Ok here are the afters, again, sorry about my dodgy camera work I had to take these ones with my other webcam coz the first one ran out of batteries, I will take some larger clearer ones and post em as well.
It's been around 9 months post op now.
The growth rate I had was extremely high, obviously I can't count my own hairs on the back of my head so I really don't know how many grew, but a lot, so many in fact that the scar has now offically gone.
Even my hairdresser noticed it and asked in a very thick Japanese accent "now has hair? You fix?".
I now buzz cut my hair at the sides military style graduating from a #1 until a #3 at the top, still can't see it.
I also had over the past 18 months or so around 2500 FUE taken in total from the back/sides of my head in several procedures. Dr. Campbell spread the removals out over a huge area on the back of /sides my head so no area was "over mined" too much. I can't see any scars or little white dots, not even when I get my hair shaved down to a number #1. Then again, I'm lucky to have very fine hair, but a LOT of it, so that amount of grafts taken from me really didn't touch the sides.
Here is my strip excision scar photo, about 3 weeks after surgery with Dr. Angela Campbell in Sydney.
Dr. Campbell placed 500 FUE grafts taken from around the thickest part of my hair and placed them into the scar.
Most of the grafts she took were doubles and triples.
I'd had several strip graft procedures done before prior to this with other doctors.
I'm actually a natural ash blond. So my issues were that the hair on the top of my head, and sides, is naturally blonder, finer and softer than the area where they take a strip graft from (which is quite dark and coarse.)
Being a blond I have quite a natural variation in my hair.
Strip graft surgery really didn't work out for me. The scar stretched to the size of thicker than my middle finger, or in old fashioned American measurements, over 1 inch wide.
Additionally, the hairs that they took when they did the strip graft work, were thicker and darker and did not blend with my blond hairs on top so they looked like crap. So I turned to the FUE method.
Anyway that's another story, so first here are some before pics, sorry they are "home job" pics taken in my bathroom, so excuse the unprofessional camera work, it's not easy taking pics of the back of your own head !!
Just so you guys can get a look here's my hairline.
I actually had my hairline "lowered" slightly in a procedure since this was taken because I had a temporal lift done (cosmetic surgery) which raised it a bit on one side more than the other.
This pic was taken after Dr Campbell took out most of the ugly strip graft grafts and put them further back in my hairline, then re-created my hairline using what I call "bum fluff" from the sides of my hair and nape of my neck. I think it's pretty much next to impossible to tell i've had a hair transplant done.
I understand there is a some kind of political argument about FUE versus strip graft surgery on this board. So I'm not going to enter into that. However, in my opinion, for me anyway, I wouldn't get a strip graft done. On a young guy, who's athletic, the scar stretches, and gets worse with multiple surgeries. But the worst part is that strip graft hairs don't look as natural as FUE hairs because they are coarser, thicker and darker, whereas if you use the FUE method you are not limited to taking those hairs, you can take them from anywhere on the body! In my case, I had my hairline reconstructed with very fine blond ones. And to avoid any little pits, they were inserted with a 23 guage hypodermic needle, instead of having a hole "pre punched" that leaves a nasty pit that you can see under daylight.
By the time I had that pic, I already had my "major removals" session done, where doctor campbell spent around 6 hours+ taking out scores of strip graft doubles and triples, and some singles that were "stuffed in the wrong way".
I can't remember how many were taken out but it was a lot, the good part was that I remember a good 80% of them were recycleable and grew out again fine in their new position, back further, and she broke them up with finer FUE grafts between them, so sort of salt & peppered the ugly strip graft hairs between the finer FUE hairs so that there wasn't any darker coarse clumps of hair in my head.
By this photo I think I'd had probably around 1800 FUE grafts placed in the front of my hairline, plus of course many more recycled grafts moved back.
Since that pic however, I've had yet another 500 FUE grafts placed in the hairline to lower it slightly where an endoscopic temporal/brow lift pulled up one side higher than the other.
I'm just waiting for my endotine browlift implants to disolve in my scalp just behind my hairline and i'll post some more pics although my latest 500 FUE grafts haven't grown out yet so u won't see much difference.
Here's another pic, I just wanted to point out the difference in my hairline. There are a number of "pits" left behind from previous grafts that were inserted by pre-punching holes during a strip graft surgery. I circled them to point them out.
The others I circled that were inserted with a hypodermic needle one at a time left no pit marks. (FUE surgery)
I think pitting on the hairline is one of the worst bits, and I really don't understand why strip graft surgeons don't at least stop pre punching holes on hairline to stop this pitting. They could at least do that I reckon.
I had to let the removals heal first for some time before proceeding.
