Third Rodeo with Dr. Gabel: ~1,500 Grafts FUT

[OtherSyde]

It hasn't quite happened yet, to be clear - as of this posting it happens in about 13 hours (Wednesday morning, Nov 23rd).

 

After two very successful transplants (one in December 2010 and one in March 2013 - both listed below for posterity's sake), I'm back for what I hope will be my final "frontal assault," meaning the last major work I do on my frontal hairline (as far as overall shape), aside from possibly a little minor touchup or thickening during a later procedure that will inevitably happen when my crown finally starts to give up (hopefully later on in life).

 

I have to say it's almost regrettable to advance my hairline, because my current hairline is so dense and well-done. It's not that there's anything wrong with the quality at all - it's just that I more or less misjudged the curvature of my hairline's shape the first time around and it ended up being much more "concave" upward, looking like a dense but receded hairline, a very intense Dracula-esque peak; ultimately I want it to have more "convex" downward shape, a "rounder" hairline if you will. I want to preserve a little nod to my widow's peak however - in fact we won't be lowering the actual frontal point of the widow's peak because it's already quite low, but instead simply extending the hairline outward on either side and from slightly above the tip, altering the curvature of the hairline on either side of the widow's peak tip while still leaving a little bit of the original point extending slightly below the rest of the newly-rounded hairline, if that makes sense.

 

Secondly, since my temples are largely just big circles of receded baldness on both sides of my head, I want a sort of line of hair from the forward-most tip of my temple points to jut almost straight up to meet the new hairline, instead of having them sweep back and contribute to the big circles of baldness like they currently do. This will serve to frame my face much more effectively.

 

Finally, as can be seen in the pic below, my crown is rather sparse and I want a few multi-hair grafts dispersed into the thin areas (maybe 150-200 grafts). This is the first place people normally notice and use to judge whether someone is "balding" or not, and multiple people I know keep giving me crap for being "the man who spent $13,000 on hair but is somehow still balding" - they do have a valid point there, and it kind of defeats the purpose if you ask me. So I just want to erase all doubt there.

 

I've down-paid for 1,500 grafts, although I do have some funds on standby in the event that we need to harvest a little more in order to accomplish the stated goals.

 

The first three attached pics are of the lines we drew at Doc Gabel's office today; we'll refine them in the morning when I arrive. The fourth is a recent pic of my crown, and the fifth is a picture of Jay Harrington from the brilliant and criminally underrated show Better Off Ted - this is almost exactly what I want for my hairline to look like, with the addition of the aforementioned little widow's peak in the center.

 

And finally, here are my first two adventures:

 

December 2010: Live Surgery with Dr. Gabel

 

March 2013: RIGHT NOW-Another Live Post From Dr. Gabel's Office

 

Anyhow, I'll keep this updated as things progress! Wish me luck (although I shouldn't need too much of it in Doc G's adept hands)!

 

[EDIT] - Oh I forgot, I came prepared this time - brought my pocket camera and new Galaxy S7 Edge (both of which do 1080p video), and my GoPro HERO3 Black Edition which does 1080p 60fps video, along with an extra battery and head-strap mount. Should be a fun time

Edited November 23, 2016 by OtherSyde

[hsrp10]

Hey man, good luck and good to see a post from you, guess hair greed has gotten the better of you! lol

I'm sure it will be an awesome result and looking forward to the updates.

[OtherSyde]

Hey man, good luck and good to see a post from you, guess hair greed has gotten the better of you! lol

I'm sure it will be an awesome result and looking forward to the updates.

 

Yay for hair greed! Haha thanks though.

 

So I've been here in my AirBNB for the last 3-4 hours, compulsively screwing with the eyebrow pencil the Doc gave me to play with, and toying with lines. Here are some pics without lines:

[OtherSyde]

And here are a few pics with idealized lines drawn in (the outer-most lines are where my actual hairline is right now)...

[OtherSyde]

And here are those lines filled in. Probably too good to be true, I know - but we'll see tomorrow. Minus the ~200 grafts for the crown area, we'll have somewhere between 1,300 and 1,500 grafts just for this slim little area, so I'll go as aggressively as I can while still maintaining optimal density (roughly 50 grafts/cm2, as per the pre-surgery handbook). This hairline sort of mimics the Jay-Harrington-esque look that I previously stated I'm kind of going for...

[hsrp10]

Forgot to ask are you on Fin?

[OtherSyde]

Forgot to ask are you on Fin?

