~850 FUE with Dr. William Lindsey

[jackiema]

Had my HT with Dr. William Lindsey today as a Norwood 2. I am in my 30's and have been taking oral finasteride 1.25mg daily for over a year. The TLDR is that the experience was very nice and I am very happy so far. 

If you want to see how things are growing, I am documenting them on a different thread here. 

I knew there were a lot of bad HT doctors out there and I first learned about Dr. Lindsey on one of these forums as he consistently popped up as a well-regarded surgeon. His practice is very close to where I live so he naturally was at the top of my list. I watched quite a few of his videos on youtube as well as those of the other recommended surgeons here before I had my initial consultation. I remember as soon as I walked in the door, he said he had good news and bad news for me. The bad news was that the hair of people of my ethnicity tended to be weak but the good news was that my hair looked pretty strong. We went into an office where I was able to ask questions and he was able to give me recommendations for my case.

Dr. Lindsey is very friendly and more than willing to answer questions. He is always reminding you that you can call the office for any question. He has a very good demeanor and very trustworthy from what I can tell. He is very straightforward and I think he really prioritizes his integrity. I think he really doesn't care whether you end up choosing to have a HT with him or not, so long as he's able to get you to understand the realistic expectations of what a HT can do for you. 

For my case specifically, I decided I didn't need to consult with any other surgeons. Based on what I saw on the youtube videos of other recommended surgeons, I am sure I would have had a good experience and their information was similar to Dr. Lindsey's. But even I if I liked another surgeon, I would have went with Dr. Lindsey simply due to his proximity to me. Although he usually does FUT, he recommended FUE for me for a few reasons. Because my hair sticks out straight, an FUT scar would have been more visible. My hairs were thick/strong so they were more likely to tolerate FUE extraction. Lastly, my procedure was relatively small as a Norwood 2, so not as many grafts would be needed, meaning less time for the grafts to be out of the body, increasing their chances of surviving. 

I really appreciate his style of prioritizing the highest chance of survival for the grafts, and I think this may have contributed to him not needing to extract an extremely high number of grafts, preserving my donor area. I also appreciate his goal of making the end result be unremarkable or simply normal/natural looking. I didn't want someone to come over and compliment me on a great HT result, I would rather have no one notice at all, and he is the same way. 

Day of the surgery, I come in, we settle on what the hairline would look like and I take a valium he prescribed for me to help me stay calm and sit still during the extraction (all his patients get valium). He then injected the local anesthesia in several rounds in the donor area and then took me to the room where I would lie face down as he and Wendy (his lead technician) extracted the grafts. One thing he told me to do in preop care was to avoid Asian food for 10 days because it (along with other types of food) tends to make people bleed more during the HT. Unfortunately for me, it was Chinese New Year and I intentionally disobeyed thinking it would have been fine. So I did end up bleeding a lot during the extractions and the bleeding may have affected the anesthesia. 90% of the time, I felt nothing, it was just a few times here or there where I felt a sting and when I told him, he would give me another dose of local anesthesia or move on to a different area and that solved the problem. I don't know how long it took them to extract all the grafts, so I won't give a time estimate, but it didn't feel too long. They told me my grafts were very resilient and tolerated extraction very well. 

Next they took me to another room where they had me sit reclining back and Dr. Lindsey would inject the anesthesia for the recipient area for a few rounds and he made the incisions. This half of the procedure was very relaxing, sitting back reclined and talking to Wendy about randoms stuff and Dr. Lindsey had 80s music playing on the radio. I felt a little pain during the incisions even with the anesthesia, so he gave me another dose in my eyebrow area which was pretty painful (he warned me about the pain) but it was very effective and no more pain after that. Wendy, the lead tech then proceeded to insert all the grafts by herself. Normally they would have two techs working at the same time, but since I was a small case, Wendy by herself was fine. I felt like I was having premium service having Wendy insert all the grafts, but I am sure the other techs would have done a fine job as well. Dr. Lindsey came in every 15 minutes or so to chat and see how things were going.

After all the grafts were put in, I met with Dr. Lindsey in an office where he showed me all the before and after pictures. I was very satisfied with how it looked, but I totally forgot to ask them to send me a copy of the pictures. So I am going to do that tomorrow when they show me how to clean for the first time. I have a before and after picture I took myself, but the ones Dr. Lindsey took are better and includes the donor area and mid-procedure pictures. I'll post those here when I get a copy of them. I am very happy with how it looks so far, the more I look at it, the more I like it. Feel free to ask any questions. 

Edited February 14, 2022 by jackiema
adding link to other thread

[HappyMan2021]

How old are you? Do you have any crown loss? Did you opt for no shave or that was the default?

[jackiema]

4 minutes ago, SadMan2021 said:

How old are you? Do you have any crown loss? Did you opt for no shave or that was the default?

I'm in my 30's and no crown loss from what I see. Default is not shaving and Dr. Lindsey encourages that so you can possibly hide the HT according to one of his videos. You could come in shaved if you want. 

[Baldingat22]

I have very similar hairline. 850 seems low. I get quoted 2000 but I maybe don’t have as dense hair as you idk

[jackiema]

6 hours ago, Baldingat22 said:

I have very similar hairline. 850 seems low. I get quoted 2000 but I maybe don’t have as dense hair as you idk

Yeah, not sure why it seems most people get quoted at minimum 1500 for smaller cases. I'm Norwood 2 and we decided on a relatively small area to work on. The Dr. Had a lot of videos with patients similar to me with a similar amount of grafts. My hair also is also very thick, it gives me splinters. 

In 2 days, I'll have all the pictures that were taken during the surgery and 7 day postop and we can all make a better assessment.