Two Weeks After My Hair Transplant, Photos And More

The fifth installment of my personal experience as a 40 something woman who received a hair transplant. Enjoy!

It has been two weeks since my hair transplant and on a scale of normalness from 1 to 10, my head feels like a six.

My doctor removed the sutures from the donor area yesterday (that strip on the back of my head). It feels great not having knots on the back of your head and when I lean back, it feels more comfortable.

The areas where the hair was transplanted (i.e. the grafted areas) look better every day. All of the “care and feeding”, the twice daily shampoos, the ointments and the sprays have done their job. As the individual grafts heal, the bright red/brown dots shrink and then eventually fall off.

Here is a photo of the frontal grafted area taken today, at the two week mark. As you can see, when I pull the hair back, there are still some grafted dots visible.

When I style my hair, as shown in the other photos, you can barely see the grafted areas.

And, when I finish styling using Toppik, the hair transplant is relatively undetectable. Toppik is like a secret weapon for anyone with thinning hair. The organic protein, hair building fibers blend in with your natural hair and fix problem areas. Check out the Toppik website for more info and “before and after” photos.

There is still a numb section of my scalp on the back right side - which is considered a normal side-effect of the surgery. While the surgery itself takes place, a number of nerve endings are severed. Over time, the nerve endings are expected to repair themselves and the numbness should go away.

The next step in the hair transplant evolution, is that the implanted hairs will shed, leaving space for permanent hairs to grow back in.

Both Bernstein Medical, based in New York, and Leonard Hair Transplant Associates based in Rhode Island (two of the most respected hair transplant organizations) tell their patients that the transplanted hair will begin shedding around the end of week two, and be almost 100% complete by the end of week four. At that point in time, your head should look close its “pre-surgery” appearance.

Three to four months following the surgery, normal hair growth is expected to occur, in the grafted areas. Find our what happens on my head in a future installment. So exciting!

On day 16, my hair transplant decision caused a bout of insomnia. What had I done? My head was covered with grafts, my donor scar was healing, my head was still numb and sore. What if I got an infection? What if all my hair started to fall out? What if I was part of the small percentage of hair transplant recipients that had a bunch of bad side effects?

Getting a hair transplant is a MAJOR decision and although I thought about it for years, I still felt some buyer’s remorse or “post purchase dissonance”. I ended up taking a sedative so I could fall asleep.

This better be worth it!!

To my readers: This is the fifth installment in a series about my personal experience with a woman's hair transplant.

Check out the first four installments:

1) I Tried Everything Before The Hair Transplant

2) Preparing For The Hair Transplant

3) Transplant Surgery Day Is Here

4) The Care And Feeding Of A New Hair Transplant