Finally Did It! Dr Vories 10/10 & 10/11 4K Grafts

[adamjimmy]

Taking shape nicely for 4 months. Hairline looks stellar on the right side. I'm sure in a few weeks it will even out more and you can let er' rip from there on out. How's your donor area looking?

[elicash80]

Taking shape nicely for 4 months. Hairline looks stellar on the right side. I'm sure in a few weeks it will even out more and you can let er' rip from there on out. How's your donor area looking?

 

Thanks for the encouragement. I may ask Dr. Vories to do a small 500 graft touch up if I still have missing spots at 12 months.

 

The donor area is a little sparse, but not noticeable to anyone that isn't looking. I have my donor area about 1/8 on an inch right now and when the hair grows out, I plan to keep it about 1/4 to 1/2 inch. This will definitely be enough to mask any lacking density.

 

One caveat to this though is that if I ever need another transplant, over say 500 grafts, I think it will have to be a combination of head and beard/body hair. I will save the last bit of donor head hair for the front forelock and then allocate body/beard hair for the top and back.

[Harebrained]

Great story! Enjoyed reading it. Your obviously not a quitter. Crown work looks great, especially considering it is often known to lag.

Looking forward to your future updates!

[elicash80]

Crown work looks great, especially considering it is often known to lag.

Looking forward to your future updates!

 

Thanks, I appreciate it. Hoping this front left will fill in just a bit more. Will post an update at month 5. Redness is FINALLY totally gone. Took 4 and a half months to completely go away.

[adamjimmy]

Any updates on your progress? Seemed to be going well.

[elicash80]

Okay, so this is a little over a 5 and half month update. Sorry guys, I have been extremely busy.

 

It is going really well. The new hair is still pretty course, but I can tell it's not as bad as when it first started growing out. Slowly softening up. Like I said the left side seemed to have a few patchy areas and although it is less noticeable now that my hair is a little longer, it is apparent to me that less grafts survived in this area.

 

It seemed to me that the hair was extremely densely packed after my procedure, but it is sparse now that it is filled in. I understand that this is the nature of hair transplantation and that we are going for the illusion of density. I just really wonder if it is due to not every graft surviving or that I was only under the impression of it being densely packed due to the sensation of tightness in the scalp post procedure. The back crown area looks really good from the pic, but honestly I can not see back there, so I am just going off the one pic.

 

Either way, it looks better by the day. I am very happy with Dr. Vories work and even more of an advocate of him than I was before. I am going to do a follow-up in person at the one year mark and ask him what my graft survival rate was.

 

Additionally, even though the hairline and temples look great, I still want to bring the hairline in just a slight bit, the temples in just a bit and more importantly, add some density. The pictures look a lot worse than in real life due to the harsh nature of the lighting and such up close pictures.

 

I am mostly depleted in my donor zone, but I may be able to get 1-2K more grafts. Also I will probably have a bit less hair behind the front recipient area by the one year mark, so I am going to see if Dr. Vories can do this in October. He may have to harvest some beard hair or body hair. I was hoping the body/beard hair could be strictly for the top and back of the head and whatever head donor hair I have left, be reserved for the front and temples.

 

Let me know what you guys think. Terrible pics, I know.

Edited April 2, 2017 by elicash80

[elicash80]

So here is a 9.5 month update. Everything is looking good, but I have a problem. I am looking to get another 1500 grafts done to thicken up the top middle and bring the hairline down just a smidge.

 

The problem is that Dr. Vories does not do beard or body hair transplantation. Let me clear and say that he did an amazing job and I would go to him in a heartbeat. Since I was going to be a repeat customer (before we noticed I am a little sparse on head donor hair), he was going to let me in at my original rate per graft (very, very competitive).

 

Now I am scrambeling, trying to find someone who does beard hair or beard and body hair. I know Dr. Umar does, but his rates seem sky high ($8-$10 a graft). Also, I am not sure if he is recommended by HRN.

 

Can anyone suggest a reasonably priced, preferably recommended, doc. who can help me out?

[Edsarn2017]

Great work! Dr Vories is the man. I really enjoyed reading his counter arguments to Drs Blake and Feller about FUE. In the right hands (with a skilled surgeon) FUE results are good!

[elicash80]

Great work! Dr Vories is the man. I really enjoyed reading his counter arguments to Drs Blake and Feller about FUE. In the right hands (with a skilled surgeon) FUE results are good!

