Feller repair - 7 month update

[MrJobi]

7 months leaves plenty of time for improvement especially the softening of it ..

 

Time Time time

[balody]

h2s,

i understand where you are coming from now.

you mention about expectations,i believe it is not necesserally the doctors fault that expectations are unrealistic,but more the fault of hype thrown about on these boards.i believe just because manA goes in to a respected dr on monday,and manB goes in on tuesday,12 months later they are probably going to have different results.no two men are the same ie hair texture,colouring, as well as healing characteristics etc.truth is no one can assure a result,unless they have a crystal ball,everyone has to wait and i feel you still have at least 6 months before you can decide wether your satisfied with the work or not.

as i said earlier i think you look fine,but you are obviously seeing something different,have you no pictures before any surgery at all?or at least tell us your norwood in the beginning.

[John_in_NC]

I agree on the hype. If people here, doctors or their staff claim that Doctor A will give an undetectable hairline, you can go to work the next day, you will an invisible scar etc., then who is to blame if results do not match?

 

By posting a "sometimes results might not be great' does excuse them either, especially if 20 other posts sent other messages.

[Bill - Seemiller]

hair2stay,

 

Based on what you are stating - it sounds like you feel that there wasn't proper communication between you and Dr. Feller about your hair restoration goals and the number of hair transplant sessions needed to achieve your goals?

 

It is also possible, as you stated, that your expectations were too high. After all, the pictures do reveal a very positive change in appearance that would leave many hair transplant patients satisfied.

 

The bottom line is that hair restoration goals sometimes are hard to convey and what is pictured in your mind as you describe them may not be exactly what is in the doctors mind. Of course, I'm speculating...

 

Please remember however, that making a final evaluation of your results should be reserved until 12 months post-op and not now. We do however, appreciate you sharing your progress with us and posing your concerns so we can offer help and support.

 

I'm sure Dr. Feller will respond to your concerns on this issue.

 

Bill

[NervousNelly]

Hair2stay,

 

Everyone can understand your frustration but you still have a good deal of time for things to grow and soften. It does sound like there is a miscommunication.

 

If I am hearing Dr. Feller correctly, it sounds to me like he believes that this surgery will infact satisfy you and that is what he originally stated to you; however he is now saying that worst case scenario if you aren't happy he could do a dense packing of singles that would have to elimininate any chance of ever seeing old work.

 

Hold out longer. I believe that you will be quite content with things. Best of luck.

[Al - Moderator]

Hair2stay,

 

I don't want to put you down, but damn dude! If you didn't tell me it was pluggy I probably wouldn't have noticed. I think your hair probably looks a lot better to other people than it does to you because you are looking at it trying to find every little detail that might be wrong with it.

 

Maybe it looks a bit worse in reality than it does in pictures, because I know that's sometimes the case with mine. If I hold my head up from 5 feet away my hairline looks pretty good in pictures, but still I think you might be trying to compare other hair transplants to your own and are being too critical.

 

I think you need a dose of reality. You need to look at some pictures of some truly bad HTs. I would LOVE to have the hair you have. Yes it's horrible that you had to have repair surgery for a not so great HT, but it looks like it's turning out better than it was and at least you had enough donor hair to actually have a repair! Some of us aren't so lucky.

 

You have to realize that it will never fall or comb exactly the way it once did when you had your natural hair there.

[hair2stay]

I hear you all, and I do not argue the fact that I have a good head of hair. However this case is unique, like all others. Whether I have a full head of hair or not is besides the point, and applying logic like "you should be happy, you have a lot of hair" is pointless and off topic.

 

What we are looking at here specifically is hairline repair, not how much hair I have on my head. Look closely at the photos of the hairline on the left side of my head (see first two photos in gallery). This is the area where the old plugs are most noticeable. Yes I can cover them and style my hair in ways to conceal it, and look great. However that again is not the point.

 

What I am trying to accomplish is a natural appearing hairline, and the left side is still not there. If anyone denies that, I beg to differ. We can all dance around it, but the reality is plugs are in the frontal hairline and noticeable. Either they need to be adequately camoflagued or removed. There is a world of opinions on what is best, and I put my money on camoflague with dense packing. Whether or not that plan will be succesful, it has yet to be seen.

 

At this juncture, I will continue to wait for improved results. Dr Feller has adequately explained his reasoning in perfoming the surgery the way he did, directly to me, and I accept his explanation. I understand his approach at this time, though it was not entirely clear to me prior to and during the surgery. My goals were clear and simple from the beginning, make the plugs in the hairline disappear, particularly on the left side, and the Dr assured me our goals were the same. If reaching this goal were to involve some removal of old grafts, I was open to that as an option and suggested it to Dr Feller. Dr Feller has been firm in his position to not remove any plugs, from the beginning and through today. Whether or not we can "make the plugs disappear" without extraction is still yet to be seen. At 7 months post surgery, they are visible, particlualry on the left side. Where we go from here we shall see.

 

Thanks again for everyone's contribution(s) to this thread, it has been very productive.