 

Yep! That reminds me, I gotta ask Dr. G to re-up my Rx tomorrow

 

BTW your hair looks great in your avatar, it's pretty much what I'm going for! With the addition of my little widow's peak of course

[TakingThePlunge]

Congrats! Rally looking forward to your future updates. You already have great hair. This is going to look amazing!

[OtherSyde]

Congrats! Rally looking forward to your future updates. You already have great hair. This is going to look amazing!

 

Thanks David! I'm in the consultation room right now (it's about 8am on the West Coast), prepping for the ride. Please excuse the rather unshaven face, I'm on vacation

[Pete-from-Farjo]

Sounds like a solid plan. I agree your hair already looks great so another 1500 or so grafts will really finish things off. Your crown still looks pretty good from your pic but a couple hundred grafts in there should still make for a noticeable improvement.

 

Best of luck with your procedure.

[Bill - Seemiller]

Looking at the beautiful head of lustrous locks you already have, I have to say I'm surprised to hear that you are getting another procedure. But it is clear that hair greed has gotten the best of you. As long as you are taking into consideration the risk of future hair loss and keeping donor hair in reserve, than I see nothing wrong with it :-).

 

Dr. Gabel is an outstanding physician and I trust you will be in the best of hands.

 

So today is the big day, right before Thanksgiving :-). Please keep us posted...

 

Best wishes,

 

Bill

[JON86]

Best of luck the temples should make a huge difference. Dr Gabel does great work.

[OtherSyde]

And here we go - head taped up and marked off for the donor strip, then the aftermath of the donor strip removed! As usual, the only pain came from the anesthetic needle.

[n00b]

And here we go - head taped up and marked off for the donor strip, then the aftermath of the donor strip removed! As usual, the only pain came from the anesthetic needle.

 

Interesting! I dont see any previous strip scars at all...

[OtherSyde]

Alright, all the recipient holes have been made and the purple highlighter dye had been applied... Time for a lunch break!

[OtherSyde]

Interesting! I dont see any previous strip scars at all...

 

Two reasons for that: 1, Dr. Gabel is very good at minimizing scars, and 2, whenever he does a subsequent FUT he removes the old scar along with the new donor area.

 

Here's the good doc placing my grafts while doing along to Bruce Springsteen, as he is wont to do.

[Melvin- Admin]

Real time documentation, Dr. Gabel is a great guy, happy growing!

[Spanker]

Nice. Good luck. Keep us posted.

[OtherSyde]

On a little break... A little over half of the total grafts placed at this point - still a ways to go, but looking good so far

[OtherSyde]

OK! All done! Dr. Gabel reserved around 20 singles for the end, and carefully placed them in any gaps in my frontal hairline at the end, and then we did a quick outro video interview while the staff cleaned up the operating room. Now I'm en route back to my comfy AirBnB outside Hillsboro. I'll snap a few final pics tonight when I get there!

[hsrp10]

Looking great so far!

Good healing to you and should make for an awesome result.

 

So Dr. Gabel does all the graft placement like Konior does?

Also interesting to see the purple dye (for making the graft sites more pronounced ?), had not seen that before.

[OtherSyde]

Looking at the beautiful head of lustrous locks you already have, I have to say I'm surprised to hear that you are getting another procedure. But it is clear that hair greed has gotten the best of you. As long as you are taking into consideration the risk of future hair loss and keeping donor hair in reserve, than I see nothing wrong with it :-).

 

Dr. Gabel is an outstanding physician and I trust you will be in the best of hands.

 

So today is the big day, right before Thanksgiving :-). Please keep us posted...

 

Best wishes,

 

Bill

 

Yes Bill you, are absolutely correct - the green-eyed succubus of hair greed has indeed seized control of my brain stem But as you mentioned that I have such "lustrous locks" courtesy of Doctor G, I must say I don't disagree - however, it was not the quality or density of said locks that invoked my ire, only my previous misjudgment of the ultimate shape of my hairline the first time around that has been haunting me ever since (I didn't realize it would end up looking quite so Dracula-esqe) and I just wanted to lay that demon to rest once and for all by rounding out my hairline and framing my face better by bringing my temple points forward - which has certainly been accomplished by this venture! I know my hair will never look quite as fabulously Brad-Pitt-esque as yours, but I think I'm in a comfortable place now and I don't think I'll be doing any more re-shaping of the frontal regions - only filling in my FUT scar and crown bald spot in a year or two with a moderate FUE session

 

As for saving enough donor for later, we ended up not even using the 1,500 grafts I had pre-paid for, and only using a total of 1,303 grafts! So the clinic is issuing me a refund of several hundred dollars, which is great for several reasons:

-Firstly, using less donor hair means more saved for later, and we were able to achieve a great result with only 1,303 grafts.

