Pb's Hair Transplant With Dr Feller Nov 17, 2005,

Follow PB's HT progress here!

Here it is, Feller Medical... went in here at 7:40 am Nov 17, 2005



I met Dr Feller and he took some before pics, took my money  and then drew in a hairline.

I asked if he could bring the front a little more forward to create a bit of a "widow's peak" instead of the more circular hairline he initially drew.

He made the changes and agreed that it looked good. He explained that he couldn't bring it down any more or fill in the recessions because it wouldn't look natural and that he had to make it work with what was at the sides.

I suppose I would need the whole back of my head transplanting onto my forehead to give me a straight line hairline anyway.

So this is it, sort of a "mature" hairline (my hair wasn't really as thick as it appears in that picture - unfortunately):



Here's a pic taken this summer with wet hair brushed back - as you can see here the front 1/3 is just about bald but when dry the few remaining hairs can give some surprising coverage when combed in the right way... I was even worse than this after Rogaine made me lose even more hair:



I met the rest of the staff and Dr Feller buzzed down the strip area and drew in the area to be excised. I then lay down on a massage-type bed and had the back of my head injected with an anesthetic - Dr Feller said that this would be the worst part of it all.

It didn't feel bad at all. The strip was then removed and the techs started removing the follicular units from the strip as Dr Feller closed the donor scar.

The recipient area was then shaved - the remaining hair was so thin that Dr Feller said it didn't exist as far as he was concerned and that it definitely wouldn't be there after a couple of years... so no need to worry about shock loss - he had a clean area to work with.

The anesthetic injections in the front were more painful than the ones in the back, especially in the (new) hairline area. The pain wasn't unbearable or anything and didn't last long - after that I didn't feel a thing.

I had a total of 2700 grafts in the front and Dr Feller and the techs said that my skin was excellent to work with and easy to pack the grafts in close to each other.

They said that the problem with some patients is that when they try to place a graft close to other grafts, 4 or 5 grafts can pop out again. With my scalp the grafts stayed there once planted.

Dr Feller said that my skin was supple too which helped and I wasn't a bleeder either. It was finally over at around 4 pm. One of the nurses explained the post-op stuff and also gave me the post-op instructions on paper.

I was prescribed some painkillers and a member of the staff called in the prescription at the CVS pharmacy in Great Neck and I picked up the meds on the way back to the railway station.

This is what I looked like after getting back to the hotel:



And these pics were taken Nov 22, 5 days post-op - when I look in the mirror I can see all the little grafts and it doesn't really look red - in the photo you can hardly see the hairs and it looks all red and scabby  :



Here's a view from the back - see what I mean about the "missing hair"?



My Wife removed the stitches 9 days post-op - the following pictures were taken 27.11.2005, 10 days post-op:

Here's a shot of the scar from the back (see how hair is growing back along the sides of the scar after being shaved):


...and from the side


And here's how the grafts and recipient area has progressed:

 

16 Day Update - the following pictures were taken 3.12.2005

New hairline and grafts:

(The bridge area behing the front 1/3 transplanted area was also shaved - I can't actually see where the transplanted hairs and regrown bridge hairs meet, the angle of the transplanted hairs match perfectly and so does the density - I'm very pleased with this  )

Close up of grafts:


View from the back - not a lot of improvement, if any  
(not so pleased about this  )



View of scar at the back:



Close up of scar, side:



The healing process 0, 5, 10 and 16 days:

28 Day Post Op