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Midiman , Your scabs seem to have completely fallen off and the recepient area looks nice and clean.. Best Wishes for the times ahead.You will be seeing soem growth in couple of months time.

Troy and Midiman . Thank your very much for your encouraging comments. I wish you both a flourishing head of hair too. Its now almost 7 days post op and i am seeing some scabs and crusts form on my scalp. I have posted recent pictures.. Wanted some comments on my scab formation.. Does it look like this on everybody...or is it appearing to be too much.. Do i need to be more aggresive with removing scabs. I have some hair falling off as i wash it.. but fortunately no grafts seem to have come out with washing ( haven't seen any blood so far). Check out the pictures here. My Bald Saga

Hi TooThin. Yeah i am quite pleased with my hairline and it looks pretty dense to me .So far so good ! My procedure was performed by Dr.Paul Shapiro . He is an excellent doctor. I recieved 2700 grafts and my graft density in the recipient area is around 35-40 FUs/cm2. The graft density in my donor area was around 85FU's/cm2. You can read more about my HT procedure under the post 2700 Grafts with Dr.Paul Shapiro

Wow ! Your results are really awesome. I could not have imagined such amount of growth from a medicine. I am now really going to hang onto to propecia medication with more determination and hope. Keep up the good work !

Hi waittosee. When i went in for the consultation, i was advised to get immediately onto propecia. While propecia has been known to arrest any further hair loss, its effect has been more pronounced on the crown part, rather than on frontal part where i have all my hair loss. I have been on propecia for 1 month now. Its good to hear that you are getting good progress from propecia. I am quite curious to see your progress photos. By the way which doctor did you consult ?

Slick . Thanks for your good wishes. Your results look really good and the scar is practically invisible. Actually I went extensively through yours and csofrank posts as you had done the HT procedure from Dr.Paul Shapiro.They were very helpful.

My Hair Restoration Photos

I think they use that technique. I am not very sure about it however..There was a 50 cent per graft price reduction from the Ron Shapiro's price.

Part 3 - The procedure On August 1, I arrived at the clinic around 7.45 am. Jackie, the receptionist at SMG had me sign some of the forms and ordered the lunch for me.Dr Paul then came in and we went to his office. He drew a hairline on my forehead and asked me whether I liked it. After some discussion, we finally agreed on a modified hairline and I was all set for the surgery to begin. The surgery began around 9 am. I was given some tablets (probably valium and pain killers) and local anesthesia was given to me at the back of my head. The anesthesia took some time to work on me as I could still feel the needle prick after a few minutes. After some more shots of anesthesia, the back of my head finally felt numb. It dawned upon me finally, why my friends use to joke about me as "thick headed". The strip was cut out and the assistants immediately set about the task of making the grafts. I was feeling a bit drowsy and decided to watch some movies. Whilst the strip was being cut, Dr.Paul was making incisions on my scalp. By lunch time, he had made around 2500 incisions. I was informed that the strip at the back yielded around 2200 grafts and he asked me if I would like to have 200 more taken out from the donor area, as 2300 were looking to be quite good. Greedy as I was, I decide to go for 200 more and had a small strip taken again in the afternoon. This strip was one hell of a dense strip and yielded another 400 + grafts. Dr Paul was very much involved with his assistants in inserting the hair grafts. Dr Ron Shapiro was also doing a procedure in the adjacent room and dropped in frequently to check the progress. He exclaimed that my hairline was starting to look really good and quite dense. My operation lasted a marathon 11 hours and I was finally done around 8.30 pm. A total of 2700 grafts were used. Hurrah! Overall, I was feeling quite happy with how the day went. After a long time was I beginning to feel some sense of pride while looking at my hairline. I would really like to thank the folks at SMG. They have been really outstanding and are very professional in their work and have taken great care of me pre-operative and post operative. I would also like to thank PAT and all the members of this discussion forum for their honest and insightful discussion on this topic. You guys have been great.

Part 2 - Research and Initial Consultation Back in U.S, i started doing some serious research about hair restoration and found this forum. This forum is really a fantastic place. I went through the experiences of many of you who had already gone through the procedure and was becoming quite prepared. Fortunately for me , i live in the Minneapolis area and the Shapiro Medical Group is just a few miles away. I scheduled a consultation with Matt Zupan on July 7 . Matt explained me thoroughly the details of the procedure and we had an extensive 1 hr discussion about the number of grafts required, cost, financing etc etc. He took some preliminary photographs and drew a potential hairline on the photographs to show the amount of coverage i could recieve. My hairloss on the Norwood Scale was a 3a and he estimated somewhere between 2000-2500 grafts would be sufficient for me. Overall the consultation was very satisfying and reassuring and I was feeling quite confident about the whole thing. I have read a lot of positive comments about Matt Zupan on this forum and he is every bit as good as I have read, a true asset to Shapiro Medical Group. My procedure was scheduled for August 24th with Dr.Paul Shaipro. I wanted the procedure from Dr. Ron Shapiro , but he had a long waiting period of around 3-4 months. Matt also assured me that Dr.Paul has been doing a great job in this area for some time now and I would have no problems whatsoever with him. To further assure me , he introduced me to Dr. Paul during the consultaion . He is a real nice guy quite reassuring . He took a preliminary look at my hair loss and volunteered to introduce me to his patient who was getting a procedure that day . This patient had a very similar degree of hair loss as I have. We had a small chat and told me that he told me that he was feeling very relaxed during the procedure with Dr. Paul. Overall , at the end of all this I was quite confident of moving along on the procedure with Dr. Paul Shapiro. Around July 23rd I got a call from Matt saying that there was an open spot on August 1 ( the person who was originally scheduled for that day would not be able to make it on that day ) . I was more than happy to take his place and was suddenly bracing myself for the surgery in a week's time. Starting to feel a little nervous too.

Part 1 - Background Before i go into the details about my procedure , i would like to give you some background about the whole stuff. I am currently 26 years old Male. Hair loss has been a real nuisance for me for since high school. I has already started noticing some thinning around the sides of the forehead. But because of my dark color hair and nice density around the top of my head, i always managed to do a good job covering up.Inspite of all the coverup, i was still quite conscious about it and would find myself every now and then trying to sort the hair with a slight brush of hand. Over the last several months i started contemplating about getting a hair restoration procedure done sometime in the "future". When i was thinking about "future" i was actually thinking about several years down the line. I did not realize that i would actually take the plunge this quick. This summer i went to back home to India for vacation. Visited a lot of places and took a lot of photos. And when i uploaded them on my computer and saw them, i just got the shock of my life. I look myself in the mirror everyday, but the photos just showed me in a different light. I was a lot balder than i had realized. The cover up was not working any more and that was it.

Hello Everybody ! This is my first post on this forum. August 1 is going to be a big day for me for years to come. I had my hair restoration procedure done on this day under the able hands of Dr. Paul Shapiro. I have organized my experience into three parts.See below. Here is the link to my photos The Bald Saga