-Secondly, the reason we came up short on grafts is that Dr. Gabel opted to remove less of a donor strip and instead include more of my previous FUT scar in the strip that was taken, which will leave me a smaller FUT scar - which is important to me since I'm in the Navy and hence I can't grow my hair out super-long to hide a big scar.

-Thirdly, the refund will be very handy to me because this week I managed to make one more of many in a long series of poor (but so much fun!) life decisions and bought a Pettit Supercharger for my Mazda RX8, and the refund will go far in helping me kill off the small personal loan I had to pull in order to acquire said supercharger.

 

All in all, I think this undertaking, at least in its early stages, is looking to be a smashing success!

 

 

_________________________________________________________________________

 

 

Looking great so far!

Good healing to you and should make for an awesome result.

 

So Dr. Gabel does all the graft placement like Konior does?

Also interesting to see the purple dye (for making the graft sites more pronounced ?), had not seen that before.

 

Thanks! And yes, Dr. G does the majority of the graft placement himself - especially along the frontal hairlines, he's very particular about getting hairlines looking dense and natural and doesn't trust anyone else to do it right.

 

As a side-note, Dr. Gabel and Dr. Konior evidently have some other career-related overlap, seeing as they wrote/edited a book together (I just saw this in his office today and snapped a pic of it - see attached pic below), and according to this thread here:

 

Just got done with a 3800 FUT from Dr. Konior. In talking to him, he mentioned that back in the day he showed Dr. Gabel a lot of his methodology and how he did things. Dr. Konior also said he'd let Dr. Gabel work on his scalp. I can't think of much higher praise than that.

 

Crazy huh? Two top-notch docs, for sure!

Edited November 24, 2016 by OtherSyde

[Spanker]

Yes Bill you, are absolutely correct - the green-eyed succubus of hair greed has indeed seized control of my brain stem But as you mentioned that I have such "lustrous locks" courtesy of Doctor G, I must say I don't disagree - however, it was not the quality or density of said locks that invoked my ire, only my previous misjudgment of the ultimate shape of my hairline the first time around that has been haunting me ever since (I didn't realize it would end up looking quite so Dracula-esqe) and I just wanted to lay that demon to rest once and for all by rounding out my hairline and framing my face better by bringing my temple points forward - which has certainly been accomplished by this venture! I know my hair will never look quite as fabulously Brad-Pitt-esque as yours, but I think I'm in a comfortable place now and I don't think I'll be doing any more re-shaping of the frontal regions - only filling in my FUT scar and crown bald spot in a year or two with a moderate FUE session

 

As for saving enough donor for later, we ended up not even using the 1,500 grafts I had pre-paid for, and only using a total of 1,303 grafts! So the clinic is issuing me a refund of several hundred dollars, which is great for several reasons:

-Firstly, using less donor hair means more saved for later, and we were able to achieve a great result with only 1,303 grafts.

-Secondly, the reason we came up short on grafts is that Dr. Gabel opted to remove less of a donor strip and instead include more of my previous FUT scar in the strip that was taken, which will leave me a smaller FUT scar - which is important to me since I'm in the Navy and hence I can't grow my hair out super-long to hide a big scar.

-Thirdly, the refund will be very handy to me because this week I managed to make one more of many in a long series of poor (but so much fun!) life decisions and bought a Pettit Supercharger for my Mazda RX8, and the refund will go far in helping me kill off the small personal loan I had to pull in order to acquire said supercharger.

 

All in all, I think this undertaking, at least in its early stages, is looking to be a smashing success!

 

 

_________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 

Thanks! And yes, Dr. G does the majority of the graft placement himself - especially along the frontal hairlines, he's very particular about getting hairlines looking dense and natural and doesn't trust anyone else to do it right.

 

As a side-note, Dr. Gabel and Dr. Konior evidently have some other career-related overlap, seeing as they wrote/edited a book together (I just saw this in his office today and snapped a pic of it - see attached pic below), and according to this thread here:

 

 

 

Crazy huh? Two top-notch docs, for sure!

That is an intersting book with many articles from many docs on this site.

[hsrp10]

Hey man I see you also do weight training, how do you manage the long off time so as not to stretch the scar? You stop for 1-2 months?

 

Since going with fue and being able to lift after just two weeks I really like the short downtime with fue.

Just was curious about this as you seem to have had a good scar before from your previous procedure.

I was never a patient one and always restarted exactly 1 month post-op (too short in my opinion).

[Squatch]

Looks good! That will turn out nice upfront.