Help Grooming Badly Angled Grafts

[HappyMan2021]

*I will not be mentioning the doc's name as it's triggering to even just mention the person who has caused me so much stress. I will say the doctor is not mentioned on this forum, and just does hair transplants as a side-gig. Avoid anyone who does not do HT's full-time, and you will avoid this doc 🙂

TLDR: 1) My temple grafts are badly angled, but I will not be getting a repair job for a few years at least. How can I best style/groom these grafts so they blend in ok with the rest of the side-hair? Buzzing the sides is out of the question. I like my side hair to be medium-ish length. Preferred hairstyles are slicked up high and back and classic side part. 

            2) Unrelated to the above - thoughts on left-side temple? IMO its a bit too rounded. 

Summary: I got my 1st HT 3 years ago at the age of 29. and the density was really bad. I then got 2 touch-up procedures from the same doc.  Density is now great. The hairline is decent, is a NW 1 design and gives me great coverage. My issue is the temple angles are mis-angled and literally untameable. I think it’s due to the doc being inexperienced, and it doesn’t help that my donor hair is naturally coarse, thick, and wavy.

The temple hair seem to point in the correct direction at the root…but after a few centimeters all the hair begins an upwards curl (when it should be going downwards). It doesn’t look bad when my side hair is short like in the below pictures, but as the temple hair gets longer and longer it will stick out horizontally.

I have solved this thus far by using product on these temple grafts to force them down. But using product daily is a lot of work, and kind of odd to be using product on the sides of my hair.

I do plan on seeing one of the legendary  docs for a repair (and to top off my crown) in 3-4 years, but in the meantime I’m looking for more tolerable and amenable ways to live with these mis-angled grafts.

An obvious solution would be to buzz the sides, but that is not my style. I either prefer a quiff or classic side part, with the sides “business casual” long.

I’m wondering if 1x/week I trim these angle grafts with clippers, right before they get weird and curly, if that is a good solution? With this solution the rest of my side hair will be significantly longer than the temple hair, but I’m wondering if it could still blend ok. Keep in mind the temple is dense (just badly angled).

Any other methods or suggestions for grooming and/or styling mis-angled temple grafts?

I’m also wondering what a repair job for misangled temple points would entail. I’ve read for a lot of these cases it can be too complicated to punch out and replace the graft, so the go-to solution is to dense fill the surrounding area with proper grafts. But I have a feeling dense filling the surrounding area wouldn’t be enough.

Would an elite doc be able to replace these grafts, or is the best-practice really to dense-fill or be SOL?

Any other observations or thoughts in general?

Hope its ok if I ping some of the regulars on here  @Melvin- Moderator @Gatsby @JC71 @BeHappy @Gasthoerer @TorontoMan @Rahal Hair Transplant @LaserCaps @DrTBarghouthi @MachoVato @Egy @Gokuhairline @NARMAK @EvoXOhio @JDEE0 @Curious25 @DrMunibAhmad @DrMunibAhmad @SLA @kirkland @hairlossPA ....anyone welcome.

 

Age 25. Blissfully ignorant about my own hairloss. Notice how untamed, thick, and crazy  my donor region gets at length

Age 27. 

Example 1 Unfiltered

Example 1 Filtered

Example 2 Unfiltered

Example 2 Filtered

No temple angle issues on the left side, thoughts on the design though?

Left Side again. Illustrating super thick donor hair. 

Dried and Brushed. Very Bright Lights

Hairline under very bright lights

The hair is dense (for a hair transplant), just illustrating it under very bright lights, slicked back with pomade

Slicked back with pomade, normal lighting

Edited January 12, 2022 by SadMan2021

[DrMunibAhmad]

Hi,

- i think they didn't pay attention to the hair curl. Especially with temples this is crucial. Next to that the angulation isn't as flat as it should be. 

- i agree that the other side is to rounded. Flared angles doesn't fit males and especially not caucasians. 

- i think it would be a good solution to part your hair a bit more to the middle so that more hair would fall on the wrong temple. This wil camouflage the curl, and the weight of the hairs wil let the others hairs fall down. 

 

The good think is this can be fixed. The bad grafts can be removed and replaced with thin feathered singles.

 

And to add something positive. It doesn't look that bad, you could have ended much worse tbh. 

 

Wish you all the best. 

