diffuse Dr. Bruno Ferreira | Sept 2024 | 3201 grafts (9929 hairs) | Diffuse NW5V | 33 years old

[Ccd99]

10 hours ago, Myles23 said:

Excellent write up @Ccd99. Excited to see how this develops.  donor looks impeccable. 

Thank you mate!

[NorwoodKnight]

Excellent write-up!! (As expected :D). The post op pictures show a really clean and meticulous work and that hair/graft ratio is monstrous (in a good way of course)!! I wish you a good and rapid recovery 🙌🏼

Edited September 9 by NorwoodKnight

[coffeeandpie]

Amazing transformation with meds and the HT looks great! all the best and wish you a very good recovery!

A side question: How was the travel out of Porto airport? how was it getting through security? Did you cover your head, if so how and were security ok with it?

Any other travel related challenges?

 

 

[Ccd99]

On 9/9/2024 at 10:26 PM, NorwoodKnight said:

Excellent write-up!! (As expected :D). The post op pictures show a really clean and meticulous work and that hair/graft ratio is monstrous (in a good way of course)!! I wish you a good and rapid recovery 🙌🏼

Thank you! Waiting for the scabs to come off so not much is going on at the moment, I can't really see the new hairs yet before they shed, I presume because they are underneath the scab atm!

23 hours ago, coffeeandpie said:

Amazing transformation with meds and the HT looks great! all the best and wish you a very good recovery!

A side question: How was the travel out of Porto airport? how was it getting through security? Did you cover your head, if so how and were security ok with it?

Any other travel related challenges?

 

 

Thank you very much!

It was absolutely fine no problems whatsoever. I was going to cover my head with a loose-fitting hat, optionally I also had a surgical cap/bandana with me and I did speak with Dr Bruno about this and he said it is fine to do so as long as I am careful, but in the end I just left it bare as I did not want to take any risks.

There might have been some people that glanced but whatever it did not bother me, I had my earphones in and was just doing my thing. Nobody asked / said anything at all, neither at check-in or security and passport control. I think it helped that I seem to be healing quite well so there isn't much redness and same goes for my donor.

The only real travel challenge I had was that my flight was delayed by 5 hours and I had a bit of a headache towards the end and couldn't wait to get home. In my home country I had no issues either going through security.

[Ccd99]

Currently on day 7 and it's going well, as mentioned above not much sign of new hairs as the scabs seem to cover them and I am looking forward to getting them off.

On an unrelated note as of 2 days ago I have started to feel a "burning sensation" in my donor, the burning feeling seems to have gone less and it's now became more of a tingling sensation which comes and goes in varying intensity. Very unpleasant! Did some reading up and appears to be nerves that may have been damaged/severed due to extraction and are now regenerating / healing, so this takes time. From what I read it can take anywhere between 2 weeks to several months to heal.

I hope it's quicker because it is making sleeping at night very tricky.

I have asked Dr Bruno for advice, perhaps taking painkillers will help - has anyone experienced anything like this?

Edited September 11 by Ccd99

[Falling]

I was wondering how did you manage to wear a hair system while growing your hair?

[Ccd99]

7 hours ago, Falling said:

I was wondering how did you manage to wear a hair system while growing your hair?

It was for a period of 7 months, and because my hair was thin before as I just started on meds it wasn't too difficult first few months - I would still get the same hold of about 2 to 3 weeks before having to re-attach it. I also completely stopped using hair system glue, and instead just adhesive tape so it was a lot less messy.

It was probably not until the 4-5 month mark when my hair started to grow longer and the meds become more effective that I started encountering some minor issues sometimes with the hold, but it was still good for 2 weeks at a time. Over the years I got so good at re-attaching the system myself that I could do it in 30-35 minutes, so it was never a big issue on the odd occasion that the hold started to get worse prematurely as I could just clean and re-attach the system.

Eventually I decided to shave it all off at the 7 month mark and wear a hat and let the hair grow. The main reason for this was not because my hair was getting too long but because every time I would change the hair system I would rip some hairs out, so I wanted to give my scalp sometime to recover and "breathe" and who knows this part of the reason for my accelerated re-growth (surely having your scalp covered for 6-7 years would be negative for hair growth?)