 

H2

[notgoing2gobald]

hair2stay,

 

I did not have a chance to read all of this thread yet, but I wanted to jump in with a question. You began losing your hair in '93 and have been able to maintain ALL OF THAT for the past 15 years with propecia? Is this correct? if so, then that is nothing short of outstanding. How progressive was your hair loss prior to propecia? I guess I better get on that, pronto.

[hair2stay]

NG2GB,

 

My friend, my hairloss was never really excessive. From the beginning it was hairline work and up to today it still is. The first doctor should have laughed at me and sent me home at the ripe age of 24! Instead he sold me a bill of goods all in the name of "staying one step ahead of my hairloss" What happened over time was all of the native hair in my frontal area continued to fall out and I was left with some funky ass transplants waving in the wind.

 

I have been using minoxidil since inception (that's like almost 20yrs now!) and propecia since the beginning as well. To date, I have had over aprox 3,000 grafts in the frontal first inch of my forehead.

 

Hair loss in my family history is a long sloooowwww process, whether the drugs have been working or I have hell to pay in the coming years I can not answer for sure. What I can say based on my humble observations, is that the drugs have slowed the hairloss and have done well to help me maintain what I have.

 

Pills, plugs and potions... Yeeehaw!

 

H2

[notgoing2gobald]

hair2stay,

 

thanks. Well, I can certainly sympathize with you to the extent that you are not happy with your situation, BUT it could be a lot worse. Im sure your well aware of this fact but MANY, MANY guys on this forum would kill to have the amount of hair you have. Im surprised you have had so many grafts put all in the front. I also find it hard to believe (I do believe you its just spectacular) that your hair loss began in your early twenties and now, fifteen years later you still have so much hair. I also found your case interesting, because if memory serves correctly I believe the doc and others commented that part of your problem was with the scar tissue in the recipient area might yield slow or poor growth. I was not fully aware of this phenomena with respect to the recipient area. I wonder if an argument can be made that it is better to put the desired amount of grafts in each area of the head in a single surgery as opposed to spreading them all out over the entire head over each successive surgery. Or does excessive trauma to one section play against this?

 

Regarding your family hair loss history, could you give me an example of what you mean by.."a long slooowwww process..." i.e. how slow did others in your family bald without drugs? Im just curious because Im thinking I should get on propecia pronto if it could possibly have such a material effect.

[dhuge67]

Considering that THIS is a REPAIR, it's pretty good to begin with. I look like a freak with my current situation. It's absolutely crushing me inside and I don't have the money to go and fix the situation right now. It feels just plain awful and is so frustrating that I can't even begin to put it into words.

 

I'm envious of this guy's hair and it is apparently a repair situation. Amazing.

 

I just wish I knew that I needed about 3x the size of a procedure that I originally got. It's been almost 2 years for me now, though, and I can get something done as soon as I have the funds. I just don't see that happening for a long while. I've still got a semester of school left and then will be job hunting or going back to OCS.

 

I'm not asking for sympathy here, I guess, I'm just spouting frustrations. The fact that this guy's situation is repairable just irks me because mine is so much worse.

 

It sucks to be 22 and hating it, even when I'm in the best shape of my life. I recently hit 190 lbs at 5'8 at 8% body fat and pulled a 550 lb deadlift at a recent meet. Of course, with a hat on.

 

This place is the bald man's guardian angel. I wish I had realized that before the trigger was pulled on the procedure. I think there's hope for me, I THINK.

 

It's sad that sometimes I actually dream about being a candidate on extreme makeover.

[Dr. Alan Feller]

Dhugh,

 

It's been a while since I've seen you on here. I remember your case. It is an excellent example that demonstrates how all HT doctors and clnics are NOT alike.

 

I posted a side by side comparison of what was done on you by another HT doctor and a similar patient I did at the same time. This is the difference between old style mini/micro graft work and dense pack TRUE follicular unit transplantation:

 

http://www.fellermedicaldata.com/images/dhugh/1.jpg

 

Best of luck Dhugh.

[dhuge67]

Originally posted by Dr. Alan Feller:

Dhugh,

 

It's been a while since I've seen you on here. I remember your case. It is an excellent example that demonstrates how all HT doctors and clnics are NOT alike.

 

I posted a side by side comparison of what was done on you by another HT doctor and a similar patient I did at the same time. This is the difference between old style mini/micro graft work and dense pack TRUE follicular unit transplantation:

 

http://www.fellermedicaldata.com/images/dhugh/1.jpg

 

Best of luck Dhugh.

Dr. Feller, I appreciate the post. You are one of the few surgeons I would trust to operate on me a second time. Your work is almost always head-turning (or not head-turning - depending on how you look at it).

 

I hope to sit down with you sometime in the near future for an assessment.

 

Thanks,

 

Chris

 

PS - One question, Dr. Feller, do you recommend that a patient come in with a certain length of growth? Mine is not shaved, but pretty darn close to it and looks sort of like the guy's hair on the right, in the picture you posted.