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| Before
the procedure the previous donor scar is clearly visible |
Needless
to say although I was excited I was also a little scared.
This was the first time in 7yrs I was having a transplant
again.
But after we got started I settled down quickly.
They were 3 steps I was having done. First step was to remove
a few of the larger grafts from previous transplants and to
redistribute them better and smaller like they should have
been in the first place.
Second was the extraction from the back of
the head. In order to try and minimize the donor area being
shown in the back, Dr. Jones raised my hair and just cut out
the donor area he wanted to use with scissors.
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| Bob's
head is shaved and the follicles are extracted |
My job requires me to be in front of people
so I wanted to minimize anything being seen for obvious reasons.
He did a good job but I will have to use some Prothik to cover
some of it up. Next time I think I will grow my hair longer
in the back so that it will hide it better. I usually keep
my hair fairly short but I see the advantage of having it
longer for this procedure. Dr. Jones numbed up the donor area
and then proceeded to remove the grafts. As he removed them
he was showing them to me and they looked amazing. Very clean
with no extra skin around the grafts that would have to be
cut out if this was a normal strip surgery. I received a total
of 200 grafts from the back of my head and I estimate the
transection rate around 2.5% (4-5 grafts). It was very low
and I was happy with that. Graft removal was fast and Dr.
Jones at one point timed the removal at approximately 15 seconds
per graft removal.
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| The
chest area showing the follicles that were removed |
Third step was to remove grafts from my chest
area. Again my chest/stomach area has a ton of hair and I
want to use as much as I can to increase density. As Dr. Jones
calls it, "it's free hair" I couldn't agree more
as this is something that you could never do with a strip
surgery. Again the Dr. numbed up the area and proceeded to
remove the grafts. It's obvious that removing the grafts from
this area is more difficult than from the head. I discussed
this with Dr. Jones and it seems like the follicles get positioned
many different ways especially when the hairs look like they
are coming out at a side angle instead of straight up. Transection
rate was high there with a yield of 60 grafts out of approximately
90 attempts. I expect that number will get better as he gets
the feel for grafts in this type of area. I am planning to
fully exploit the chest/stomach area in my next session.
Taking grafts from this area does take considerably
longer than when being taken from the head.
Actually I should mention that after Dr. Jones
was finished removing the grafts from the back of the head,
he numbed up the top of my head and placed the holes for the
graft placement. While he was removing chest grafts one of
his technicians was working on planting the grafts from the
back of my head.
The rest was just finishing the placement
of the grafts and some cleanup. The biggest thing is no stitches,
which I can tell you was great for sleeping. The whole session
lasted about 4.5hrs.
I
am scheduled in two weeks for another longer session with
Dr. Jones and I am looking forward to it.
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