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My FUE Procedure With Dr Rahal

mattj

mattj

Valued member
Hey guys,

I €™m probably familiar to many of you as Dr Rahal €™s forum representative and patient advisor, a position I €™ve held for a number of years now. Well, as the title suggests, now I am posting as a patient!

I first discovered Dr Rahal when early onset male pattern baldness propelled me into the online hair loss community. The results he created always looked more natural, higher in density and simply more appealing that those being produced by other doctors. I had no idea that this sort of work was even possible! After talking with him at length, my decision was made - it would be Dr Rahal who would perform my hair transplant.

Then he asked me to work for him. Why? Well, I €™m never one to jump into a decision, so in the lead up to choosing Dr Rahal I had done a heck of a lot of research and accumulated a fair bit of knowledge. Dr Rahal felt that this knowledge, together with my desire to help people, would make me a good addition to his team.

So if I €™m working for Dr Rahal, why didn €™t I have my procedure immediately? Personal reasons. Life. Things got in the way. Fast-forward to 2013 and the time was right, a date was set and here I am wearing the blue protective cap.

I underwent an FUE procedure totaling 2502 grafts.

Waiting Days

I arrived in Ottawa a few days before the procedure and this allowed me time to drop into the office and finally meet some of the staff who, until that moment, had existed to me as voices on the phone. A surreal experience, to say the least. Everyone at the office is extremely nice and friendly and it was a pleasure to spend some days in their company.

There was only one place to stay and that was Brookline Guesthouse. As many of you know, this B&B-style house is for exclusive use by Dr Rahal €™s patients, is very convenient and we do encourage out-of-town patients to stay here. As expected, I really loved Brookline and was glad to see some familiar faces belonging to patients who had consulted with me. It deserves a separate write-up, which is coming soon.

Procedure Day

On the morning of the procedure, I turned up for my pre-op photos and consult with Dr Rahal, during which he drew the hairline position onto my head. A few strokes of the pen and it was done. I €™m used to seeing pre-op photos so I could easily picture how the result would look once the pen line becomes a hairline.

After this I donned the surgical gown and Mike (the head technician) shaved my head. Patients always speak very highly of Mike. He €™s a very nice guy who is highly skilled and has a sort of calming presence. You €™re always glad when he €™s in the room.

The procedure itself is broken into three key stages: extractions, incisions and implantation.

For the extractions, I was lying on my front, facing down and then to either side, allowing access to the full width of my donor area. I fell asleep. I drooled.

For the incisions, I was seated at around 45 degrees. Dr Rahal didn €™t seem to mind me yapping, which surprised me as I thought talking would cause me to move and I €™d be politely told to shut up.

For the planting of the grafts, I was seated at the same angle as the technicians efficiently placed the grafts into the incisions. The movie I chose to watch couldn €™t hold my attention and I think I fell asleep a few times.
Duration - This was quite a lengthy procedure. The day was undeniably a long one, but I €™ve had many ordinary days in my life that were more grueling than this one. The majority of the day was spent in quite a relaxed state as I was immobile, numb to the work being carried out and tired due to lack of a proper nights rest.

Pain and discomfort €“ as many HT patients before me have mentioned, the most painful part is the numbing injections. How painful will depend on your threshold. However, they €™re over quickly and from then on I felt only the sensation of scalp contact €“ prodding and pushing €“ rather than pain. Later in the evening I had a bit of a headache, but in the days which followed, the only discomfort was some tenderness in the donor area when scrubbing it clean.

On the second day after the procedure, I no longer had any excuse not to go to work. Some of the other patients coming and going must have wondered why a fellow patient is sat at a computer terminal in the office! The ones who were staying at Brookline knew the answer.

I will be updating frequently over the next 12 months and beyond and hope you €™ll follow with interest. I can tell you that I €™m looking forward to finally having a Rahal hairline to call my own! Although it €™s still early days and I €™m wearing a hat, I actually feel a new sense of confidence just knowing what is beneath the hat and what it will become.

Watch this space for photos.
 
bullitnut

bullitnut

4 awesome repairs with SMG
Thats Awesome Matt....your a good guy and have helped many so your recent experience will surely help lots of people interested in FUE.

Great write up and i can't wait to follow your updates;)

Take it easy BN
 
D

Dazzster26

Valued member
Thanks for posting your story and all the very best , looking forward to your updates

Heal and grow well

Take care I care

D
 
S

Staffie

Valued member
Hi Matt,

Thanks for sharing your story, best of luck to you!

