Hello There



I have read so much on the forum, but I am having a huge problem, and hopefully you can tell me what to do.

I am not completely bald, I have some hair on the top of my head, and little on the frontline, and less on the crown, but with using toppik i can pull up an acceptale hair look. But it takes me so long to style my hair so no one will detect I use toppik.

So I intend to do a Hair Transplant procedure using the FUT procedure, please note that I work in a very delicate job which requires to look good. I am now feeling paralyzed, about what to do. So an idea come into my mind and I was wondering if you can tell me if that is safe and possible, and what type hair system products can I use.

Please note that I only can take 2 weeks off from work, this time should be enough for me to do the transplant, and get rid of the scabs that will fall after surgery, and be in the safe zone to wear a hat if needed. But as I told you I work in a delicate position, so I thought if there is a possiblity to wear after 2 weeks from the Hair transplant procedure a hair system that looks very close to my hair that I have before transplant, as you know it will maybe take 5 months for the transplanted hair to grow to a point to be able to comb and style. Now the question is can I wear a system on my scalp, and let the transplanted hair grow to about 2 inches which will take about 5 months. PLEASE NOTE, I only need to wear the system only 1 day a week, this is when I go meet with my boses, but the rest of the week I can go without wearing a hair system, so that I can leave my transplants exposed to the sun and fresh air.

So is it possible to wear a system for 1 day a week for 5 months, and have my transplanted hair grow, will it not affect the transplanted hair if I wear a system

yskhleif,

Welcome to our forum.

Your plan sounds pretty good, but be aware of a few things:

1. Don't wear a hair piece for the first 10 days on the transplanted area

2. Limit how often you wear the hairpiece (once a week is fine)

3. Make sure the hair piece you buy is well ventilated

4. Most if not all the transplanted hairs will shed in 2 to 4 weeks leaving you looking like you never had a hair transplant. These hairs won't start growing back until on the average, 3 to 5 months, but take a full year+ to mature. Even when the hair starts to grow, it grows in as thin, fine, and colorless and matures with time. So don't rely on the transplanted hair to grow for the first 5 months as a means to conceal your hair transplant.

The good news is, if you don't shave the recipient area, you will look pretty close to normal after about a month when all the transplanted hair sheds, minus some potential postoperative redness that can last a few days to a few months.

I hope other members will contribute their experiences on how they concealed their hair transplant

I hope this helps.

Falc

yskhleif,

There is a member on this forum that had a HT w/ a very good surgeon and wore ahairpiece after and he had a hard time w/ growth. I would not recommend wearing one!

I will only wear the hair piece once a week for only 8 hours. As i work in the office, so I will not be doing efforts.

Now the question is how can I find a good source for a good hair piece, and what type of hair piece shall i look for.

yskhleif,

Take a look at my weblog, especially the 8 day photos, and see if it helps. I returned to work in four days, and if not for the large plugs removed at the same time, I believe my "new" procedure would've been undetectable.

However, you will need to be sure the doctor you choose doesn't require shaving of the head. There are some truly world-class surgeons who don't require you to shave your head.

After two weeks, you should be fine and undetectable.

quote:

Originally posted by Falceros - The good news is, if you don't shave the recipient area, you will look pretty close to normal after about a month when all the transplanted hair sheds, minus some potential postoperative redness that can last a few days to a few months.

Hi, I thought if you dont shave the recipient area - and assuming one has some hair, the transplanted hairs would not be noticeable. Basically you native hair would conceal any signs on a transplant, no? Aren't the transplanted hairs essentially stubble length? So if your native hair is longer than that, it would more or less be undetectable - unless of course you've lowered the hair line or done work on the temples?
cheers

Hi NM76-

If you start a blog with a baseline picture, many in this forum might be able to advise what you can expect your native hair to do, camoflauge-wise.

For me, two weeks was the earliest I could comb my native/recipient area (Doctor's orders). Add a little Toppix and I was able to wing it in public.

I think you could pull it off, hairpiece 1x (8 hours) week and all. Remember, shock loss is also possible.

Can you post a hairline picture? Others will surely offer sage advise.

Good luck!

If you have never worn a hair piece before and start to wear one after your ht, IMO, people will notice something is differant; IMO it will draw more attention; Not to scare you, but after two weeks, chances are you will have some decent amount of redness; if you don't have a lot of native hair that will be noticable; also, make sure your hair is long enough in the back; I would say at least an inch to cover the donor scar;

quote:

Originally posted by dhoose75:
If you have never worn a hair piece before and start to wear one after your ht, IMO, people will notice something is differant; IMO it will draw more attention; Not to scare you, but after two weeks, chances are you will have some decent amount of redness; if you don't have a lot of native hair that will be noticable; also, make sure your hair is long enough in the back; I would say at least an inch to cover the donor scar;

This is true. Depending on circumstances, there is a good chance you will not look "normal" for 3 or more months.

