BHT - 610 grafts with Dr Robert Dorin

[Al - Moderator]

On 6/3/2023 at 3:39 PM, mr_peanutbutter said:

i think smp could improve the whole situation even more

 

Maybe. I'm just not a fan of SMP. I don't even like fibers as I tried that years ago and just hated it. I don't want anything fake because if people find out it's not really hair, whether it's fibers or SMP or a hair piece or whatever, then that defeats the purpose because they then know I don't have hair. There's just no point in trying to cover it after that as I wouldn't be fooling anyone. That's why I don't even wear a hat anywhere even as bad as it was a few years ago with almost no hair and lots of scars, because at some point I am going to have to take my hat off and then everyone sees I'm bald with rows and rows of FUT scars. Once that happens, wearing a hat doesn't make them think I'm NOT bald with my head all sliced up, so it's just not worth wearing a hat everyday trying to fool people. I realize others feel differently for themselves and that's fine. I'm only explaining how I feel about it for myself.

 

[Al - Moderator]

On 6/3/2023 at 3:48 PM, stephcurry30 said:

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

Haha. I wish I made as much as a lawyer, but I can tell you that if you are destined to be an extreme NW 7, you are probably never going to have a great head of hair no matter how much money you have available to spend on a hair transplant.

[Al - Moderator]

On 6/3/2023 at 9:02 PM, mrmane85 said:

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. 

 

I've seen Dr Pitella's work posted here and I think he has done a great job on some very bald guys. I know I made a couple of comments on his posts.

However, right now I'm just going to let everything grow and heal and see where I'm at after a year. I'm still gaining chest hair, so I'm hoping I can eventually go back and get another good round or two of chest hair done. I did not have any useable scalp donor hair, so all 6475 grafts I had done at True & Dorin was beard, chest, and abdomen grafts. I am not unhappy with what they did or how they treated me, although I am now at or certainly near the end of what they are able to accomplish with me and I may need to look elsewhere soon, but as I said, for now I will let everything grow and heal and see where I am and go from there.

When I had the first body hair repair in 2014 it was the early days of using body grafts and there were only 2 Drs willing to touch me. That was Dr Sanusi Umar and Dr Robert Dorin, so I have nothing bad to say about Dr Dorin as he and his staff did all of the grafts and he never promised me anything. Only that he would try his best. In fact he always asked me if I was sure I wanted to try another session because he said he felt bad taking my money if I felt it wasn't working well enough. But I always saw improvement after every surgery he did.

 

Edited June 6, 2023 by BeHappy

[mr_peanutbutter]

2 hours ago, BeHappy said:

 

Maybe. I'm just not a fan of SMP. I don't even like fibers as I tried that years ago and just hated it. I don't want anything fake because if people find out it's not really hair, whether it's fibers or SMP or a hair piece or whatever, then that defeats the purpose because they then know I don't have hair. There's just no point in trying to cover it after that as I wouldn't be fooling anyone. That's why I don't even wear a hat anywhere even as bad as it was a few years ago with almost no hair and lots of scars, because at some point I am going to have to take my hat off and then everyone sees I'm bald with rows and rows of FUT scars. Once that happens, wearing a hat doesn't make them think I'm NOT bald with my head all sliced up, so it's just not worth wearing a hat everyday trying to fool people. I realize others feel differently for themselves and that's fine. I'm only explaining how I feel about it for myself.

 

ur already mentioned doctor umar has great results with smp and beard hair

[Fox243]

Any updates here?

[Al - Moderator]

On 10/9/2023 at 4:34 AM, Fox243 said:

Any updates here?

 

I been trying to decide what to write for a while. Sometimes I get very depressed and other times I think it's not looking too bad compared to where I was or where I would be. I guess it depends on how my hair looks that day.

Dr Dorin and his staff have been great. I don't want to say anything bad about them. I know I am an extremely tough case. When I first went to them there wasn't anyone else besides Dr Dorin and Dr Sanusi Umar who were willing to do anything. Dr Umar wanted to use 3500 beard grafts, 1000 chest grafts, and 1500 scalp grafts. He was going by pictures I sent him. I didn't have an in person consultation, however I knew I couldn't use any scalp grafts as my donor areas were already too thin and still thinning. I was also very reluctant to have a large session done because I had so much scarring all over, not just in the donor area, but also on the entire recipient area. I had 5 scalp reductions, around 1400 large plug grafts, sections of previously transplanted grafts removed and moved to other areas, hundreds of 4mm punch outs where they punched out between existing grafts and stitched them closed, but the scars from those ended up just as large or larger than the plugs punched out. So even my entire recipient area was scars on top of scars. This made me want to go slow with a few small sessions to see how it would work. Plus I didn't want to have a bunch of beard area scars on top of the scalp scars, so I took it slow which was Dr Dorins way of doing it.