Staffie
 
Bigmac

Bigmac

Administrator
Staff member
Great story Matt, I enjoyed reading it and I'll look forward to seeing your pictures.

All the best.

Bm.
 
mattj

mattj

Valued member
Thanks guys. Everyone has been very supportive.

Here are the pre-ops, taken the morning of my procedure. I never saw myself from above so it was a shock to see how deep the temporal recession was. Taken very early in the morning - much earlier than 'normal' patients need to arrive.

before01.jpg

before02.jpg

before03.jpg

before05.jpg

IMG_4336.jpg


 
mattj

mattj

Valued member
And here I am the next day. Another surprise was how much I liked the buzz cut.

day2_01.jpg

day2_02.jpg

day2_03.jpg

day2_04.jpg

day2_05.jpg

day2_06.jpg

day2_07.jpg


 
mattj

mattj

Valued member
Here I am on day 4 (3 days after the procedure). I had some mild swelling between my eyes on this day. Gone by the next. Note that the extraction site has calmed down a lot.

day4_01.jpg

day4_02.jpg

day4_03.jpg

day4_04.jpg

day4_08.jpg

 
J

jonzi

Valued member
Were the extractions done by a machine, the ARTAS or something?

Quite a high number of grafts for such a small area. How high is the risk that you will end up looking a bit weird at 69? Continued loss, low hairline of thick transplanted grafts. What is youre reasoning, never gonna happen to me? I am not trying to be an ass, im genuinly interested in youre look on it, being very knowledgeable about what can go wrong.

Sometimes, transplants come out looking abit "rough" in texture due to the hairs in the neck being thicker than the front. Occasionally, this effect will be dramatic, especially in natural light. Spotted many hts in stockholm just based on this fact. The unnatural "roughness" is a sure giveaway, despite being a "good" ht. What is youre view on this?
 
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Sparky

Sparky

Valued member
Looks fine to me, extractions are all from safe zone, the work looks tidy.

Some people lose hair behind the hairline and retain the hairline so even if he didn't have any more work, I think he would still look fine.

Look forward to updates.
 
D

Dazzster26

Valued member
Hi Matt

The work looks great and that amount of grafts for the coverage area is rich , I think you must be going for dense packing , this should be a great result really looking forward to your updates , the pictures are great and as Sparky stated all the extractions are well within the safe zone

Take care I care



D
 
C

close

Member
Hi Matt,
The work indeed looks clean and good. But in my opinion 2500 grafts for an area like this is, some how, very excessive. Considering the fact that from an average donor area you can extract around 4000 grafts (without having significant thinning there) you have used more than half of your donor area just to cover a small part of your front zone. If your NW pattern will not increase over the years, then there will be no problem, but what if it will increase. Question: can you tell us the size of the area covered? I believe that the density of the grafts is very high (lucky you) and I hope they will all survive.
 
Sparky

Sparky

Valued member
You can get more than 4k grafts from the average donor are without significant thinning. Where does it state that this is FACT?
 
mattj

mattj

Valued member
My hair loss has barely progressed at all over the past 10 years (I'm 32 now) and my family history of hair loss is working in my favour. I still have more grafts available via FUE and then there's strip.

Extractions were done using the handheld tool. Not ARTAS.

IMO the hairline position isn't that low. To lower it further would have sacrificed density, and density was more important to me.
 
C

close

Member
Maybe you are right Sparky, probably it's not a FACT but considering myself who have almost 4.500 grafts from a quite dense donnor I can say that 4.000-4.500 grafts is the limit in order for your donor area to seem almost untouched.
 
bullitnut

bullitnut

4 awesome repairs with SMG
The work looks fantastic as expected and your going to have great new hairline. I agree with Sparky's comments too and as you say your family history is on your side which is good.

Very happy for you dude and like the others have said we look forward to following your progress.
 
Bigmac

Bigmac

Administrator
Staff member
Looks very neat and tidy Matt, great quality pictures too.

I`ll look forward to seeing you progress.

Cheers Bm.
 
janna

janna

Valuable Member
Well, fingers crossed you don't experience any further hair loss. Your donor supply looks above average.
 
B

Boberto

Valued member
By the time hes 49 dont mind 69 i believe there will be major advancements in hair restoration techniques. Cloning / Multiplication/ Hisotgen etc.

Even if there wasnt and he suffered loss he could still buzz real short and have a framed face with solid hairline. Anyway hes loads of solid donor there to fill in any gaps the traditional HT route. Non issue for me.

 
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