I got back to London from the second procedure with Dr De Reys about a month ago.
I'm very happy with the result although I was also very happy with the first operation which I had with him last year.
I chose him because I knew he had been the lead surgeon at the Pro Clinic, which is also in Belgium.
My overall impression? Very professional and very experienced. He seems to be trying to limit the number of clients he has these days.
His Rep said I was a Norwood class 5 going on 6.
Here are some photos of me before I had anything done:
This is straight after the first operation. 3000 grafts put in front and centre.
I've been asked a few times about the donor area so I dug up some photos from the day after each operation to see if I had any of the donor area.
This is what I had.
For Operation 1, I had two reasonable photos of the donor area after the first operation.
If you look closely, especially on the one taken from the left side, you can still see small points of blood which formed on top of the tiny holes made during the extraction.
I'm afraid I didn't think about snapping the donor area at the time so these are the only two donor area photos that I've got for the first op.
Anyway, When I got home, I kept on taking photos and here are some shots after three days. You can still see the crusts (or scabs) on the scalp. At this stage, you're not supposed to touch the hair.
This is how it looked after seven days. Now I was allowed to wash my hair using a special Aloe Vera shampoo that Dr De Reys gave me.
After 3 months. Here you can see that the transplanted hairs had already started to shed. This is normal and after they had fallen out, they came back again after five or six months. At this stage I'm still using the Aloe Vera shampoo
and also applying an Aloe Vera cream in the evening.
Before I go on, I have to admit that I cut my hair a few times in the first few months (I did it myself at home with a set of clippers).
I'd always had a buzz cut before the first operation to hide my thinning hair.
It was an eye-opener growing it in the months before the op because I finally saw how much had gone!
Dr De Reys recommended I grow it before the operation but on operating day his nurse cut it back down to grade one.
I also have to admit that after three months I let the photos slide a little
...but I also started to let the hair grow out.
I still had it cut but now it was at the barber shop!
It was great to visit the barber again and get a proper haircut - no need to use the clippers at home anymore.
So here are some photos at around eight months, just before I went to see Dr De Reys again for the second op.
Now a few days after these photos (at eight months) I went to see Dr De Reys for the second operation.
This time I wanted to get the back done and he said I had 2000 grafts still available in the donor area.
He also said that the grafts from the first op were not all through yet and he expected the full result to show at twelve months.
I'd already decided to add more to my temples, to bring the hairline even more forward.
Dr De Reys said it was no problem. He put 350 grafts to fill in the temples a bit more. The rest (1650) he transplanted into the back of my head.
Here are the pics he took immediately after the second operation:
You can see how he added a little to the temples to move the hairline forward. You can also see that there's absolutely no scarring from the first operation. Here's the result after one week:
I've got more photos of the donor area for the second op though.
Here you can see the small points of blood much more clearly. These have disappeared completely now and there is no scarring.
A week later, the points are already disappearing but still visible.
Now I've got some more photos of 1 month post-op (although I'm not on this forum as much so there's always a delay before I post
I've also received a ton of questions since I did this first post so I'm going to try and post some more answers at the end of this thread as they keep coming in.
I'll put up some two month and three months photos soon.
Hope you like this journal and let me know if there's anything else you'd like to see or know!
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