 

[Ccd99]

On 9/11/2024 at 10:10 AM, Ccd99 said:

Currently on day 7 and it's going well, as mentioned above not much sign of new hairs as the scabs seem to cover them and I am looking forward to getting them off.

On an unrelated note as of 2 days ago I have started to feel a "burning sensation" in my donor, the burning feeling seems to have gone less and it's now became more of a tingling sensation which comes and goes in varying intensity. Very unpleasant! Did some reading up and appears to be nerves that may have been damaged/severed due to extraction and are now regenerating / healing, so this takes time. From what I read it can take anywhere between 2 weeks to several months to heal.

I hope it's quicker because it is making sleeping at night very tricky.

I have asked Dr Bruno for advice, perhaps taking painkillers will help - has anyone experienced anything like this?

14 day post-op update

The pain I was feeling in my donor area and the burning sensation have completely gone away as of 4 days ago. So it was only there from post op day 5 until post op day 10. Fortunately I have been able to sleep well at night again! My donor is still a bit sensitive/tender but I am sure in a few weeks everything will be back to normal. Recipient area feels a little bit numb still so it will take more time for sensation to return there.

Most of my scabs came off around the 7/8 day mark, and the remainder came off by day 10/11. I think the fact I kept using saline every 30 minutes even after the initial 4 days helped soften them a lot. They came off without much difficulty, some had tiny tiny hairs attached to them which is fairly normal from what I read.

The shedding has slowly started, but the worst is still to come. Something that had me worried is that none of my transplanted hairs seem to have grown, or maybe they have grown only a tiny bit, hard to say. But from what I read this is fairly normal as for some people the transplanted hairs following the trauma of the surgery go into "catagen" immediately and await their shed. For other patients some hairs will continue growing for a few days and then go into catagen, and lastly the lucky few have their hairs grow as normal indefinitely. I guess I fall into the first category - (this is something I am still to query with Dr Bruno Ferreira but I am fairly positive this is normal).

I am pretty happy with how the donor is looking can't really see any evidence of scars yet even at the short length it's at now but time will tell. Attaching some photos here if anyone is interested (Note: I have a bunch of small circular scars at the back of my head and one on the side of my head from childhood, those are not relating to the surgery).

I do wish I went slightly lower on the hairline corners, and I might ask Dr Bruno to lower them a smidge at my next intervention. Lastly I haven't experienced much redness, religiously applying Aloe Vera gel twice a day seems to be working.

 

 

 

Edited 15 hours ago by Ccd99

[Gatsby]

The work looks excellent @Ccd99. However I wouldn’t go lower on the hairline corners. That’s beginning to enter female hair line territory. All the best. 👌

[Falling]

I think your hairline is perfect as it is.  I'd definitely not touch it.

[Ccd99]

28 minutes ago, Gatsby said:

The work looks excellent @Ccd99. However I wouldn’t go lower on the hairline corners. That’s beginning to enter female hair line territory. All the best. 👌

 

19 minutes ago, Falling said:

I think your hairline is perfect as it is.  I'd definitely not touch it.

Thank you both, I appreciate the input. I guess I was just basing it on my natural hairline as you can still see some thin hairs where it used to be.

Nevertheless I will wait for the full result before deciding, if anything I would at least want to touch up the dotted area as pictured below.

On this side of my head I feel like the hairline corner is a bit concave - it could just be the initial shedding to be fair or the fact I already have hairs there and Dr Bruno did not implant there on purpose because of that, but time will tell, probably a bit premature of me thinking about all this now. 

If only there was a fast forward button to skip the next 5-6 months of waiting 😄

[Al - Moderator]

9 hours ago, Ccd99 said:

Thank you both, I appreciate the input. I guess I was just basing it on my natural hairline as you can still see some thin hairs where it used to be.

 

Those thin hairs in front should give the hairline a very natural look. You want a few thin hairs in the front. It's very hard to get that look with transplanted hair.