 

Edsarn, could you link me to that discussion? I would love to read it.

[Hairhope4ever]

Congratulations on your great procedure, but most importantly, best of luck, and best wishes health wise moving forward.

 

You look great btw.

 

 

 

 

http://hairtransplanttestimonial.blogspot.com/

[buzzbee]

My Story: You can skip to below, The Report if you just want to see how it went. So all I finally took the plunge and had a hair transplant with Dr. Mike Vories on the 10th and 11th of October. So glad I did after so long of waiting and so much research. I will try to make this succinct, but I want to share my experience. As I have a kidney transplant, this might be helpful for anyone else with major health concerns. I am 34.

 

Let me start before the surgery. I began losing my hair at about 17, but only ever so slightly and it was only noticeable to me. My father and stepbrothers were all bald by the time they were 22, but luckily I some how got a decent mix of Mom (thick Italian lifelong hair) and Dad's genes to make this a slow process. Quick might actually have been better as I wouldn't have been slowly losing the battle and would have had to deal with it early on.

 

Anyways, I got divorced early last year and said screw it. I started doing the things I never was able to or avoided due to familial pressure. One of these was fixing my hairline. This is just one major block of my plan to build my life for me, not for someone else.

 

My best friend (can you believe this? greatest friend in the world) donated his kidney to me six years ago. While it saved my life and literally changed the direction of my life immeasurably, my looks took a major hit. I was used to being thin with a decent amount of hair and what young women in their early 20s would consider 'cute', not handsome, but decent enough looks to catch and eye or two. With the strong medication, I put on about 40lbs, looked older, more tired and lost all facial definition due to the 'moon-face', a result of the prednisone.

 

My ex-wife before our divorce told me, she did not like the way I looked any more and although I thought it was somewhat shallow, I also kind of understood. I look like I had aged 15 years in 6. The final straw that is forcing me to get in shape, get back some hair and do what I can to look as good as possible came when I got a date with an attractive 20 year old woman I met online. No, I have no problem with dating women in their early 20s, just so it's out there. I am funny and can make people at ease, even in my online interaction. This is the only reason women are sometimes willing to look past the outside. We had a blind date as she was looking for someone older and more established (yes, part of it, I'm sure was about the dollars) and I was looking for a piece of arm candy.

 

I stopped into a gas station to take a piss right before I was going to meet her. I have avoided looking in mirrors for years since the transplant and weight gain, but this time I wanted to see how I looked. What I saw was someone that, in my mind, she would likely be repulsed by. Even if this was not true, this was how I felt. I cancelled the date 20 minutes before the meet up on a BS excuse.

 

The next day I decided to fix my looks by diet, exercise, surgery, secret Tibetan massage rituals - anything. I literally could not go on like this. A huge portion of the dissatisfaction with my looks is (was) my hairline. I developed some psychological body issues and confidence issues during my divorce that took me over a year to fix.

 

I was a lurker on this forum for about 8 years and just started posting a couple of years ago. My goal was to find the best bang for my buck, the best value so to speak. Like a lot of others on here I did a ton of research on this site and others and began making spreadsheets of different surgeons. I started with about 30 different doctors and would eliminate them based on criteria such as price per graft, ability to cover a large area with a small amount of grafts, general forum consensus on the doc., travel expense, response rate, FUT vs FUE, etc. I think I had something like 10 or 11 criteria on my chart.

 

I eliminated quite a few based on price per graft as I just could not bring myself to pay $30K for the procedure when I knew I could get it for $15K. When I started contacting international surgeons (please see another thread that I started at the beginning of my search), every one of them would not even consider me due to my kidney transplant.

 

This brought me down to two surgeons in my relative area. I am in Knoxville, TN. Those two were Dr. Cooley and Dr. Vories (I only considered recommended surgeons). After meeting with both surgeons I talked to my local kidney doctor to get clearance. The final decision came down to the fact that, for my situation, FUE provided a slightly less invasive procedure and therefor a slightly lower risk of infection. This was my major concern being on a cocktail of immuno-suppresive therapy.

 

Dr. Vories assured me that he has worked with organ transplant recipients before and he did his due diligence in contacting my transplant team to get full clearance. The other reason I chose him, and nothing against Dr. Cooley, his work and reputation speak for themselves, is that Dr. Vories was so involved in the process and that gave me peace of mind with my medical condition.

