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1652 grafts FUE/PRP african curly hair: Dr. Arocha


northman

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Before

Until now I was a lurker around here and it was really informative if nothing else. I'm in my late 20s and have never had a perfect hairline. In my peak at 19, i had two cowlicks one on the rightside and one on the leftside of my front hairline corners. With a widows peak to top it off. In retrospect i probably started losing hair around 22 but i didn't realize till i was 24 when a patch went "missing." This is cause i kept it medium on top and faded on the sides.

That's when I started hair saving steps etc & also looking up doctors Diep, Wesley, Ziering, Arocha but waited years till I finally took the dive in 2022. I decided on Arocha. His representative Al deserves alot of credit as well. I met with arocha and my problem was an eroded hairline and diffuse thinning right in the front. We went over a suitable hairline and methods to maintain minitutizing hair around the front. I didnt realize we needed to slightly rebuild my left temp peak, it had got that bad.

New hair day

I got the procedure done on a Wednesday. I get nervous for just about anything so it was no surprise here to me, but arocha and all his staff was great and patient. The pre meds helped too. Arocha and assistant did all the graft removal, then Arocha did the incisions for the recipient area and also the PRP injections. The technicians did the graft placements. Took about 10 hours and I was pretty satisfied with their work and was actually starved more than tired.

Post Op

Arocha called to check in afterward the next day and I went in for a cleaning on day 2. According to everyone my donor area was healing extremely quickly. Which was good cause day 1 it looked.... ravaged.

During the first week my head felt like a cinder block. I couldn't do much of anything without being nauseous. The outside of my head might've been healing, inside was something else. But, no pain no gain. Interesting note is there was very little swelling, only I noticed certain small points around my forehead day 2 and 3.

Pictures include before hair loss, peak erosion, and post op.

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Glad to see another afro case on the forum. Dr. Arocha has always impressed me, definitely will be following your progress closely. 


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  • 2 weeks later...
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meant to post awhile back this is day 10. still had a lot of scabs. they didnt want to budge and I was scared to pick them. i had started washing my hair regularly in the shower on day 8.

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this is day 20. during this last week the donor area goes through spells where it itches bad and still has sore spots. one spot bled just a little from my "light" scratching unfortunately. man i learned from that.

other than that my thin native hair is starting to grow around the recipient area so it can be hard to spot new hair underneath the curls. but its growing little by little which is nice since nothing was there for years. taking it day by day.

one picture in natural daylight. the other with flash on.

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If - as I suspect based on the pictures - all the grafts are placed in the thinning region and the final outcome will not be a lowering of the hairline so much as a vast improvement in the existing one, I think this will be good.  I will say this is one of those things where your hair texture makes it quite different to judge than non-black transplants.  Hope it turns out well.

I found the position of my head for the placement of the grafts to be very uncomfortable - to the point where I had to take a couple of 5-10 minute breaks during my transplant.  And my entire procedure was only 6 hours total for 2600+ grafts.  I can only imagine how exhausting that 10 hours must've been notwithstanding you probably didn't have neck discomfort.

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  • 4 weeks later...
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2 month update 4/13-6/13

A lot of shedding and pimples happening now. Most of the shedding was week 4 and 5 and I panicked cause I thought it was me washing my hair too rough but Dr. Arocha reassured me it was normal at this time haha

A side issue is the itching. That's one thing I never saw feedback about with FUE. My donor area itches and is actually sore in some spots. But I'm using aloe vera. It seems to sooth it a little.

I think there was some shock loss? near the edges of the thickest hair. And also on my left temple since its more thin than my right temple now. I don't really know.

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On 5/17/2022 at 8:58 PM, Vann said:

Thanks for the update. Do you have any pictures of the donor zone after and some pics right after the implantation/extraction?

sorry for late post. I can get some it'd be good to compare

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On 5/13/2022 at 10:51 PM, John1991 said:

If - as I suspect based on the pictures - all the grafts are placed in the thinning region and the final outcome will not be a lowering of the hairline so much as a vast improvement in the existing one, I think this will be good.  I will say this is one of those things where your hair texture makes it quite different to judge than non-black transplants.  Hope it turns out well.