[HappyMan2021]

33 minutes ago, DrMunibAhmad said:

And to add something positive. It doesn't look that bad, you could have ended much worse tbh. 

 

thanks I appreciate it. 

[Gatsby]

To speak frankly with you the average person in the street, let alone someone you are talking with face to face, would not even notice it. Only a true hair forum geek like us would and even then you would have to point it out. I’ used to be hyper critical on myself and we are all our own worst critics. I would definitely just style it in a manner that takes ‘your’ mind off it. If it’s still perceived as a problem then wait until you feel you need more work done in the futurevand have it addressed then. All the best!

Edited January 13, 2022 by Gatsby

[NARMAK]

Hey Sandman, sorry to hear you're dealing with this. Now, i'm no expert by any means and don't have this issue so feel plenty free to ignore my 2 cents. 

Looking at the images, it appears the temporal hair causing you issues are much closer to the frontal hairline than the actual "points" per se. 

So, there may be visually looking at it a couple options styling wise to manage it whilst you wait for the HT to potentially fix it. Also, i do agree, your left temporal design looks rounded down. Not to say this shape is necessarily "wrong" as i have seen some well respected docs do that, but to address it might require the temporal points to be worked on and possibly bringing the temporal points down to a more flat angle around the frontal temporal angles. It might also be necessary to extract grafts to "reset" the angle which some skilled doctors have been shown to do. 

That above is all conjecture and assumption so feel free to ignore. 

Okay, options that might actually be helpful. Firstly, adjust where you part your hair from. You go right to left from a very close part to the problem grafts. Combing some of the temporal hair that's longer more over the left side and trimming those problem hairs down with a scissor to a more manageable length should help hide them. Then the hair falling over the left side of the rounded temporal corner will hide it being visible as rounded. 

It's not actually the disaster i thought it could look like because it's on the upper temporal areas, not the temporal points which are significantly harder to hide and manage. 

Hope you can get it resolved soon, even things that might seem minor to others like this do prey on your mind, so hopefully the above will help and maybe others ideas. 

 

Good luck and hope to hear how you get on. 

[HappyMan2021]

3 hours ago, Gatsby said:

To speak frankly with you the average person in the street, let alone someone you are talking with face to face, would not even notice it. Only a true hair forum geek like us would and even then you would have to point it out. I’ used to be hyper critical on myself and we are all our own worst critics. I would definitely just style it in a manner that takes ‘your’ mind off it. If it’s still perceived as a problem then wait until you feel you need more work done in the futurevand have it addressed then. All the best!

thanks I appreciate it. I am pretty hypercritical with any permanent physical change lol.

I normally have my sides longer than I do in my current pics, and at length the temple grafts start to curl more and more and I require gel to tame it. While it looks good styled, its a pain to have to rely on it. Maybe I do just need to keep my sides on the shorter side. 

And yes I definitely plan to have a 2nd surgery, guessing 3-4 years from now but not exactly sure. It will be my 4th so really really hope its my last. And I want to have enough money saved up that is has zero impact on my surgeon choice. 

[gillenator]

The use of a good quality gel and/or strong hold hair spray will help hold the hair in the direction you groom it…let the gel dry and then brush it.

[DrTBarghouthi]

Thank you for tagging. I can see where the concerns are but honestly it is not noticeable to most people as other experts mentioned here. I think a change of style will address your concerns quite well. The concern is mostly in the hairline region where the flaring took place, which i think is eventually repairable if you reach that stage later. I strongly recommend trying few styles to cover these areas and that might solve the issue for you. 

[HappyMan2021]

On 1/12/2022 at 5:06 PM, NARMAK said:

Hope you can get it resolved soon, even things that might seem minor to others like this do prey on your mind, so hopefully the above will help and maybe others ideas.

thank you! yes these flaws/errors are relatively 'minor' in the grand scheme of things, and I know I ultimately will get it repaired at some point, I'm just acutely aware of these details in the meantime. I think I just need to accept my hair will be a bit high-maintenance and need some TLC styling in the interim.... 

Thanks for the actual styling advice as well. I feel like moving the part more towards the right will help, I'm just really stubborn on the part line. My favorite style is a classic tight side part and the part line is great where it is (if not for the temple angles). I guess I do need to experiment a bit, there are a lot of hairstyles and fashions out there. 

Edited January 14, 2022 by SadMan2021

[gillenator]

Moving the part will definitely help.