My biggest problem is that I'm still losing hair. The body hair is all growing, but it's just replacing the older hair that is still falling out, so the end result looks like there is hardly any improvement after nearly 6500 grafts. It's really depressing, but at the same time I am so glad I had it done because I don't know what I would do if I didn't have any of the body grafts growing to replace everything. There is just no way I would be able to get by with a shaved head with massive scarring all over. I was getting to a really bad place that I didn't want to be in when I first went to Dr Dorn, so I don't even want to think about where I'd be now if I didn't get those 6500 grafts that he did.

I'll try to post pics later, but I just get depressed looking at them.

 

[AB2000]

If I'm following the thread correctly your last two procedures with Dorin have each been about 500 grafts, which were a combo of beard and body hair, @BeHappy?  Since these have been small surgeries have you been able to figure out how effective these have been?  90% survival, 100%?

Your problem, other than a shortage of donor, is all the scalp scarring.  A surgeon might have good technique, but if your body is working against you by not allowing hair to grow out through the scar tissue, then more transplantation won't help as much, so hopefully you can find out if it's a problem or not going forward.

I'd suggest giving Dr. Umar a try, with a similar sized test procedure.  He is probably one of the top specialists for body hair.  The surgical tool has been designed to use difficult hair types, including those from below the head.  The arm hair he used to put into the nape of my neck worked out great.  There wasn't the problem you described where the donor skin was falling apart from the extraction process.

Another reason to see what he can do is that a lot of his surgical work includes men with Acne Keloidalis Nuchae (AKN).  If you look at his youtube videos you can see a number of examples.  It's a type of skin disorder where little hair grows out of and once he removes/minimizes it, he's also been able to get hair transplanted into the area, so he might have a good idea on how to work around your scalp reduction scars.

I think I forwarded you this link before, BeHappy, the NW7 patient was able to get coverage with little scalp hair involved.  A result like this, when combined with moderate FUE or some toppik would cover your scarring, leaving just the denuded beard and the little white dots being visible.  This was about 10k grafts over three surgeries:

 

[Al - Moderator]

@AB2000 Thank you for the comments. Yes I spent a lot of time going through several of Umar's extreme repair cases some time ago and that was what led me to contact him in the first place. I've also been following your case on here.

I emailed back and forth with Umar's office a couple of times, but I ultimately went with Dorin for various reasons. I wanted to try a small test first and it didn't make sense to travel 3000 miles to do a few hundred grafts when my other choice was only 2 hours away. Maybe I should have gone with Umar once I was satisfied that Dorin's grafts grew and I wouldn't end up with visible scars, but there were still other factors. I didn't want to shave my head and then have all the scars and work showing for months while being required to work where I'm in close surroundings with hundreds of people every day.

The problem is not that the beard and chest grafts aren't growing. They are growing very well. The problem is that I am still losing hair, so I'm just replacing hair that is falling out with body hair and not really getting anywhere. I'm just kind of spinning my wheels in place. The same thing would have happened if I went to Dr Umar except I would have gotten more done at a time so I would have ben in more of a rollercoaster as far as hair growing and falling. A bigger session would have gotten me some improvement at first, but then the native hair loss would just catch up soon anyway and then I'd go back for another large session and up and down we go again. Wth Dr Dorin's small sessions it's just sort of been keeping it more even. It's not really much difference either way.

I'm attaching two pictures below. These are at just about the same angle. This should give you an idea of what I mean. The one on the right was taken in 1998. It's around 3 to 4 years after my last hair transplant at that time. The picture on the left was taken in March after the last transplant. You can see how much hair I've lost and how thin it has become. Instead of filling in the top to get some density there, I am forced to use the grafts far down the sides into the scars. On top of that since the sides and back has been thinning so badly, the old transplanted hair that was growing on top is thinning as well, so any beard and chest grafts that did get placed over the top are only ending up replacing the older grafts that are falling out. I now have almost 100% body hair grafts growing throughout the entire original NW 6 area that was transplanted in the 80's and 90's.