I found the position of my head for the placement of the grafts to be very uncomfortable - to the point where I had to take a couple of 5-10 minute breaks during my transplant.  And my entire procedure was only 6 hours total for 2600+ grafts.  I can only imagine how exhausting that 10 hours must've been notwithstanding you probably didn't have neck discomfort.

Thank you. Yeah the doctor told me my texture could maybe help with final density but we'll see. The hair type also made things take longer. You lay face down on this massage table like bed and I get congested easily, so it was kind of bad but hope those hours will be worth it.

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20 minutes ago, northman said:

2 month update 4/13-6/13

A lot of shedding and pimples happening now. Most of the shedding was week 4 and 5 and I panicked cause I thought it was me washing my hair too rough but Dr. Arocha reassured me it was normal at this time haha

A side issue is the itching. That's one thing I never saw feedback about with FUE. My donor area itches and is actually sore in some spots. But I'm using aloe vera. It seems to sooth it a little.

I think there was some shock loss? near the edges of the thickest hair. And also on my left temple since its more thin than my right temple now. I don't really know.

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To begin with you were already losing in a diffuse pattern so some of it may be shock loss along with shedding around the transplanted which may have caused you more worry. 
 

i think this looks very normal and you don’t need to worry about it. Shedding at 4-5 weeks is a little later than some who shed between the first 11-14 days. But everyone has their own pace. 
 

i think you have some thinner hairs that are still there so once you hit months 4-5 I think you’ll grow fast. Just my speculation nothing concrete but just wait this out patiently.

also just to note make sure you keep your head covered and out of the sun since it is summer time. The sun can be very harmful to transplanted hairs early on so make sure you take precaution against that. Happy growing and thanks for the update.

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5 minutes ago, Vann said:

To begin with you were already losing in a diffuse pattern so some of it may be shock loss along with shedding around the transplanted which may have caused you more worry. 
 

i think this looks very normal and you don’t need to worry about it. Shedding at 4-5 weeks is a little later than some who shed between the first 11-14 days. But everyone has their own pace. 
 

i think you have some thinner hairs that are still there so once you hit months 4-5 I think you’ll grow fast. Just my speculation nothing concrete but just wait this out patiently.

also just to note make sure you keep your head covered and out of the sun since it is summer time. The sun can be very harmful to transplanted hairs early on so make sure you take precaution against that. Happy growing and thanks for the update.

Yeah i just washed literally when it hit 4 weeks and a lot transplanted hair came out. I was shook a bit lol

But thank you for the feedback. I'm the only one that I know of that would even do this, so nobody really to talk to outside the forums. And yeah my floppy fisherman hat will come in handy in this Texas heatwave.

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Definitely some shock loss but that's a reasonable expectation given that the area was diffused. This doesn't mean that the shock loss is permanent, but you may need to wait a few more months before they come back.

Nothing to be concerned about just yet. Too early to really see much appreciable growth in most cases but long enough that shedding has already kicked in.

Edited by Mycroft
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  • 2 months later...
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month 4. The native hair was wild so i just cut it for the first time since the surgery. I had to use a #3 guard. There's new sprouts everywhere and the hairline has some that aren't really big...yet? I did figure the front would be the slowest to grow.

The left temple seems okay for now but it could be the haircut being low that it blends in. I'll see by next update. The donor site has one or two spots that itch still. Overall some progress is better than none

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Edited by northman
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  • 4 weeks later...
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I haven't been able to post like I hoped but took just a few photos overtime for myself and i'll get to it and post them.

september first 2 pic

october 3rd pic

november 4th pic

 

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Edited by northman
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8 months december. similar to november. my widows peak has filled in and the hairline. hoping it fills in a little more behind the hairline but coming from nothing i'll let it finish doing its thing. (if it's not done, we'll see)

 

 

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Edited by northman
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30 minutes ago, Yan bio said:

Afro hair has such great characteristics for transplant. Your results are great and density looks like is going to be phenomenal!

thanks for the comments. Density was one of my main concerns from the beginning and I appreciate the results so far. we'll see where it ends up soon.

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