What a day - Over 15 hour FUT w/ Dr. Konior | ~3,100 grafts | 38 yrs old | Oct. 25th 2023

[WalterWhite]

Well I finally pulled the trigger 😊
 
After spending literally years doing research (and losing more hair along the way), trying every medication under the sun (with mixed results and some siginificant side effects) I decided it was time to move forward with a hair transplant from Dr. Konior.
 
During my initial virtual consultation with Dr. Konior he explained that I a very healthy donor area, and the pros and cons of FUT vs. FUE. I ultimately decided to go with FUT as  1) his FUT scars I’ve seen are generally pencil thin, 2) this could help preserve grafts if I need another surgery down the road. And 3) FUT scars can be well disguised with SMP or a future FUE surgery if necessary (there are some great examples on this forum where they are basically invisible)
 
I originally flew in to Chicago from the PNW for this procedure on Tuesday, checked into my hotel (chose the Embassy Suites Lombard -due to being a 5 min drive from the office and offering free breakfast), and dropped by the local walgreens to fill my prescriptions - One piece of advice, double check that they actually gave you all 4 prescriptions (Valium (relaxation/sleep), Hydrocodone (pain), Cephalxin (antibiotic), and Scopoline Patch (nausea). They forgot one of mine and I had to catch an uber back to get it at 10pm the night before the surgery.

Honesty I was so nervous I didn’t sleep more than an hour the night before the surgery, but my alarm went off at 5:30am, I grabbed a quick light breakfast and was over to their office by 6:30am.

After being greeted by Karen (whom I bonded with over our shared love of Golf and Pickleball), and meeting Lisa (hope I got her name right) who’s been working with Dr. Konior for 20 years, Dr. Konior came in and we spent the first 15 minutes getting to know each other, discussing our views on great restaurants and some new books he recommended. We then dove into hairline design. His original line was a little low/ aggressive for my tastes, so we ultimately revised it to be a bit more conservative. He also did a nice job matching up my temple points as my right side was lower than my left. I was debating a “U” shape hairline vs. a “soft V” and ended up going with Dr. K’s recommendation which was more of the “U:
 
I’ve seen other Hair Transplant doctors use all sorts of crazy equipment to find symmetry, but aside from a ruler and a marker, Dr. Konior did everything freehand and by the second revision I was incredibly happy with the design he recommended – felt like a dramatic improvement while being age appropriate. It was really at this moment that I started to understand why people call him an “artist”, he really has an uncanny ability for partial symmetry (you actually don’t want full symmetry or faces look extremely odd, and micro irregularities in the hairline)
 
After that it was Valium time and after waiting about 30 minutes for that to kick in,  into the operating room we went. As everyone states, the painkiller injections were the most painful part. He  mentioned everyone’s body is different and mine seemed to go through anesthesia quickly (this is something my dentist has mentioned too) so they needed to regularly re-inject more painkillers throughout the procedure.

One piece of advice - don’t try to grit through the pain, at one point late in the day I started to feel some pain in the donor area and figured I just try to let them finish but it pretty soon became unbearable and as soon as I mentioned it they kindly/gently scolded me for not telling them sooner and quickly injected more anesthesia.
It was quite a marathon with a few breaks to stretch legs and for lunch, and by the time we finally wrapped up it was 10PM, meaning I’d been there for over 15 hours straight!
I know long days can by typical with a lot of grafts, but it sounds like what partially took so long for me was that Dr. Konior called me an "oozer" (literally the term he used haha). Apparently they inject adrenaline into the scalp to try and minimize bleeding, and for whatever reason this wasn’t as effective for me, and my scalp bled more than normal. I do remember hearing some deep sighs from Dr. Konior and his team during a few moments throughout the surgery where it just felt like they were holding gause to the side of my head and waiting for the bleeding to stop so they could keep going.

I’ll probably sound like a broken record with all the other patients who’ve chosen Dr. Konior, but he truly is a one of a kind doctor and person. There literally wasn’t enough space on the walls of his office to fit all the awards he’s won, and his bedside demeanor, confidence, humor and consultative approach all set me completely at ease. Hes’ also a genuinely good guy I could see myself being friends with.

I should also mention all his incredible staff, including Karen, Lisa, and one tech who I believe was from Poland (I feel bad forgetting her name) and what felt like 6-7 other incredibly friendly and professional staff working alongside him the entire time.

Once we finally wrapped up it was time to head home, and as I was about to call an Uber, Dr. Konior kindly offered to drive me to the hotel.

At the hotel I crashed on my makeshift upright bed (I got a great wedge pillow and neck pillow on Amazon that was recommended here, and perhaps partly due to exhaustion, partly due to valium I slept like a rock.

One final recommendation - the next day I was due back for a cleaning and wasn’t feeling particularly hungry so I took a Hydrocodone pill and headed off to the office. BIG mistake - I got so nauseous I actually ended up throwing up at the office. ALWAYS take your meds with at least a little food, and make sure to use the anti-nausea patch if they offer one.

Anyway this was quite the novel so I’ll wrap up, and see below for a few before and after photos. I know the shedding/ugly duckling stage is next, but I’ll be continuing to update this thread over the coming year regardless.

Finally a huge thank you to all of you on this forum who don't even know it, but inspired me to take the plunge. 

 

Happy to answer any questions, and any thoughts/feedback or advice would be welcome.

 

Fortune favors the bold! 

 

 

 

[HappyMan2021]

Congrats, it looks great! A few questions:

1) How many months did you have to wait for surgery?