The skin grafts that were taken from behind my ear to fill the holes when the strip graft grafts were removed are very fragile and "pop out" easily, so I couldn't even wash my hair for a week until they had well and truly glued in. So hairs couldn't really be placed around those areas at the same time as the skin grafting was done because when the local aneasthetic is injected it would pop the skin grafts out of the holes...if you get what I mean... so yeah I waited till it had all healed.
I'm very very very happy with the results.
I just wish I'd never got the strip grafts done in the first place and went straight to FUE and not have to go thru all this crap.
Like I said above, the strip scar that is now repaired..*was* an inch wide in it's widest part, but stort of tapered slimmer towards the sides.
500 grafts was enough, I'm guessing cause they were all the darkest and thickest and most coarse doubles and triples so they really filled in the space well.
I think the main good luck I had was that they pretty much all seemed to grow.
But they grew out at irregular times.
For example a number of the hairs never even fell out after they were put in, they simply happily kept growing. Some fell out after a few weeks, some after a few months. Then some came back quite quickly, and some sort of formed under the skin and just sat there and did nothing for months before deciding to come though. In fact if I touch my scar now, I can still feel prickly ones that have decided to come through now after all this time.
Hair growing out of scars doesn't have the same regular growth rate as normal skin. A year really is the minimum to wait and see what happens.
I have shaven it down to a number #2 so far, graduated from a number #1 at the bottom and there is enough hair growing out of the scar to cover it and because hair grows in a downwards direction on the back of the head.
But I think that's a pretty good result from a scar that used to be an inch wide.
Scars on the body of any kind never go away, you can just make them less visible so a normal person can't see them anymore.
If my hairdresser can't pick it, and I no longer have to wear my hair longer at the back to cover the scar and can adopt any hairstyle I want, then I'm satisfied.
I just measured the width of it at it's widest and it's 15mm wide at the widest part...that's in normal measurements I assumed that was around an American inch? Sorry we aren't taught that system in school, I'm not familiar with inches, pounds, stones, yards, miles etc.. But my grandmother just said it's less than an inch? Can someone confirm?
It was not that wide all the way across. In fact on the left side it tapered down to as narrow as 4mm. So the vast majority of the grafts were placed in the centre of the scar, in the centre back of my head.
It sort of stretched on the back of my head but didn't on the sides.
Yes I will try to get some high res pics, I might get Dr Campbell to take them for me because I can't really do it with my digital camera, when the flash goes off at that short range it makes it all look white and you can't see anything. I'll try on the weekend in daylight with the flash off and put it on highest resolution setting and see how that works first.
500 of the thickest darkest grafts, where they were all 2/3/4 groupings placed anywhere can make a difference. No singles were placed in the scar, just dark thick large groupings only.
Like I said you never really get rid of a scar but it's now to the point where I can cut my hair normally and my hair dresser can't locate it while buzz cutting my hair...
that's be best I can do with my crappy cam it's on full blast it's 8 years old i gotta buy a new one.
the hair is parted exactly on where the scar is...there is actually plenty of hair coming out of it so it's nice and well covered.
the skin underneath the hair still is scarred, not much can be done about that, but the actual scar now is disguised so i can shave it down to say a #2 (haven't tried shorter) and it can't be noticed.
like someone said though, doesn't mean the scar is gone, it's just disguised... or "cloaked" for the star trek geeks out there lol..
Well here are 2 more pics I've just taken.
Yes I know it's a crap camera, it's on it's highest bloody setting and yes I will get a new one.
Anyway in one I show the scar, and the 2nd of the scar I've highlighted where the scar sits.
All the hair contained within that highlighted region is transplanted.
As I've said I'm blond, so when my hair is parted it looks white in the centre and fades to a lighter blond colour. If you pull apart your dog or cats fur, you'll see a similiar pattern, because my hair is ash blond and not all the same colour over my entire head.
To demonstrate that fact the other pic, is NOT a scar, but simply my usual scalp hair that has been parted to show a comparison to the scar.
As you can see, between my usual parted hair photo, and the parted hair where the scar is, there is little difference other than less density obviously (which I did not want because high density in a scar, when it sits down flat, it would look like a dark strip because I don't walk around with my hand holding my hair up parting it for people!)
If they had "packed it densely" as you were mentioning, then I would have been left with a "dark strip" of hairs at the back of my head, that would have looked worse than the scar!
Anyway I'm probably digging my own grave sending this but anyway, I've had some nice emails and I'm happy to discuss it further with some people rather than have them make the same mistakes I did.
( I had my first HT at 18 ! )
Detailed forum discussion for these pics can be found at:
http://www.hairsite4.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=12&topic_id=53509&mode=full&page=3
