1869 Grafts with Dr. Diep 2/12/19 (33 y/o Caucasian NW3)

[FUEblonde1985]

Week 9. Good news is the donor area looks fairly undetectable. So I'm not sure the concerns from the last 4 pages panned out. There is basically only one spot near the hump at the bottom of the donor area that is thin - probably because I kept scratching that area and was getting pimples there. The hair on back is about 2-3 weeks out from a 3 guard, so a 5-6ish guard. Bad news is the recipient area is still red. If its still the same by month 3 then I will reach out to the Dr about an in personal evaluation to ensure there is no issues.

[Lennney]

Your redness is pretty intense, but it should start lightening up! I came out pretty red, but now with the hair beginning to grow combined with the redness going away, I look close to normal. I'm close to 13 weeks, but I had persistent redness easily into the 10th week.

It also sounds like you may be a little rough with the scalp (scratching and bleeding as a result). Don't use nails to scratch!!! Use your fingers and Pat the area or press lightly and move the skin (not scratch the non-moving skin).

I still baby my hair. I pat-dry when I leave the shower. I alternate baby shampoo, Nioxin, and nizoral. I know you're not sabotaging your scalp, but maybe do a face mask and put some of the moisturizing liquid on your recipient scalp. Also drink water and stay hydrated. Fun fact: the older you get, the less water your body holds, and thus the older you'll look. Staying hydrated will potentially help heal your scaring, but will definitely help with your skin (and thus the appearance of your scaring).

Helping your skin isn't as simple as minimizing your walk outside on a sunny day. Sometimes you'll have to put more effort in. 

[Yorn]

We have similar Hairline (your pre op) and Hairstyle (pre op) .. looking forward to your results ... Lots of progress so far bro

[Melvin- Admin]

I’ve seen redness persist for up to 5 months. Unfortunately, this is fairly common for guys with pale skin. I honestly don’t anticipate it getting much better by 3 months. I would say it’ probably improve by 4-5 months.

[PlzRespond]

Do you have any itching in your recipient? As long as there isn’t itching or burning I wouldn’t be too concerned. Maybe ask your doctor about using pure aloe Vera.

[FUEblonde1985]

There is itchiness in the recipient area however not severe - I'm not fighting back the urge to itch it but it does feel a bit itchy when washing it.

[FUEblonde1985]

3 month update. Around 2-3 weeks ago I was looking and wondering why I was seeing sparse growth from hairs that never shed, but nothing new. I decided to use one of those vanity mirrors to look really closely and noticed that there were hundreds of extremely fine white hairs that were poking out. Apparently there are a ton of hairs growing, but they are nearly invisible under regular light - the camera doesn't even pick them up zoomed to the max.

So I took a few photos using the vanity mirror light from a specific angle and you can clearly see there are a ton of hairs growing - most about 1/3 of the length of my native hair. The right and left side of the photos you can see all those invisible hairs, but you can't see the ones near the center of the hairline just because of the angle and light.

The recipient area still has redness - it looks a bit better in these photos since the temperature of the lighting is different, but its getting slowly better over time, and the hairs are starting to mask it.

Not a lot to say about donor, looks more or less the same.

[baldlivesmatter]

I have those little, blonde hairs too (4 months post-op). 

I believe they need to cycle once or twice to come in darker

[Melvin- Admin]

I can definitely see an outline of fine hair, look right on track 👌🏼

[FUEblonde1985]

Here is my 4 month progress. My left side seems to be growing a bit better than the right side, and there is a small area in the right near the temple that is a bit sparser than everywhere else. The redness is (slowly) getting better. For some reason the redness is more obvious than pictures than IRL.

 

[shookwon33]

Woah idk if its the lighting but your progress looks relatively dense already! @FUEblonde1985

[Melvin- Admin]

Damn you’re a freak of nature! Never seen growth like that at 4 months 😱

[OtherSyde]

Wow, looking great! Your hairline's shape came out looking a lot like mine with the widow's peak, except with the major difference that it looks low enough that once your density grows in, you're only a quick late-90's Backstreet-Boys highlighted-tips dye-job away from having hair just like Chris Hemsworth (pictured below in Star Trek), and that sounds like a home run to me any day!

