BHT - 610 grafts with Dr Robert Dorin

[Al - Moderator]

On 1/4/2022 at 1:14 PM, Etownone said:

You healed up great.  

Cant tell over 2k grafts were extracted.   

Have you been getting a lot of ingrowns?    I heard thats happens to just about everyone getting beard fue.    When I hady consultation with Dr Dorin,   he told me about a trick people use to get help treat, and get rid of them.     Totally forgot what it was.   

 

 

Sorry I missed this before. I hardly get any ingrown hairs on my beard, so it hasn't been a problem. I did get a bit on my abdomen when we did a session from there, but since nobody really sees that area, I didn't really worry about it much. It eventually all clears up.

 

Edited January 8, 2023 by BeHappy

[davidn]

Hey @BeHappy

obviously things didnt work good for you, but just wanna say that you actually look pretty good from the front and imo you look very natural, middle aged man with thinning hair. I also deeply respect your fighting spirit in all of this. I personally hope that you can see the day of unlimited grafts, would be such a nice story if you end up with a thick nw0 at the end of it all.

[mrmane85]

12 hours ago, BeHappy said:

 

I have tried them at home a few times over the years and yeah my hair looks totally full, especially now that I have enough hair to use it with. I didn't have enough hair in some areas before. What a difference it makes now! However, I just can't bring myself to actually go out with it in my hair. I know me. I'd constantly worry about whether someone can tell. This is what happened to me when I had a hair system years ago. I got sick to my stomach just being around people. It was awful. I wouldn't do that to myself again.

And actually I worry more about how to explain one day being bald and the next day having a full head of hair.... and then what? Then I have to keep up the charade every day or else everyone sees me bald again. No thanks. If everyone I work with is going to know it's fake, then why bother? What's the point. I wouldn't be fooling anyone. It's like a guy you may see who wears an obviously fake hair piece and you think "OK. We all know he is bald. He may as well just get rid of it."

 

I don't think it's any different to women wearing make up. If you don't go crazy with the fibres and make it look natural then I can't see any issues with using them. You can become really good at applying them so you only need a minimal amount.

As you add more density through small HT sessions then you can just reduce the amount of fibre you use. 

Also you can bring a small umbrella with you packed in your bag each day then you will never need to worry. 

[Etownone]

Are you going to use Dr Dorin again? 

[Al - Moderator]

9 hours ago, Etownone said:

Are you going to use Dr Dorin again? 

 

Yes. I've been on this repair journey with True & Dorin for almost 9 years now having 8 transplant repair sessions totaling approximately 6000 beard, chest, and abdomen grafts.

 

[Al - Moderator]

16 hours ago, mrmane85 said:

If you don't go crazy with the fibres and make it look natural then I can't see any issues with using them. You can become really good at applying them so you only need a minimal amount.

As you add more density through small HT sessions then you can just reduce the amount of fibre you use. 

 

Now that I have a lot more hair spread out all over my head it can probably work OK at this point. In the past I had so little hair on my entire head that I had to put so much DermMatch on it (DermMatch is the only one I tried) that it looked so fake. I could probably get away with it now. You have to realize that I would have had to cover the back and sides too as I had many strip scars all over. It ends up being a full head of DermMatch and to do that every day and spend an hour or two each day trying to make sure it's not too noticeable just wasn't something I wanted to do.

I'll try it just for fun after my next hair coloring, but I always figured if I actually had enough hair where I only had to spend a few minutes sprinkling/spreading something on then I'd rather just not use it and have a bit of thinning hair instead. I've had thin hair since I was 15, so I can deal with it not being so thick, although I'd love it if I could ever get to that level for real.

 

Edited January 9, 2023 by BeHappy

[AB2000]

On 1/8/2023 at 11:26 AM, BeHappy said:

I think I am going to do a before and after with hair fibers and post it here just for fun though .

 

It's surprising how far they can go:

 

There is a spray version, which I've found doesn't quite match the powder version:

 

[Al - Moderator]

 

This is what my beard looks like now after roughly 3000 grafts removed. Little to no scarring and I still have enough for another beard FUE session which I will be doing in mid March.

