so i'm 2 days after my surgery with Dr. Armani in Toronto. 3300 FUE grafts. this will probably just come out as a stream of consciousness, but hopefully it will be organized enough where everyone can follow along reasonably well.
in general, he's a great guy. he was talking with me during most of the time he was making the incisions in the recipient area (i asked him if he's done a lot of celebrities - yes, he has; i asked if HM was coming along well - no, it's not and it just had some poor lab results in the past few months; i asked about the "illusion of density" and he said it's all about the angles he makes the incisions at...he said honestly, almost any decent doctor can place the grafts into the incisions equally well, but his hairline design and the illusion of density are all about his recipient incisions; he asked about other doctors i considered for the procedure, etc.). the incision part took about 1 hour, but i truly did not feel any pain (other than the initial numbness injections they give you in your forehead and recipient area). it's kind of uncomfortable at some points as you have to alternate laying on your right or left side for long periods of time w/o moving, but not too bad. i had my iPod on most of the time and i highly recommend that as it takes your mind off what's going on and lets you relax (some people claim that you can read or watch tv the whole time which just isn't true. they had a tv in the room and gave me the remote to flip around, but you're only sitting upright for maybe 10% of the time. the other 90% i was lying down and couldn't even see the tv screen).
anyway, after armani spent about 1-hour (maybe 1:30) making all of the incisions, they then begin to harvest/extract the grafts from the donor area. again, i had FUE which is actually a tiny drill that drills into your scalp and pulls out the microscopic grafts. they have to numb your donor area which takes many needles (in each 1-inch square area they harvest from, they typically give you about 3-4 injections of novacaine type numbing stuff and the injections in your head are not pleasant. i've never complained about a needle in my arm in my life, but repeated needles in your head hurt...trust me). after you are numb, however, you really can't feel the extractions at all. this took several hours (maybe 3 in total). also, there are other technicians dissecting the grafts under a microscope simultaneously as they're coming out. armani was not in the room except for 1-minute to check on the progress during this time.
finally, they begin to place the grafts into the your recipient area. this took several hours. in total, i was in the office from about 9:00am to almost 7:00pm (by the way, the people that claim you can only do 2,000 FUE grafts in one day are crazy. they told me that the most they've done in one day so far is 4,300 and they're getting better all the time). let me tell you, i was THRILLED to finally get out of that chair at the end of the day.
they give you a list of instructions and pillls to take home or to the hotel for that night and for the next 2 weeks and i made an appt. to come back the next morning at 9:00am for my hair washing.
the night of the procedure, not particularly fun. they give you, among other things, pain killers, some anti-nausea pills and vallium to help sleep. i ordered room service and took the pain killer and anit-nausea pills with my dinner. for the next 2 hours, i felt like i could vomit at any moment, but never did. finally, i took the vallium and went to sleep. you have to sleep at like a 45-degree angle which isn't comfortable. i initially tried sleeping in this chaise lounge thing they had in my hotel room, but i kept waking up every 20-30 minutes and wound up moving to the bed with several pillows propping my head/back up. this was more comfortable and i did sleep a decent amount.
the next morning, they washed my hair and gave me some vitamin E gel (for recipient area) to take home as well as some anitibiotic cream to rub on on the donor area.
Useful Observations/Notes
- i had them shave my entire head b/c they were going to have to shave most of the back to extract from the donor area and they were going to have to shave my entire front hairline for the grafts to be placed. anyway, i was quite surprised how decent my head looked shaved. i had never once in my life (32 years old) seen my head shaved before and i was very surprised that it looked fine. i joked with the guys at armani that maybe if i had seen what my head looked shaved earlier, i never would've had the procedure in the first place. i was kidding of course, but it was interesting to find that out and it actually makes me a lot happier to know that if for whatever reason i needed to shave my head 20-30 years from now, i could and it wouldn't be that big of a deal.
- my donor area, from the minute i left the left the doctors office has not hurt one single bit. this, to me, is huge. i hear stories about people not being able to lift anything heavy for months after the strip-procedures and tightness, numbing, scarring, etc. and to me, that sounds horrible. not only do i have no pain in the donor area, but it's less than 48 hours after my procedure was completed and it doesn't even look like much of anything happened. just some small red dots that you probably couldn't even see from 10 feet away. if you have the extra money, i HIGHLY recommend FUE instead of strip, but it's a personal choice. all i have to do is rub some cream on it twice a day for the first week. no scar, no tightness, no numbing, no inability to lift weights for months, etc.
- the recipient area is doing fine as well, however, it's a pain because you literally CANNOT TOUCH it at all for 4-weeks. you can't rub it or scratch it or rub shampoo on it or anything. it's completely off-limits. you can wear a baseball hat after 2-weeks, as long as no part of the hat rests on the recipient area (so it can't be really tight essentially). but this part is still a pain. you have to drip vitamin-E oil on the grafts twice a day (without touching).
