs representative came on here bashing a competitor Dr in the same city just to get people to go to his Dr rather than the Dr he was bashing. Those kinds of posts when it's found out they are fake should be removed as it is not fair to the Dr that is mentioned.

I've been trying for 31 years. I'm still working on it. What's needed for any real chance of a decent head of hair on a NW 7 is a lot of thick beard and chest hair. If you have that then you have a shot. If you are a NW 7 then your donor area is going to be much smaller than average. You'll be lucky to get 4000 scalp grafts from a NW 7 head. After getting 4000 scalp grafts you will need to get 8000 to 10000 body hair grafts to get somewhere close to looking like a full head of hair.

I'm a NW 7 with approximately 460 cm2 of bald area (if I remember correctly. I will have to measure it again, but it's over 400). At an average of 40 grafts per cm2 that would be 18,400 grafts. If you wanted to average 45 grafts per cm2 then you're looking at 20,700 grafts.

Keep it somewhat long. You want your hair to be long enough to cover the area that will be worked on. Directly after the procedure the area without hair will be wider than the actual scar because they will shave a section out where they will be removing the strip, so you'll have a bit of shaved hair above and below the scar line right after the procedure. You may also get some shock loss in the area over the next few weeks. You want your hair long enough to cover it all. Don't worry about how they will work on it. They will shave, trim, put a hair band, whatever to work on the area. It's what they do.

You can't rub off transplanted hair once it's growing. It's your hair. It grows from your head just like it did before.

I'll add that it helps that he is located in South Carolina which is a much cheaper area than places like New York or California.

He saves money on not having to pay for an extra tech or two since he does it himself. The cost savings are mostly given to you. It allows him to compete with low cost clinics in other countries. I think there will be other clinics trying to get a bit leaner staffing wise in the future too if they start losing too much business due to the high USA prices.

How long ago was the FUT done? They cut a long strip out of the back of your head, so you are going to have nerves and blood vessels cut. There's no way around that. It can take several months or more for the numbness to go away in some patients. I don't know if that's all he was trying to tell you or if it's a lot worse than that in your case.

You should rethink that. If you have decent beard hair under your chin then that is the best to use. You won't have any noticeable scarring and you can still grow a beard if you want to. Beard hair works best. EDIT: And you may be able to get a surprisingly large amount of grafts from there. If you take a good look and measure the area it's rather large.

I also think most guys should try shaving their head before going for a transplant or at least seriously consider shaving their head and think about whether that might be a better long term solution. Some guys end up liking their shaved head and some guys hate it. I am one who hates a shaved head look on most men and it's definitely not for me especially since I grew up in the 80s when shaving your head meant you were a neo nazi skinhead, so that wasn't an option for me back then. The sad thing is that most younger guys don't want to shave their head because it makes them look much older, but those are the ones who are the worst hair transplant candidates because of their hair loss at a young age while the older guys over 45 who shave their head don't really look too much older and it's more acceptable at that age, yet they are some of the best hair transplant candidates.

Thicker, stronger hairs hold on to the surrounding tissue much better, so when a FUE graft is pulled out it is much more likely to be intact and have a good follicle root. Thinner hairs have more tendency to easily rip out of the follicle and also is more delicate to implant, thus they have a tendency to not grow as well. FUT grafts are cut from a strip of hair, so the techs can cut thicker grafts that will stay together even if the hairs are thin.

You should avoid that even before the transplant 😊

At 6 months you will still have some growing and thickening to go for a few more months, so you are not at the final result yet.

I didn't have much styling time. I have to go way back. Here's me in 1985 at 17 years old vs 1989 at 22 years old.

My scabs always started coming off earlier than I always see everyone elses come off too, maybe day 6 or 7 to start and by day 9 or 10 they are all gone, so I don't think there is any issues with that.

Looks good.

If you're concerned about losing a lot more hair down the road then the best thing you can do if you are getting a hair transplant is go with a conservatively placed hairline and not try to get extreme thick density. That way you don't use up too much donor hair now.

Dr Lindsey has several examples of a double layer closure for scar repairs. He cuts the scar out and then uses dissolvable sutures below the surface to pull the area together, so the tension is mostly on those sutures. Then he does a top layer of sutures to close it all up. He explains it much better than I can. With that said you may be better with some FUE placed into the scar instead of trying to cut it out.

You are not even going to want to do anything the first 3 or 4 days anyway. Take about a week off and then start light training. No heavy weights. You'll know you're doing too much if you get a burning feeling on your head all over your recipient area and maybe the donor area as well (but probably not as much from there) from straining too much. That's when you stop and take a rest and go lighter if you still want to train more that day. After two to three weeks you can get back to normal. Like I said you can feel your way really. Just start easy and see if you are able to increase each day and then stopping if your head starts feeling some pain. Mine is like a burning all over my recipient area. That's when I knew had enough for the day. Don't push it.