 

Edited February 27, 2023 by BeHappy

[Tony711]

Has the beard hair grown out?

[Fox243]

Wondering if you're expecting to post an update sometime soon.

[Al - Moderator]

13 hours ago, Fox243 said:

Wondering if you're expecting to post an update sometime soon.

 

I had another procedure done about 2 weeks ago. I haven't posted because I was a bit bummed about it as we only got 522 grafts. I was really hoping to get in the 800 range, but the toughest part to deal with is it means I may be coming to the end of how much improvement I will ever be able to get.

I've also been busy doing some people taxes as it's tax time. I'll get some pics and details up within the next couple of days.

 

[CharlesBarkley]

Such interesting story. Thanks for sharing all the details. I can not believe there were already doing hair transplants back in 1989, oh my God!

Have you thought a combo with SMP?

[Rafael Manelli]

The underside of the chin and jaw takes scars so well

[Al - Moderator]

I'm finally getting around to posting some info on my latest procedure. I only had 522 grafts transplanted, so there isn't a lot to see, but here goes.

Dr Dorin got 357 grafts from my beard and 165 from the sides of my abdomen. We took some from my abdomen in a previous session, so we left that area alone and took a bit from further out on each side.

I took a picture of my beard during the procedure, so this is how it looked all bloodied up after graft removal.

 

Here it is the next day after cleaning it all up.

 

Here are the areas we did. We sort of made a half circle around the perimeter, but also added some in the mid scalp on the part side as it was noticeably thinner there and hopefully that will help give a better illusion of density and coverage for the front half. Just a note, if you see my hair sticking up and looking weird it's because I tried to push my existing hair away from each section to get a better picture of the grafted areas, so my existing hair looks worse in these pics than it actually is (not that it ever looks good)

This is the part side. You can see we put some on the side and also across the top/mid scalp.

 

Here is a better picture of the mid scalp area.

 

This is the right side

 

And here is the back

[Al - Moderator]

 

I buzzed the entire chest and abdomen hoping to get a lot out of this area, but Dr Dorin decided to just get grafts from both edges where we hadn't taken any before. This is the best picture I have of that as I didn't think of taking any the first couple of days. This is about 3 days afterwards. What is nice about this picture is it gives you an idea of what my entire chest and abdomen area looks like shaved down after about 3000 grafts removed in previous sessions. If you zoom in you can see all the dots, but you really have to look for them. They are not noticeable normally if you aren't looking for them.

Edited April 22, 2023 by BeHappy

[Al - Moderator]

 

The procedure was on Tuesday, March 14. These photos are from Sunday, March 19, so this is 5 days post transplant.

 

 

[Al - Moderator]

These pictures are Wednesday, March 22. This is 8 days after my hair transplant. I am shaved and getting ready for my first day back to work. Yep, back to work 8 days post op. There's a slight bit of redness in the beard still, but it's hardly noticeable.

 

 

And here I am an hour or two later in the office. This is why I like not shaving for a hair transplant. Nobody has to know anything. They just think I took a nice vacation.

 

 

[Rafael Manelli]

How much time have you spent recovering from hair transplants in your lifetime thus far? It must be years. This has been a mammoth journey for you. Very good documentation.

[Al - Moderator]

I almost forgot to post this one. This shows we got 433 singles and 89 doubles, so for anyone who thinks you can only get single hair grafts from body hair, here you go.

[Al - Moderator]

48 minutes ago, Rafael Manelli said:

How much time have you spent recovering from hair transplants in your lifetime thus far? It must be years. This has been a mammoth journey for you. Very good documentation.

 

All my life 😔

I have now had a total of 34 hair transplants over 34 years.

