Big Mistake!

[JoeTillman]

Jon17,

I want you to slow down. I fully understand your anxiety as I was the same age as you when I was first cut. I can say however, with experience, that you need to give this time. You are only a month out and you are looking for answers to questions you can't ask yet. What I mean is, your donor scar hasn't healed. It takes months for it to heal and settle down so at this point you have no idea if you will even need to take action at all. I understand why you're coming up with solutions, you feel horrible, you think you made a big mistake, but you're also working yourself up unnecessarily. I think you should document your donor scar, document the placement of grafts and make notes every week. At the end of nine months you can pretty much count your scar as healed and then go from there. Stay in touch with your clinic, let me know now how you feel about the switch they pulled on you and let them know your concerns.

I want you to understand that you have a great resource here for support. It personally pains me to see such a young man as yourself going through this experience but I and others here will give you support however we can. Just please be patient and don't work yourself up too much. It does you no good and will only cause unnecessary stress in your life. No one can see the donor scar so no matter how much you feel it no one else knows it's there.

Ultimately, it will take a couple more months for the redness to disappear. It will turn pink sooner rather than later, some hair above and/or below it may thin out due to temporary shock loss, but it usually comes back and if it does occur it won't be so bad that others notice. It will get itchy, you may have random spotting (blood), but it is all fairly normal for donor strip healing.