Try to imagine that the area transplanted into will be rough and reddish. If you have sparse native hair that was planted into, much of that (considered "weak hair") will disappear either permanently or through shock loss.

Furthermore, as the hair grows back in, it will do so unevenly and will not look normal until it is a couple inches long.

Depending on how much hair you have left, and how large an area was planted, you may be able to hide the transplants and red scalp.

Look at all the 1-5 month progress pics from other patients. Only a small % can "hide" the work.

Dude, just tell your bosses. In the grand scheme of things, who cares? I told my bosses and any coworker who asked. I found it to be liberating and then you don't have to worry about it. Just tell your bosses you're losing your hair (which they probably already know) and you want to do something about it because it bothers you. Don't plan on looking normal for a while after the surgery. I'm almost five months out and I just started going in public, including work, without a hat. I had severe shock loss and hopefully you won't but don't expect to look normal in a few weeks or even a month or two. If you wear a rug, chances are they'll notice. I think you should just level with them. Good luck.

You have been given some good advice and it is truly difficult to give you a definitive answer without a good consultation. Keep in mind all that was discussed above. Even with native hairs, transplanted grafts and redness could still show depending on your hairstyle, do you comb your hair back or in bangs? What I advised my patietns is to wear a stylish hat they would not mind at work for 2-4 weeks before the surgeries. Let people see you wearing your new hat for awhile. People will usually ask why you are you wearing a hat. " No reason new style, new image" You can take it off comfortably to show people. After a while people stop asking questions and ignore it. Once you get the transplant, they are used to it and wont bother. This worked great for a few of my patietns. I would advise the same with any hair system. It will look different so if you do decide to wear one, wear it ahead of time, so people will not ask question if they notice a difference in your hair.

Dr. Meija excellent point about starting to wear a hat BEFORE the procedure. I used to wear a hat time to time pre op, but after my surgery I was always sporting a hat, slowly introduce it into your style, also get a few different styles and colors of hats

quote:

Dr. Meija excellent point about starting to wear a hat BEFORE the procedure. I used to wear a hat time to time pre op, but after my surgery I was always sporting a hat, slowly introduce it into your style, also get a few different styles and colors of hats

This is a great tactic. I was already a regular hat wearer since I was used to wearing it to conceal my baldness, so it came of no surprise when I went out socially with a hat to anyone.

The interesting thing is, I wore a hat even before I started losing my hair a lot (no, the hat didn't cause my hair loss ), so most people didn't even know I was losing my hair.

When I finally told one of my closest friends that I had 3 hair transplants, I showed him my before picture and he was amazed at how much hair I had lost before I restored it. He just assumed I was just thinning a little.

So yes, wearing a hat ahead of time is a good idea to get people used to the idea

Best wishes,

Falc

Yskhleif,
I think the most important key to your problem is whether you have already existing hair down to the area you want your new transplanted hairline to be or not. If your existing hairline now is way up high and it will be brought down an inch or so, then you will have a slightly noticeable situation, although in 8 of 10 patients, it is fairly unnoticeable two weeks later. The redness and scabbing will most certainly be gone in two weeks. The problem sometimes are the persistent hairs that stay at the transplanted length and just sit there, or the ones that actually do take off and start growing. They will appear somewhat different from your pre-transplant appearance. You could shave them as they grow. If you do have some hair, no matter how miniaturized or scant in the same area you want transplanted, then either Toppik or Dermmatch (or both) can do a nice job of camouflaging things until the hair starts growing out.
Assuming the hairline or temple areas will have transplants that you want no chance of someone noticing, then the temporary hairpiece is an option; but I should warn you that it is very difficult to get one that matches your present look of thinning hair. You will need a very skilled salon to pull this off. Most will put something on you that looks considerably more than what you want and will be a give-away as a non-surgical addition. If you do get a hairpiece, be sure and get a clip-on attachment, and, if you use if for more than a very few months, have the salon every few months change the location of the clips so that they are not pulling on the same clump of hairs, which can lead to little bald spots. One last suggestion, ask your HT surgeon for a Graftcyte kit. I have seen several miraculous healings, even within a week with all FU transplants, in which you can barely tell any surgery occurred.
Mike Beehner, M.D.

DONT WORRY MAN JUST APPLY SOME BANDAGE ON YOUR HEAD --ONLY A LIGHT SINGLE COVERIN AND TELL UR BOSS THAT U MET WITH SOME SORT OF ACCIDENT...THIS WILL NOT ONLY SAVE UR HAIR FOR VANTILISATION PLUS NO EXPENSES ON THAT F***G SYSTEM STUFF.ITS SIMPLE MAN ..I HAVE DONE THIS TWICE...EVERYBODY WILL THINK THAT YOU ARE INJURED..BEST OF LUCK...THINK WISE ACT SMART..PM IF U WANT ANY MORE HELP..