 

Finally - The Report: I went in about 15 minutes early on the day of surgery to finalize paperwork and go over any last minute questions I had. Dr. Vories always answers everything in a straight forward, understandable way and he is just a good guy that, is as cliche as it sounds, is NOT trying to sell you anything. It just seems he wants to help and likes doing great work.

 

We took pictures and the tech then washed and shaved my head to a 1 guard. I was a bit nervous, only for the numbing injections I knew were coming. Before the haircut, the doctor and I went over placement of grafts and possible hairlines. I have felt I have looked so much older than I am for so long, that I wanted at least a decent hairline that made me look youthful, not young.

 

The injections did sting, but the doc. placed a small vibration tool next to the needle site to distract me from the pain. Really not that bad, but your head does feel like it has a piece of buffalo hide super-glued to the top of scalp. Occasionally I would feel a tiny pinch during the extractions and he would just give me another tiny dose of local anesthetic right in that spot to stop the sensation. The extraction, hole punching around each donor hair and subsequent removal of those hairs, were all hand done by him. The worst part of this was having the turn my head at a 90 degree angle for about 45 minutes so he could access the donor area. My neck was sore for about 20 minutes after this.

 

We took breaks about every hour for hydration/restroom and to talk about any concerns or issues I might be having. The process the first day went very smoothly and lasted around 8 hours including breaks and a lunch. The first day he did 2000 extractions and placements with 1000 in the crown and 1000 in the front vertex/beginning of the forelock.

 

Once he got to the frontal area, I could tell that he was really densely packing that area with follicles. There are hundreds of follicles in an area that did not have them before and you can feel it. While not painful, it just feels very tight like it has been inflated.

 

No real pain started until about the last hour of the procedure when my donor area started to 'wake up' from the anesthesia. The pain built up over the next few hours until I was able to get my prescription from Dr. Vories filled. It took longer than expected as I was forced to take medicine that is different than most patients due to my kidney transplant. I drove around about an hour looking for a pharmacy that had it. When I contacted Dr. Vories about this (not his fault) he immediately turned around after being on the road for about 45 minutes and drove straight back to the office to write me a prescription for a medication they did have. I was glad I had picked a doc. that is accessible at any time for his patients, especially when they are in pain.

 

Day 2 was very much the same minus the paperwork and haircut. I was less nervous so the day, in my mind, went by relatively fast. Dr. Vories only does one patient a day and nearly everything is done by hand by the doctor himself. I liked that each graft was specifically being directed by the surgeon so that it would sit at the right angle. He is very fast, but you can tell he is putting thought into the extracting and the placement. He would sometimes put in a graft and then consider it and where his next move would be. He seemed very focused.

 

He did the final 2000 grafts the second day focusing on the hairline, rest of the forelock and the temples. It was relatively easy, and while not painful, I would say some of the time I was uncomfortable simply due to the sensations. I chose not to take the offered sedative because I am already on a lot of mediation, but if you can take the sedative and can get someone to drive you to your hotel, take the sedative. It will probably help a lot. Also, one last word of advise - If you are having a larger procedure, don't plan on driving a long way right after your surgery. Many people can and do, but it was such a relief to just be able to go back to the hotel, take my pain meds and then that night the prescribed sleep-aid and relax and sleep. I could not imagine driving a very long distance or standing in an airport line the day of surgery.

 

Some insane itch is starting to crop up along with a headache that builds up slowly during the day until bedtime. For the past couple of days all I have needed is the 1 tablet of the Vicodin and I am asleep about an hour later. I am glad I am not having to take them throughout the day (fingers crossed). The donor area is definitely sore and I have been applying triple antibiotic ointment to it about every 12 hours. Strangely, the actual skin of the recipient area is not painful. Dr. Vories let me know this would be the case. Sleep so far is still problematic as I am too paranoid to sleep without the travel pillow yet. Another day and I am going to return my normal sleep position. I pray I don't lose any precious follicles that are not embedded yet.

 

Below are different pics. These are not that great of quality and Dr. Vories has more professional ones which I am sure he will share at our 6 month or 1 year follow up. These are just taken with my cell phone, so sorry if the angles and lighting is crap. Let me know what you guys think. I truly could not have done all this research or made this happen without this website, the forum and most importantly everyone that makes contributions here.

 

You mentioned an insane itch. Did you do anything to prevent your scratching of your grafts esp while you sleep? That is a fear of mine.