Having acute anxiety after procedure

[John M]

Does anyone know what can be causing this? Can it be the anasthesia? Or the antibiotic Keflex? After the third day of my procedure, I started getting severe panic attacks and all day acute anxiety. I would get occasional panic attacks in the past, but never like this. I took the Keflex as directed and one Vicodin per night for 3 days, and on the third day everything went haywire. I stopped the Keflex and vicodin about 3 days ago, but this persistant anxiety is still with me. Can it be the trauma to the donor area and the staples? I just think it's odd how I was never this bad until the 3rd day after the procedure.

[j1j9j85]

great advise given here......

 

and if memory serves spexs advised me the same thing a month ago...

 

drugs,trauma recovery worries lack of sleep all equate to anxiety this happens with all surgery not just HT

 

i recently had facial surgery and exactly the same thing nerves and worries an concerns

 

just have to push through it im affraid

[Tom60]

How common is this? This is the first time that I heard that of someone having anxiety after procedure.

[John M]

Can this be something like acute stress disorder? They say if it lasts for more than a month it becomes post traumatic stress disorder. Can this procedure do this? 4 years ago when I had this done the first time, I had no problems. Today is actually the first day im starting to feel better since the 14th of this month.

[TC17]

John,

 

At the risk of sounding offensive, I believe you should see a psychiatrist. I don't have the qualifications to make any conclusory statements, but having followed your posts for about a year now, I think you could be helped by a qualified mental health professional.

[hairthere]

John, I have to agree with TC17-- your post-op problems may have something more to do with your emotional and mental state than with the actual surgery or medications. Do you (or does anyone else in your family) have a history with panic attacks/anxiety? Have you ever sought help from a therapist?

[TakingThePlunge]

John,

 

I think this is very sound advice. A community such as this one can only go so far when it comes to emotional stress. I think that we, as hair loss sufferers and hair transplant patients, tend to get so caught up in discussion of side effects and healing that we can become short-sighted and forget that there are other external factors affecting us as well.

 

If you are feeling this way, I highly suggest talking to your physician or a mental health professional and find out why.

 

All the best,

[Al - Moderator]

When you have the first procedure, your donor area is shaved down and afterwards the little bit of hair that you did have in the recipient area falls out from shock loss. You wait 6 months before you feel like you even get back to where you were before you started. The next few months you get some good growth, but wish it was thicker.

 

Now you go back for a 2nd procedure. Afterwards you get more stressed than the first time because you know all the progress you just had disappeared because your recipient area was shaved again, some of the new hair will fall out from temporary shock loss again, you have to wait another 6 months to start showing improvement, etc.

 

You're asking yourself if it is worth all the money and getting a scar across the back of your head if all that's happening is a few years are going by with you having worse hair most of that time than you had if you didn't do anything at all.

 

Some people breeze right through it, but for others it can get very stressful. If that's what's happening to you, then I do think it's normal for some people. You say it's going away and my guess is if you didn't hate the way the first one turned out (other than not thick enough) you'll feel much better after another few months when you start seeing the results.

[Tom60]

i believe it is a combination from BeHappy's post plus a reaction from the medication that you given.

 

Any other thoughts?

[John M]

I think most responses here are right; I do have a history of anxiety, but this is different; 3 days after surgery, my body seemed to of gone haywire. I stopped the Keflex and Vicodins, and was hoping it was those. But today is the 8th day, and today I can really say that this was the first day I was feeling much better. Today was the day I had the staples removed. All day before and after the removal I was fine. Then a few hours later it came on again for a couple of hours, and now im ok again. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. I asked Dr Feller about this, and he said that it is possible that the surgery can do this; especially for people that are predisposed to anxiety. He mentioned a few years ago Spex wrote up a post on this. Spex, ifr you see this post, can you point me in the right direction?

[Tom60]

glad to hear that you are doing better. Keep us updated on your progress and best of luck.