 

 

 

Edited October 16, 2023 by BeHappy

[AB2000]

40 minutes ago, BeHappy said:

I didn't want to shave my head and then have all the scars and work showing for months while being required to work where I'm in close surroundings with hundreds of people every day.

The problem is not that the beard and chest grafts aren't growing. They are growing very well. The problem is that I am still losing hair

In your case, with the hair growing out sparsely you might not need to have the head shaved for a procedure?

Also, do you know why your hair loss is continuing into the safe zone?  Have you been checked for LPP?  If you are suffering scalp inflammation that would be something to address to stop further loss.  If you continue losing more then your scars are going to become visible as if you had your head shaved for a FUE.

[Al - Moderator]

On 10/16/2023 at 11:26 AM, AB2000 said:

do you know why your hair loss is continuing into the safe zone?

 

I always knew it would get to this point. I have an uncle and great uncle who were both much older than me who had practically no hair at all on the sides of their head and only a small, thin area of hair in the back by the time they were in their 50s. Looking at their pictures and old home video from the 1950s through early 80s, I was pretty sure once I hit my late teens and saw my hair loss progression up to that point that I had the same hair loss pattern as they did. That was why I went for a hair transplant. Supposedly once the hair was transplanted to another area it was never going to fall out, so I tried to have as much transplanted as possible. I felt if I waited until I was older I wouldn't have enough hair left to transplant because it was obvious that my uncles wouldn't be able to have a hair transplant at their then current amount of baldness.

 

On 10/16/2023 at 11:26 AM, AB2000 said:

Have you been checked for LPP?

 

No. I never knew what that was when I was younger. I did go to 3 dermatologists and 10 to 12 hair transplant Drs from the ages of 18 to around 30. The Dermatologists never did any actual tests of anything. They just looked at my hair, pulled on it from a few different places, and told me it's normal. One even said my hair wasn't falling out. 

 

On 10/16/2023 at 11:26 AM, AB2000 said:

If you are suffering scalp inflammation that would be something to address to stop further loss. 

 

I don't have any inflammation. I hardly even have any redness two weeks after a hair transplant. I did have a lot of stinging pain when I was in my teens when my hair was falling out at it's fastest. I could tell which area was going to have a bad shed over the next few weeks just by where the stinging pain was at. It sort of moved around a bit. I also had a lot of greasy, gunky stuff that oozed out of my scalp. I had to wash my hair twice a day for several years when it was at it's worst. It also got worse if I was working out regularly. But those were the days when I was told it was normal and there was no hair falling out. The Doctors were all idiots. How do you tell a NW 5 at 18 years old that it's normal and you're not losing any hair??

 

[Vann]

Have you ever tried to get in contact with any surgeons that are doing the verteporfin trial? I think your case may be a great study for their research. They may not want to have someone who may not be a good candidate. But it can be an indication for a number of different experiments to see if you have any other issues that are underlying.

If you are willing to be a candidate perhaps @Melvin- Admin can refer you to a doctor that is looking for patients to trial on?

[Fox243]

Would you consider going to Pittella to see if he can alleviate your situation with beard + body grafts?

[Al - Moderator]

On 2/4/2024 at 8:34 AM, Fox243 said:

Would you consider going to Pittella to see if he can alleviate your situation with beard + body grafts?

 

If I was just starting out he would definitely be on my short list of Drs to go to.

However at this stage I've already used nearly 6500 beard and chest grafts, so there's not much benefit to going to someone like Pitella at this point. I will be going back to Dr Dorin soon for a follow up to see how much else we can get and maybe try using some arm hair. I want to wait at least a year from my last procedure to fully see where I'm at and what is needed. My goal for the next session is to try to fill in the front half as much as I can. After that I'm hoping to be able to get one more session to fill in the crown with whatever grafts we can get.

 

[Al - Moderator]

On 10/22/2023 at 10:31 PM, Vann said:

Have you ever tried to get in contact with any surgeons that are doing the verteporfin trial? I think your case may be a great study for their research. They may not want to have someone who may not be a good candidate. But it can be an indication for a number of different experiments to see if you have any other issues that are underlying.

If you are willing to be a candidate perhaps @Melvin- Admin can refer you to a doctor that is looking for patients to trial on?

 

I haven't been following the verteporfin thread much, but from what I did read the Dr would need to create new scars to allow them to heal with new hair growing in. My scars were never wide. I just have lots of them and the hair is thinning anyway. I think the hair that would grow back would only be what would naturally be there if I didn't have the scars, so I don't think it would grow in much anyway. I could be wrong there. I should probably look into it more perhaps.