Dr. Diep's done a fantastic job, please keep us posted!

Edited June 19, 2019 by OtherSyde

[Melvin- Admin]

2 hours ago, OtherSyde said:

Wow, looking great! Your hairline's shape came out looking a lot like mine with the window's peak, except with the major difference that it looks low enough that once your density grows in, you're only a quick late-90's Backstreet-Boys highlighted-tips dye-job away from having hair just like Chris Hemsworth (pictured below in Star Trek), and that sounds like a home run to me any day!

Dr. Diep's done a fantastic job, please keep us posted!

Glad to see you back man, you should do an update of your hair I would love to see it cheers 🍻

[OtherSyde]

Quote

Glad to see you back man, you should do an update of your hair I would love to see it cheers 🍻

I will, I'm back in the game for a scar revision and a tiny bit of touch-up soon

[bismarck]

On 2/13/2019 at 9:21 PM, FUEblonde1985 said:

IOther than taking ibuprofen after the surgery, everything seems to be normal. Once I woke up, i was no longer in pain and haven't really felt anything yet. The doctor told me the ibuprofen won't have any effect on the graft survival, it can just cause excessive bleeding from the donor area (doesn't seem to be a huge issue at the moment). I also apparently misinterpreted the pre-op instructions regarding smoking - the warning made specific reference to the dangers of nicotine - so I assumed that smoking marijuana was still OK (I used marijuana semi-regularly 1-2 times/week), and had smoked it 4 days prior to the surgery. Dr. Diep didn't like that but said it should be fine, but advised me to refrain from any marijuana use for an "entire year" ?!?!. From what I've been reading, it seems that the general MO is to refrain from smoking anything for a month or so, but after that I can resume. Cannabis has been show to inhibit growth of hair generally from what secondary sources I've read, but it doesn't appear from anything I could find that would cause the failing of hair grafts once the grafts are fully healed. If anyone has better information they could chime in?

 

It's an interesting point about the weed. Certainly marijuana increases estrogen levels, both short and long term, which is a great DHT inhibitor, so that would probably go against what Diep said. I suspect his main concern is the free radicals you might generate from the smoking itself. Also, I read a study from about 15 years ago that marijuana has anti-VEGF activity (which is a growth factor that promotes blood vessel growth), though I don't remember the methodology. CBD itself would probably have anti-oxidant activity.

Hormesis vs anti-oxidant activity is a very complicated subject. I don't think there's a clear answer regarding the effects of weed on hair loss, though my hunch is that it probably would impair your healing if smoked, though the rebound jump in testosterone after discontinuing might impact your native hairs.

Are you in a place where you can switch to oil/edibles? If you went to Diep, I'm guessing California?

Regarding comments on technique, Diep's work is for the most part decent, though he certainly seems to have become more aggressive with the donor area (akin to the Spanish docs), presumably to preserve more of the dermal papillae and enhance graft survival. This is why I generally favor the strip first, FUE later approach that Bloxham and many others have advocated on these forums. You burn your ships, but you win the war. Did Diep tell you what caliber punches he took? 1 mm?

And certainly keep us updated.  Would love to see how you evolve. Best of luck.

Edited June 20, 2019 by bismarck

[FUEblonde1985]

5 month update.

Pros: The redness is mostly gone, or at least you can't really see it unless you look for it. The hair has been growing quickly, and it seems as if what is going to grow has already started growing. I got a lot of early growth, but I don't know that anything "new" is coming in. Donor area from what I can see is not showing any obvious thinning, and I've been cutting it to a 3.

I am pleased each time I get a haircut (every 3-4 weeks now) that the hairline is looking better and better each time and it has become much easier to style it the way I want to. Definite improvement from pre-op.

Cons: Either my eyes are playing tricks on me from my increased density at the hairline, or my general frontal third area behind the transplanted area is looking thinner than it used to. Not sure if this is delayed shock loss, or if switching to brand propecia has caused reduced effectiveness, or maybe its more effective but I am getting a shed that seems to often happen when people start propecia. The thinning area is more noticeable on my right side, which is the side where the the hair was extracted from. No idea if they are related, since the thinning area obviously isn't where hair was extracted, but the other side doesn't seem as affected.

