My FUE Hair Transplant Journey | Uncensored
Well, guys I finally did it! I leaped, took a while to save up the money for the surgery, but it finally happened. I say “Surgery” very loosely, by the way, It wasn’t even close to one. But for political correctness, I’ll write it.
How Much Was The FUE Hair Transplant?
Let’s get the elephant out of the room right away, and talk about the money. I had my FUE hair transplant done in West Palm Beach Plastic Surgery Office.
The down payment was $2,500, and after one month of waiting for my scheduled due date, I paid a lump sum of $4,500 with a credit card that I will be paying back monthly. For a total of $7,000.
As crazy as this might sound, $7,000 is extremely cheap for an FUE procedure. Most FUE hair transplants cost between $8,000 – $20,000. not to mention that could take many revisits to finish.
I did what they called a Mega FUE Procedure where I sat there for 8 hours straight and had my grafts taken from the backside of my head and put into my front hairline that same day.
But it sure didn’t feel like that, due to the valium they gave me 15mins before they started. That was a huge blessing lol!
How Was Actual FUE Hair Transplant Surgery?
As I wrote in the title of this post about being uncensored and transparent I wanted to mention I struggle daily with severe anxiety, I’ve never been diagnosed with it.
But I truly struggle to do much of anything besides going to work and coming back to hang out with my wife and son.
I’ve never been one to take supplements, drugs, pills, or drink a lot either. I just like tattoos and cutting hair I’m the textbook family man, to be honest with you. So when they offered me valium I was like “I’m Good, no thanks!” but my anxiety sang a different tune in my heart lol!
I ended up taking it, and the technician came into the room and went over everything he was going to do for the FUE transplant.
Guys, this dude was good, no he was better than good. He was as professional as they come for this type of specialized procedure. He explained the type of needle he will be using is small, with a hallowed middle that collects the hair follicle underneath the skin.
He collects them one by one (for my transplant he removed 2,500 hair follicles) I always thought for each hair follicle there was only one hair.
But that wasn’t the case, turns out one follicle can contain 1-4 hairs growing out of it at the same time. I thought that was interesting, luckily for me the back of my head was full of thick juicy hair follicles to extract.
We then went into the room, he turned the dial that turned up the music that filled the room to help us all relax. His assistant sat beside him with a microscope resting on the table.
He asked me to sit down so he could examine my natural hairline and where the DHT started to remove my hair in the first place.
He used a small measuring pen to measure the distance from the bottom of my chin to the bottom of my nostrils. From there he measured the bottom of my nose to my eyebrows. This is because the human face is proportioned this way.
If you’re familiar with drawing faces on paper this same method applies.
The distance between the eyebrows to the beginning of the hairline should all be the same going down to the chin. in three main pieces if you were to break them up into 3rds.
With the first mark made with a sharpie marker, we needed to find the corner points. Corner points can be tracked by your sideburn closest to your eyebrow and going straight up from there.
That should be where your natural receding line should be. Now you combine the two and find your exact measurement for your new hairline for the FUE transplant.
Super interesting stuff! He asked me to lay on my chest and place my head into a round pillow to begin the injections.
He explained to me all the nerves that are in the skull, as he began to scratch the top of my head.
“these nerves can easily be confused if I continue to scratch as I inject the local Anastasia into the area.”
he injected it and I felt nothing, just some light scratching. It went as smoothly as I could have hoped for, to be honest with you.
Afterward, he doubled and triple-checked to make sure the area was completely numb. He had the needle ready on a spinner-type device that would turn on by him pressing down on the foot peddle.
This made it cut through the skin in seconds, it was easy for him to extract my hairs in the back, again I didn’t feel anything.
After he collected 1,000 graphs from the back of my head he handed them over to his assistant sitting by the microscope where she would then sterilize them and find the roots follicles.
I turned my head to the left, and then to the right as he continued to extract 1,500 more graphs from both sides. This was many hours in by this time, but I didn’t care nor did I even consider the time.
I will say I was very happy I ate something for breakfast around 8:30 am, but thankfully they placed an order for food for all of us around 12:30 pm and that gave a second wind. Along with taking another valium to relax again.
So at this point, the tech was done extracting, the assistant is done cleaning the follicles, and organizing them from single hair follicles to ones with multiple hairs.
we ate, laughed, talked, and complained about how they played way too many Michael Buble love songs during the entire procedure.
The only tough part about the FUE transplant was having to sit and lay in some uncomfortable positions for long hours at a time. Other than that the actual procedure wasn’t bad at all.
They loaded me up with plenty of painkillers, most of which I’ll have for the rest of the year. something like; 20 Oxi, 20 Valium, 20 antibiotics, 2 ice packs, anti-bruising cream, a large container with 80 capsules of hair vitamins, and a sequence of steroids I have to take for a week.
It was overkill, as of the time of writing this FUE hair transplant post I’m on day three of recovery and feel no pain whatsoever. Just some swelling around my forehead and checks.
The Results Of The FUE Hair Transplant:
Enough about my experience with the tech and doctor’s office, I wanted to share with you my raw photos of how each day after my FUE hair transplant looked. Please be warned if you’re squeamish, or don’t like the sight of blood, you might want to skip to the results lol
After FUE Transplant:
This image was taken less than 4 hours after surgery, (had to pick up my pain killers, which Walgreens didn’t fill the prescription properly so I settled with taking Tylenol extra strength the first night.)
The first day was probably the worst, even with the FUE transplant going extremely well. Having thousands of tiny hairs removed and creating more holes to be placed back into your head really does some trauma to your skin.
As you can see in this image after removing the head band the swelling made me look like a lollipop lol!
Although infection is rare for these procedures, I wanted to safe. This is a picture of my wonderful wife applying antibiotic ointment to the back of my head where they removed the graphs.
Throughout the day I have to take medications to help with the swelling and pain. (again there wasn’t much pain, although after the swelling it’s a bit uncomfortable) but nothing to crazy. I was given plenty of pain killers, but I only took a Tylenol once or twice so far. But I’m sure everyone is different, and it’s better to have to much than not enough in this situation right?
This blog is to be continued. I apologize, I’m On The Fourth day of recovery and need to get the images right for your viewing pleasure. lol, Come back in 24 hours and you can continue reading!
