Just had HT done

[chasguy]

This is my first post. I am 30, and have had steady loss since early 20's. Wish I had gotten on propecia earlier, but I was too embarrassed and self conscience to actually go talk to a Dr about hair loss. Anyway... I met with a local Dr that does FUT & FUE. A search of his name on the site has turned up nothing. Ironic, since he does only HT and is pretty well booked. That concerns me a little, however whats done is done so we'll see the results. I'm now on fin for a few weeks (no side effects), and I had about 1000 grafts this past monday (Aug 23, 2010) and another 1200 I think, on Wed. All went to the hairline/front area. Dr said he didn't want to spend any grafts on the crown as my midscalp was in great shape and his opinion was that I wouldn't lose that, particularly on fin, and that he is looking to the fin to thicken the crown. He also felt that FUE was not the better option due to the better yield with FUT and greater survival of the grafts (lots of debate on this I see). He said he wanted to just really pack the hairline area.

The initial consult was good. I still have good growth in the hairline with some pulling back at the temples, and the hairline is not as dense or robust as the rest of my head. When waiting on the initial consult another patient came in for a post op followup at 6 months, and when I said this was my first visit he was uber-excited to show me all his pre-post photos, and really let me look closely at his scalp. I honestly couldn't tell there was work done, and he was pretty much bald up top before. I wish I had looked closer at the scar (he showed me but I didn't lift up the hair, or anything like that and it was probably half-inchish long and blonde. He had pretty short hair and I couldn't see either scar so I assume this Dr does good work.

So the procedure wasn't bad. I'm a week out, some aches in the donor area (FUT), a little tenderness in the recipient area. One thing I've noticed that seems different about my immediate post op is that I seem to have much much less scabbing and redness. I assume this is good. The Dr was also telling the techs "ones, ones, ones" the whole time so I assume he only wanted to do single hairs at a time? I know my graft vs hair count was very similar. Anyone wish to comment on this? So right now I'm trying to just get the existing hair to grow back out so I can look normal again while I wait for the transplants to do their thing. So far, I don't have near the recipient site redness of some of the postop pics I've seen, and my roommate/bacitracian applier said Monday's cut is not red at all. The Dr did all the recipient site incisions and did all the "more cosmetically relevant" grafts (a little over half the grafts both days) and techs did the rest. Friday's checkup was good and he said he could find no grafts dislodged or follicle bulbs rising out. I did almost crap myself after the first shower though, and the white puffy stuff that is on every graft I initially thought was all the grafts popping out.

I'll post some pics tomorrow morning

So questions: Any tricks to minimizing the scarring? Are all the graft hairs going to abruptly shed, and is this gonna happen before the existing hair grows back in? does the graft growth happen pretty abruptly at 3-6 months or is it a fairly gradual thing? Should I basically plan for FUE ontop of the scar? I'd like to keep my hair in the 1/2 inch to 3/8 inch long cut in the back. Going through so many posts on here of horror stories regarding scaring is got me highly concerned. I did ask about the sutures and he said there is both a deep suture and a surface suture, that they are running sutures (previous injury sutures have always been single knotted sutures for me). They come out on the 8th, which means 14days

Finally, Hi, and thanks for having me on the site