I've also concluded (I was watching and suspected around 2.5-3 month mark) that a small area in my right temple, just behind the hairline, just isn't growing. I didn't take any close up pictures yet of that spot (I have a couple from months 3-4) but looking closely you can see there is about a small dime sized spot where barely any hair grew. I'm not sure what happened there, as it seems odd that a chunk of grafts would all fail in the exact spot, but at this point if there is nothing coming out, its probably a loss. You can see in one of the photos below the area where you can see the thin spot. I don't think any gain in thickness around this area will suffice, as the goal of this procedure was to not have to style my hair in a way to fix the thinning hairline. I will likely ask that this area be touched up (it really is only missing maybe 30-40 grafts?)

The implanted hair is still very wirey (is that a word?) and doesn't have the consistency of the hair around it. It blends much better when short, but looks a bit awkward when the hair around it gets longer. The hair is also continuing to grow straight up, so I've been using a small amount of blowdry heat in the AM to keep the hairs manageable and blend in.

 

[CosmoKramer]

Filled in nicely for 5 months and still not half-way, and I really like the hairline shape w/widows peak, congrats!

[LonelyGraft]

Wow, homerun incoming

[Melvin- Admin]

This result is incredible 😱 my friends going at the end of the month has a very similar hair color and texture. Gonna definitely show him this thread. 

In terms of the hair being wiry. I experienced the same thing. It started becoming normal around 12-18 months as the hair fully matured. It’s hard to say you’ve lost any hair or are missing any density from the pictures, looks like a full head of hair to me.

[Tentpole91]

@FUEblonde1985 I was browsing Dr Diep's profile on HRN and saw this in his bio:

"Dr. Diep feels that his FUE procedure can rival that of strip as long as follicular units are viable upon extraction. He developed his own FUE instrument called "The Diep Extractor", which he believes helps to minimize transection and damage to the follicles during the extraction process." (source)

I'm curious if perhaps his FUE instrument for extraction is subpar to the techniques of other doctors. It certainly feels that way in terms of initial appearance, as others have said on this thread. If not for anything else, the 1mm punch is larger than you get from other doctors right?

That said, his technique does specifically call out the minimization of transection as a benefit. And the results in the recipient area speak for themselves. 

Edited August 17, 2019 by Tentpole91

[LonelyGraft]

2 minutes ago, Tentpole91 said:

@FUEblonde1985 I was browsing Dr Diep's profile on HRN and saw this in his bio:

"Dr. Diep feels that his FUE procedure can rival that of strip as long as follicular units are viable upon extraction. He developed his own FUE instrument called "The Diep Extractor", which he believes helps to minimize transection and damage to the follicles during the extraction process." (source)

I'm curious if perhaps his FUE instrument for extraction is subpar to the techniques of other doctors. It certainly feels that way in terms of initial appearance, as others have said on this thread. If not for anything else, the 1mm punch is larger than you get from other doctors right?

That said, his technique does specifically call out the minimization of transection as a benefit. 

Motorized Punches can typically work with various punch tips of different diameters. It’s not like his tool only has a 1mm punch. It’s likely he chooses to use .9 and 1mm punches for his surgeries. I’m a laymen on this so you may want to follow up with your clinic directly.

[Melvin- Admin]

@FUEblonde1985 

any updates? 

[shookwon33]

Im afraid @FUEblonde1985 is going to be one of the many who stop posting updates because they've gone far off into the distance with their new full head of hair :((. Was hoping for this 6-7 month update

[Melvin- Admin]

1 hour ago, shookwon33 said:

Im afraid @FUEblonde1985 is going to be one of the many who stop posting updates because they've gone far off into the distance with their new full head of hair :((. Was hoping for this 6-7 month update

Yea he’s off enjoying his Chris Hemsworth hairline. Sucks, I really wanted to see how his hair progressed. I’m pretty sure it’s a home run.