[NOTE] Sorry the photos are massive! No idea how to fix that.
Hey guys. I had a hair transplant exactly ten days ago, so I wanted to create an ongoing thread to share and update my experience, and maybe answer any questions for people interested in taking the plunge. I'm thinking I should update this thread on a monthly basis, or at least until I hit major milestones (one month, three months, six months, year).
Pre-op
This is me 20 days ago. I'm 30 years old and have been losing my hair for about 7 years. I'm on the 'big two' - finasteride and minoxodil - and I use Toppik in my everyday hairstyle. As you can see, I've been losing hair in my temples at a fairly gradual pace. I sent this image to a well-recommended Turkish FUE doctor (not sure if I can mention doctors by name here) a few months ago, who suggested that I needed 2000 grafts at €2 per graft. I would never go to an Irish surgeon and pay an arm and a leg for an outdated FUT op. I've been living away from Ireland for a few years, earning good money, and I always said that hair loss isn't the end of the world for me, but if I could get an operation and be in a situation where it wasn't going to eat into a huge chunk of my savings, why not? So, after a few years finally the time had come where I could give it a go.
Post-op
This is me 10 days ago, immediately post-op. It was red raw later that night. I stayed in Turkey for two nights, arriving on a Thursday morning for a consultation, where I was told that I might need more than 2000 grafts (in the end it was 2250, so an extra €500, but I got a €150 discount from the hospital for usage of photos they took for later promotional purposes). At the consultation the doctor drew my hairline and explained that unfortunately 1. the grafts would only be added to my hairline, and not the slightly thinning area of my crown, as it was too early to add grafts at this point and might mess up the existing growth, and 2. because my hair is very fine, I had a smaller than average amount of hairs in my donor area. This means that following the operation, I just have 2000 additional hairs that can be taken from my donor area for any future operation. Let's hope the crown stabilises!
The operation itself
On my second day, I had the operation. What people never tell you about these operations is how painful and uncomfortable they are! The first thing that happened was that I lay on my front and had doctors extract exactly 2250 hairs from the back of my head (donor area). There was a half-hour break and afterwards each of the hairs was placed in the temples. Both sessions were about 2.5-3 hours each and the pain comes from the needles in both sessions going right into your head. Yes, there is anaesthesia but in my case, I needed more anaesthetic needles during each sessions when they were operating on areas that weren't fully numb. I felt pain consistently in some spots as they were operating but I didn't want to keep prolonging the operation, so I just gritted my teeth. But at some points I had to call out for another anaesthetic needle because in certain areas I was getting the full feeling of a needle entering my head. So a word of warning: it will hurt and it'll be very difficult to sleep for a few days afterwards.
Recovery
This is me, 10 days post-op. The reason I waited 10 days to post here is because this is when it's generally agreed that the grafts are 'locked in'. I was very careful during the recovery period, following the detailed instructions I was given (extra drugs, and specific shampooing process to follow twice a day, sleeping elevated so as not to disturb the grafts) and I think I only lost or two grafts during the week. My head now looks very different than from a few days ago - it was bright red in the donor area (it was calmed down to where it now looks like a nasty rash) and there was scabs all over the temples. On about the eight day the scabs softened and could be removed when shampooing.
So what happens next? Unfortunately, 'shock loss' is meant to occur within the first 4-6 weeks, so I'll lose all these new hairs and have to wait for the 3-4th month so the first shoots of recovery. From what I hear, you see about 60% of the full result at the six month mark, and 100% at the yearly mark.
So it's early days, and the ugly duckling stage is on its way, but this is how things are for now. If anyone has any questions about the operation, or any specific advice, do let me know.
