Al - Moderator

I’m surprised how good the crown coverage turned out. It looks great. 

It seems to look like it’s filling in more compared to previous pictures. I know sometimes the lighting can make a difference. Do you feel like it improved any? 

You usually have to stay on meds at least a few months before starting to see results so don’t give up on them too soon. It could take 6 months or more to see an improvement. 

There are a couple of members here who have gone to Dr Bekir Bek. You can do a search for the Drs name and you should come up with a few results that you can view. 

Thank you for coming back to let us know you went through with a hair transplant. Keep us updated on the progress. Do you plan on going back later to fill in the crown? 

It looks about right for 5 months. Update us again in another month so we can see the progress. 

1 minute ago, Melvin- Admin said:

I feel like Shia Lebouf would have been a better fit.

 

In looks you’re right. But would he have played the part as well. I haven’t seen the movie so I can’t say but some   people have the right skills for certain parts. 

If you are a NW 6 or know you are headed there then I think it’s probably a good idea to use some beard hair from the start rather than waiting until some later time when you run out of scalp donor. If you mix beard hair in at the beginning the Dr can blend it in with scalp donor hair to make any differences less noticeable. If you wait until years later as you lose more hair then you’ll be stuck using all beard hair in a ring around the fringe area which may be more noticeable then if you blended it in with other hair from the start. You also will have to worry less about donor depletion since you’re not using as much scalp hair 

It’s a good idea to try meds because you’ll get a better idea of what you can get with a hair transplant. If the meds work and you get some growth without having side effects then you will need less grafts and you may be able to go a little more aggressive with density or where you create the hair line. If the meds aren’t working for you, or if you get side effects, or just decide you don’t want to stay on them long term then you’ll know you need to be more conservative with density and the hair line design. 
 

You can’t get better than that. Your hair is so full and thick. 

According to that test case, Ixekizumab caused the hair loss rather than improve it. The hair started growing back after he stopped taking it.

What you should have done was had an in-person consultation with a HT Dr near you before committing to this surgery. Then you'd have a good idea of your hair situation and can make a more informed decision on what to do. It's not a great idea to end of having to make those decisions on the day of surgery like what happened to you. You want to have an idea of your situation before you go there. The Dr has never seen you before, so you can't expect him to know your situation.

You did get 5003 grafts which is a large amount and it looks like you got decent density all over with those grafts, so I wouldn't be so down about it thinking you wasted a lot of money for nothing.

16 hours ago, salsazio said:

I wanted to ask you In your opinion, how much donor do I have left?

It doesn't look like your donor was all that great to begin with, so you may not have much left after taking over 5000 grafts. You'll have to wait at least 6 months until it grows back in to see how dense (or not) it is.

The density seems OK. It's hard to tell what it actually looks like this early after the HT because you still have a lot of blood on the grafts. Once the scabs come off you will have a much better idea of what it all looks like.

Looks good.

You most likely have at least some shock loss, so I would guess it will look better than it does now after several months. There’s no way to tell how much though. 5500 grafts is a lot to take out, so you’re going to be thinner in the donor area compared to before the transplant. 

This looks awesome.  

Hi @Paul J. Welcome to the forums. Thank you for posting. How many grafts did Dr Cooley give you.

I hope you don't mind, but I changed the title of the post to spell the Drs name correctly.

Very good density. It seems to all blend together very well.

Very nice result.

I would love to see a picture of the graft placement on the temple points.

Looks like this turned out very well.

It's a bad idea. It basically ends up being an organ transplant. You risk having your body attack the grafts as foreign objects and killing all the grafts. You could even be risking your life and you may need to be on immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of your life.

The only possible positive these days is that grafts are so small now that it may be possible to do it without triggering a severe immune reaction, but then again you'd be transplanting thousands of grafts, so that would seem to negate any idea of getting away with it.

I wouldn't do it.

Just try changing shampoos. You don't have to use any specific one. If the one the clinic gave you or recommended you use is drying your scalp out too much or burning your scalp, then just stop using it and try something else.

Bloxham tries to limit the width of the strip so there's not too much tension. A thinner strip will generally give you a lower chance of scar stretching. Hasson & Wong like to push the limits of how wide a strip they can get for higher NWs that could use more grafts.