I started in 1989 at 22 years old. They did small procedures in those days spaced 6 weeks apart. I had 25 transplants in 5 years. The first one was September 7, 1989 and the 25th one was on December 2, 1994. That was a really bad period in my life because I basically went through my entire 20s unable to do anything or go anywhere. In those days your entire head was bandaged up for a couple of days and then it took 3 weeks to heal and the scabs to come off because they were large 3.5mm plug grafts. Then it's almost time for the next one and we do it again and again. I was supposed to have a full head of hair in a year and the estimate was 300 grafts and 2 scalp reductions. I had saved up a lot of money, so I figured I'd take a year off of work to do this. I was wearing a hair piece at the time, so it wasn't like I could just go back to work without anyone knowing because I'd go from a full head of hair with the hair piece to NW 6 with a bunch of plug grafts all over. At 22 years old in 1989 when hair transplants weren't known to most people and a lot of people didn't know I had a hair piece, that wasn't something I could do.

After 25 surgeries they basically told me they couldn't do anything else for me and left me with scars all over my head which they had insisted over and over wouldn't be there when they were finished with everything. I went to a bunch of other Drs over a number of years, but nobody even wanted to touch me because there wasn't any hair left to work with. It wasn't until 2014 when body hair grafts started being used that I was finally able to actually get some new hair on my head rather than just moving it around.

Since 2014 I had 9 repair surgeries with Dr Robert Dorin. these have been small procedures averaging about 720 grafts each with the smallest being the one I just had with 522 grafts and the largest was 1055 grafts. I know the next question is why didn't I go somewhere that would do a much larger session

1. in 2014 there was hardly anyone doing body hair grafts at all, so the choices were very limited.

2. I had a LOT of scarring all over and I didn't trust getting a large session and not have it grow due to all of the scarring and low blood supply. To give you an idea of what I mean, this last transplant was only 522 grafts yet while making the holes for the grafts, Dr Dorin had to change the blade 3 times because my head scarring was so thick and dense it was dulling the blade after only a few punches. He was actually struggling to make the incisions.

3. I didn't want to get into the same situation as the first time around and look so hideous being shaved with all the scars and not being able to go back to work. I have to meet hundreds of people daily at my job.

 

Edited April 22, 2023 by BeHappy

[RTC]

Damn this is interesting stuff. How far are you from you want to get to (realistically)?

[mr_peanutbutter]

i think smp could improve the whole situation even more

[stephcurry30]

On 4/22/2023 at 8:00 AM, BeHappy said:

These pictures are Wednesday, March 22. This is 8 days after my hair transplant. I am shaved and getting ready for my first day back to work. Yep, back to work 8 days post op. There's a slight bit of redness in the beard still, but it's hardly noticeable.

 

 

And here I am an hour or two later in the office. This is why I like not shaving for a hair transplant. Nobody has to know anything. They just think I took a nice vacation.

 

 

epic. What do you do for work? You look like a big time lawyer!

[mrmane85]

Have you thought about consulting with Dr Pittella to see what he feels can be done? I've seen some insane results with almost non existent donor, using body hair. 

[Al - Moderator]

On 6/3/2023 at 12:19 PM, RTC said:

Damn this is interesting stuff. How far are you from you want to get to (realistically)?

 

I was originally expecting to be able to lower my hair line at least 1 cm, but it looks like it probably won't happen. When I started out with body hair, Dr Umar thought he could get about 6500 grafts, so that was my minimum goal as far as graft count. I went with Dr Dorin instead of Dr Umar, but I'm pretty much there with the graft count at 6475 grafts. Unfortunately since I have in the range of 400 square centimeters to cover, if I were to spread out all 6475 grafts evenly, it only comes to just over 16 grafts per centimeter, so there it was probably never going to give me a huge difference in appearance even though I really hoped it would.

At this point I'm looking for at least 1 more session of about 525 grafts to bring the total to 7000 to cover a few trouble spots that bother me. I'm going to wait and let the last session grow and see where I am and figure out exactly where to put a few grafts here and there to best fill in some spots that could best make a difference.

Ideally, I'm hoping to get closer to 1000 to 1500 more grafts, so I can get some minor temple points and get the hair line just slightly lower and more natural looking. I think I'd be pretty happy with the results at that point.

If I really decide to push it I may try arm hair and maybe have another try at using back hair, but I'm not sure it's going to be worth the trouble.