- my head is swollen up like a pumpkin today. i definitely would not recommend being out of your house for the first few days after the procedure.
- you wash your head twice a day as well with baby shampoo mixed in a mug and pour it over the whole head. the donor area you can then dry with a towel, but you still cannot touch the recipient area and you have to let it air dry. you put the vitamin-E oil (grafts) and antibiotic cream (donor) on after each wash. vitamin-E oil must be used for the first 3 weeks, then you stop that and as i already mentioned the cream on the donor is just for the first week.
- you are not supposed to exercise for 1-month after the procedure b/c sweating could potentially cause in-grown hairs, infection, etc. i think it's fine to do situps/pushups and very light exercises if you can do it without sweating (i have an email out to them right now to verify this).
- they encourage you to take multi-vitamins, vitamins B/C/E, MSM
- minoxidil should start after 7-days. they actually require that you do this even if you don't normally take it. unfortunately, it has to be the liquid form for the first 3-months so i had to go buy a 3-month supply of the liquid minoxidil before i can switch back to the foam that i normally use.
- after 3 weeks, you can begin to take a "light shower" (of course you can take a body-shower from day one, i'm only referring to your head). a light shower basically means that you can drip shampoo on your recipient area and then rinse it off with the shower, but you still can't massage the shampoo into the scalp or touch the grafts at all.
- finally, after 4 weeks, you can begin to basically do everything as normal. you can resume normal exercising, you can resume normal showers, you can touch the grafted (recipient) area, etc.
- one crazy thing that they said was that you're not supposed to go swimming for 12 MONTHS! they said the chlorine wasn't good for it and in the ocean, the salt water wasn't ideal either. i basically told them that i didn't think this was gonna happen b/c i love to go to the beach in the summer and since June would be 7-8 months from now, wouldn't that be fine? their response was basically that they recommend that nobody goes swimming for 12 months, but they have a feeling that almost everyone does anyway. it seemed to be one of those things they just say and realize it probably won't happen and it sounded like it probably doesn't even matter anyway. my take, how is salt water on my hair after 7+ months going to do some permanent damage to my hair? incidentally, i talked to a customer rep. there that had the procedure done himself 1.5 years ago and he said that he went swimming after 3 months and his outcome was fantasic so draw your own conclusions.
anyway, hoped this help shed some light on things. i don't plan on posting any pictures now, but hopefully i will post pics of the end results in several months (i already have a bunch of before pics).
in general, he's a great guy. he was talking with me during most of the time he was making the incisions in the recipient area (i asked him if he's done a lot of celebrities - yes, he has; i asked if HM was coming along well - no, it's not and it just had some poor lab results in the past few months; i asked about the "illusion of density" and he said it's all about the angles he makes the incisions at...he said honestly, almost any decent doctor can place the grafts into the incisions equally well, but his hairline design and the illusion of density are all about his recipient incisions; he asked about other doctors i considered for the procedure, etc.). the incision part took about 1 hour, but i truly did not feel any pain (other than the initial numbness injections they give you in your forehead and recipient area). it's kind of uncomfortable at some points as you have to alternate laying on your right or left side for long periods of time w/o moving, but not too bad. i had my iPod on most of the time and i highly recommend that as it takes your mind off what's going on and lets you relax (some people claim that you can read or watch tv the whole time which just isn't true. they had a tv in the room and gave me the remote to flip around, but you're only sitting upright for maybe 10% of the time. the other 90% i was lying down and couldn't even see the tv screen).
anyway, after armani spent about 1-hour (maybe 1:30) making all of the incisions, they then begin to harvest/extract the grafts from the donor area. again, i had FUE which is actually a tiny drill that drills into your scalp and pulls out the microscopic grafts. they have to numb your donor area which takes many needles (in each 1-inch square area they harvest from, they typically give you about 3-4 injections of novacaine type numbing stuff and the injections in your head are not pleasant. i've never complained about a needle in my arm in my life, but repeated needles in your head hurt...trust me). after you are numb, however, you really can't feel the extractions at all. this took several hours (maybe 3 in total). also, there are other technicians dissecting the grafts under a microscope simultaneously as they're coming out. armani was not in the room except for 1-minute to check on the progress during this time.
finally, they begin to place the grafts into the your recipient area. this took several hours. in total, i was in the office from about 9:00am to almost 7:00pm (by the way, the people that claim you can only do 2,000 FUE grafts in one day are crazy. they told me that the most they've done in one day so far is 4,300 and they're getting better all the time). let me tell you, i was THRILLED to finally get out of that chair at the end of the day.
they give you a list of instructions and pillls to take home or to the hotel for that night and for the next 2 weeks and i made an appt. to come back the next morning at 9:00am for my hair washing.
the night of the procedure, not particularly fun. they give you, among other things, pain killers, some anti-nausea pills and vallium to help sleep. i ordered room service and took the pain killer and anit-nausea pills with my dinner. for the next 2 hours, i felt like i could vomit at any moment, but never did. finally, i took the vallium and went to sleep. you have to sleep at like a 45-degree angle which isn't comfortable. i initially tried sleeping in this chaise lounge thing they had in my hotel room, but i kept waking up every 20-30 minutes and wound up moving to the bed with several pillows propping my head/back up. this was more comfortable and i did sleep a decent amount.
the next morning, they washed my hair and gave me some vitamin E gel (for recipient area) to take home as well as some anitibiotic cream to rub on on the donor area.