2) I haven't seen many cases of Konior doing 3k+ grafts in one go. Did he bring this up with you at all?

3) You mentioned another potential surgery down the road. Did Konior give any commentary on if he thinks you are a one and done or what is his long-term prognosis for you, etc.?

[Gatsby]

Excellent write up @WalterWhite and you have gone to arguably the best. Super clean work. 👌

[WalterWhite]

Thanks @Gatsby, was super inspired by stories like yours @Melvin- Admin, @aNewHairHope and countless others here. You are all very appreciated 🙏

[WalterWhite]

@HappyMan2021

Thanks for the kind words, I'm definitely excited/cautiously optimistic!

re: your questions:

1) I originally signed up for the waitlist in September of 2022, so a little over a year.

2) Konior will do 3k grafts but only for FUT, I think it's just to hard to do over ~2200 or so for FUE in one day. The way he put it was he would use "every graft from the strip harvest, none would go to waste". 

3) Related to the above, I still have some thinning on my crown, but i've seen pretty decent results with topical fin and oral min, so I'm going to see how that goes for another 6 months or more before deciding whether to do the crown.

[Recession1]

Looks really clean. How old are you? 

[WalterWhite]

Thank you @Recession1! And I’m 38

[Recession1]

How many inches would you say he brought down your frontal forelock from where the bulk of your existing hair is? 

[WalterWhite]

@Recession1 Hard to say with any exact specificity, but one thing you can notice on my before photo is I had a faint scar directly in the middle of my forehead (from hitting my head diving into a too shallow swimming pool as a teenager - yeah that was real dumb) but anyway that scar went down a little over an inch from my old hairline. That scar is completely covered so my guess would be it was lowered at least an inch to 1.25 inches.

 

Another way to look at this is Konior mentioned generally hairlines are recommended to be anywhere from 6cm to 10cm from the Glabella (point in between the nose) to the hairline. When Dr Konior initially drew the line it was about 6.5 cm which felt way too low, so we settled for about 7.5cm.

 

Hope that helps!

Edited October 28, 2023 by WalterWhite

[Silent123]

Hey man, great write up. The work looks really good dude. This will be a great result! 

[jjalay]

Looks really solid work. What was the cost of your ht if you dont mind me asking?

[Melvin- Admin]

Konior is a master, the work looks exceptional 🙏 thanks for the amazing write-up.

[WalterWhite]

2 hours ago, jjalay said:

Looks really solid work. What was the cost of your ht if you dont mind me asking?

Thank you, and It was definitely not cheap, but I saved up for a couple years and wanted to go to the absolute best. All in it was ~$32k

[R Des]

Could you add the links for the wedge and neck pillow that you purchased? Any other items you would recommend to buy? Thank you

[Proportions]

Can't wait to see how those temporal peaks turn out

[Savemyhairline]

That new hairline design is going to make you look 10 years younger minimum, huge difference. Happy growing

[Vann]

JUST WOW

[disTressedHairline]

Curious about your "oozing" during the procedure, what was your pre-op protocol in the days leading up to surgery? Were there any instructions they provided? 

[WalterWhite]

13 hours ago, R Des said:

Could you add the links for the wedge and neck pillow that you purchased? Any other items you would recommend to buy? Thank you

Sure thing I actually found them from reading through other posts in this forum - wish I could remember who so I could give them credit. Regardless here’s the two I bought:

 

Wedge pillow (there are two sizes I got the larger one) - https://a.co/d/d27K3qP

Travel pillow - https://a.co/d/cqiPw11

I was happy with both, note that the wedge pillow is vacuum sealed and I had to tie it up with a belt to get it to fit into my suitcase. 

[WalterWhite]

7 hours ago, Savemyhairline said:

That new hairline design is going to make you look 10 years younger minimum, huge difference. Happy growing

I definitely hope so, and really appreciate the encouragement! 

[WalterWhite]

3 hours ago, disTressedHairline said:

Curious about your "oozing" during the procedure, what was your pre-op protocol in the days leading up to surgery? Were there any instructions they provided? 

My pre-op protocol was just following the instructions from the clinic, don’t take medicine like Aspirin, don’t cut my hair shorter than one inch, etc.

Personally I tried to eat a little healthier in advance but nothing crazy. The way Dr. Konior described me as an “Oozer” didn’t seem to be due to anything necessarily in our control, just that some people have a tendency to bleed more, clot less, and in my case - go through anesthesia faster than others. 

[JDude82]

Great write up!

I had my second procedure with Dr. Konior on October 24th so I was in for a follow up during your procedure. Look forward to seeing your results.

[WalterWhite]

3 hours ago, JDude82 said:

Great write up!

I had my second procedure with Dr. Konior on October 24th so I was in for a follow up during your procedure. Look forward to seeing your results.

Ah no way?! I’ve seen your results and they look incredible! 
 

Also meant to ask - was your second procedure FUE/ and did you have any donor hair transplanted directly into the scar? Your scar looks damn good so was wondering if you felt that was necessary. 

Edited October 29, 2023 by WalterWhite

[JDude82]

Thanks! My second was FUE and I did not have any grafts placed in the scar. I wear my hair long enough that it's not visible at all. I created a new post titled 'Round 2 with Dr. Konior - 2027 grafts FUE - October 24 2023' if you'd like to check it out. Not much to see yet obviously. Konior is an absolute master of his craft.

 

 

[HairFunk]

Nicely done with the hairline design. This will be a great result once it all finalises!