 

[Melvin- Admin]

@Al - formerly BeHappy

In my opinion, try smp for the scarring, if you did a military style cut, keeping the top hair short and the sides close to shaved. I think you could look really good.

Something like this:

You have enough hair in the front that this could look decent. @Gatsby had similar scars and check out his SMP. It was amazing. Both your stories are eerily similar. 

[Gatsby]

I have to agree that I feel a good option would be to buzz down the back and sides maintain the frontal third cut shorter with SMP. I think choosing a good SMP artist is as impossible as choosing a good hair restoration surgeon. I also like your approach about adding one variable at a time to win the long game. 👌

[AB2000]

1 hour ago, Gatsby said:

I have to agree that I feel a good option would be to buzz down the back and sides maintain the frontal third cut shorter with SMP. I think choosing a good SMP artist is as impossible as choosing a good hair restoration surgeon. I also like your approach about adding one variable at a time to win the long game. 👌

Even SMP for scar camouflage, as opposed to fake density, would help, as that might allow for my style options.

[Al - Moderator]

@Melvin- Admin and @Gatsby and @AB2000

I've been cutting it a little shorter lately and it looks pretty good, but not so short like the picture Melvin posted. I wasn't able to do that before because of the scars, but as you can see in this picture from the last session I had, the upper scars were covered. Now that it's grown in I can cut it shorter without having an issue. At this point I really just need to add density all over. The scars are not as big a problem as they once were. Unfortunately I had to use up a lot of grafts over several sessions to solve a lot of the scar issues, so I haven't gotten as much density over the top as I'd like. Bt overall it's a much better look without worrying about scars.

 

[Fox243]

2 hours ago, Al - formerly BeHappy said:

@Melvin- Admin and @Gatsby and @AB2000

I've been cutting it a little shorter lately and it looks pretty good, but not so short like the picture Melvin posted. I wasn't able to do that before because of the scars, but as you can see in this picture from the last session I had, the upper scars were covered. Now that it's grown in I can cut it shorter without having an issue. At this point I really just need to add density all over. The scars are not as big a problem as they once were. Unfortunately I had to use up a lot of grafts over several sessions to solve a lot of the scar issues, so I haven't gotten as much density over the top as I'd like. Bt overall it's a much better look without worrying about scars.

 

It’s been over a year since your last surgery so would love to see an updated pic of how the grafts finally grew in. I have very strong norwooding genes (NW6 by 23) and grandparent/uncle NW7, so am particularly invested in your case. Thanks! 

[Al - Moderator]

21 hours ago, Fox243 said:

It’s been over a year since your last surgery so would love to see an updated pic of how the grafts finally grew in. I have very strong norwooding genes (NW6 by 23) and grandparent/uncle NW7, so am particularly invested in your case. Thanks! 

 

Actually next month will be one year. I will try to throw some pics up here tomorrow. I only had a small session done, so there isn't any huge difference. In fact I had several small sessions done prior to the 2 posted in this thread. What I need to do is post a few pics of what it looked like just prior to starting all the repairs and then how it looks now. Let me get some photos together and I'll see what I can do.

 

[Al - Moderator]

Here are a couple of before and afters on the hairline. The "Before" pictures on the left are both from 2014 which was about 20 years after my last hair transplant at the time, but prior to any repairs. The "After" pictures on the right are both from September 2023.

 

 

[Melvin- Admin]

Al,

The front looks great. It looks very natural 🙏 BHT in your case was a game changer.

[Fox243]

On 2/19/2024 at 1:05 PM, Al - formerly BeHappy said:

Here are a couple of before and afters on the hairline. The "Before" pictures on the left are both from 2014 which was about 20 years after my last hair transplant at the time, but prior to any repairs. The "After" pictures on the right are both from September 2023.

 

 

I know you were hoping to have one or two more sessions. When will you learn how many grafts you have left? 

[Al - Moderator]

6 hours ago, Fox243 said:

I know you were hoping to have one or two more sessions. When will you learn how many grafts you have left? 

 

I am trying to wait at least a full year before going back for a consultation because I want to let everything grow and heal as much as possible to get a proper idea of where I am at with everything including how many grafts I can still get as well as where I need them the most. I'll be setting up a date soon. I'm planning on going back for the actual surgery sometime around November. I'd rather not be in the ugly duckling phase through the Summer. I'll post here for sure when I go.