Useful Observations/Notes
- i had them shave my entire head b/c they were going to have to shave most of the back to extract from the donor area and they were going to have to shave my entire front hairline for the grafts to be placed. anyway, i was quite surprised how decent my head looked shaved. i had never once in my life (32 years old) seen my head shaved before and i was very surprised that it looked fine. i joked with the guys at armani that maybe if i had seen what my head looked shaved earlier, i never would've had the procedure in the first place. i was kidding of course, but it was interesting to find that out and it actually makes me a lot happier to know that if for whatever reason i needed to shave my head 20-30 years from now, i could and it wouldn't be that big of a deal.
- my donor area, from the minute i left the left the doctors office has not hurt one single bit. this, to me, is huge. i hear stories about people not being able to lift anything heavy for months after the strip-procedures and tightness, numbing, scarring, etc. and to me, that sounds horrible. not only do i have no pain in the donor area, but it's less than 48 hours after my procedure was completed and it doesn't even look like much of anything happened. just some small red dots that you probably couldn't even see from 10 feet away. if you have the extra money, i HIGHLY recommend FUE instead of strip, but it's a personal choice. all i have to do is rub some cream on it twice a day for the first week. no scar, no tightness, no numbing, no inability to lift weights for months, etc.
- the recipient area is doing fine as well, however, it's a pain because you literally CANNOT TOUCH it at all for 4-weeks. you can't rub it or scratch it or rub shampoo on it or anything. it's completely off-limits. you can wear a baseball hat after 2-weeks, as long as no part of the hat rests on the recipient area (so it can't be really tight essentially). but this part is still a pain. you have to drip vitamin-E oil on the grafts twice a day (without touching).
- my head is swollen up like a pumpkin today. i definitely would not recommend being out of your house for the first few days after the procedure.
- you wash your head twice a day as well with baby shampoo mixed in a mug and pour it over the whole head. the donor area you can then dry with a towel, but you still cannot touch the recipient area and you have to let it air dry. you put the vitamin-E oil (grafts) and antibiotic cream (donor) on after each wash. vitamin-E oil must be used for the first 3 weeks, then you stop that and as i already mentioned the cream on the donor is just for the first week.
- you are not supposed to exercise for 1-month after the procedure b/c sweating could potentially cause in-grown hairs, infection, etc. i think it's fine to do situps/pushups and very light exercises if you can do it without sweating (i have an email out to them right now to verify this).
- they encourage you to take multi-vitamins, vitamins B/C/E, MSM
- minoxidil should start after 7-days. they actually require that you do this even if you don't normally take it. unfortunately, it has to be the liquid form for the first 3-months so i had to go buy a 3-month supply of the liquid minoxidil before i can switch back to the foam that i normally use.
- after 3 weeks, you can begin to take a "light shower" (of course you can take a body-shower from day one, i'm only referring to your head). a light shower basically means that you can drip shampoo on your recipient area and then rinse it off with the shower, but you still can't massage the shampoo into the scalp or touch the grafts at all.
- finally, after 4 weeks, you can begin to basically do everything as normal. you can resume normal exercising, you can resume normal showers, you can touch the grafted (recipient) area, etc.
- one crazy thing that they said was that you're not supposed to go swimming for 12 MONTHS! they said the chlorine wasn't good for it and in the ocean, the salt water wasn't ideal either. i basically told them that i didn't think this was gonna happen b/c i love to go to the beach in the summer and since June would be 7-8 months from now, wouldn't that be fine? their response was basically that they recommend that nobody goes swimming for 12 months, but they have a feeling that almost everyone does anyway. it seemed to be one of those things they just say and realize it probably won't happen and it sounded like it probably doesn't even matter anyway. my take, how is salt water on my hair after 7+ months going to do some permanent damage to my hair? incidentally, i talked to a customer rep. there that had the procedure done himself 1.5 years ago and he said that he went swimming after 3 months and his outcome was fantasic so draw your own conclusions.
anyway, hoped this help shed some light on things. i don't plan on posting any pictures now, but hopefully i will post pics of the end results in several months (i already have a bunch of before pics).
