Mastodawn

Let's talk about feminizing hair transplants!

Hair transplants are an oddball procedure that can be absolutely decisive in feminizing a transfeminine face, depending on what a person needs. The process is pretty simple: they take a strip of skin and hair from the back of your scalp, usually 1-2cm wide, close that incision, use a microscope to reduce that strip of hair into its individual follicles, and then insert them where your hairline needs modification. Many folks don't need transplants, and a lot of transfems miss that MANY cis women have very square natural hairlines, and that their hair falls easily into cisf error bars.

Still, dysphoria is a beast.

There are quite a lot of us who *do* absolutely need a hair transplant in order to visibly pass without a hairpiece. I was definitively one of those women--I'd suffered massive hair loss and recession when I started HRT.

How bad, you ask?

This bad.

Yeah.

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#mtf #trans #hairtransplant #ffs #facialfeminization

Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

Now, what I did is what anyone should do before going in for a transplant: I turned to hair care and medicine, and I gave estrogen time to work. There are actually some *very* good scientific reasons to believe that estrogen is often decisive in getting dorman hair follicles producing again. In addition to this, a DHT blocker (finasteride or dutasteride) and minoxidil--I recommend low dose oral, by prescription, even though it'll make your facial hair more obnoxious to knock out for good--can have incredibly transformative effects on a hairline. Sulfate and sulfide-free hair products are similarly important, so the hair you grow can be healthy and full.

Six months after that first picture, this was the hair pattern I recovered to. Still way more thinness than I was okay with, and deep Noewood-grade recession at the temples, but it was a damn sight better.

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Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

Things stabilized there afterward. About a year later, when I went in for my FFS with FacialTeam, this was the final pre-surgical photo of my face. The key problem, as is obvious, is that in addition to the sparseness of the hair in the middle of my head, I had extremely high temples; together, they meant that I really couldn't style my hair effectively. I used a small wig called a topper to help during this time period.

From here on in, we'll be going to pictures including surgical recovery, so be ready for some weird and (very slightly) icky stuff.

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Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

A hair transplant is a delicate and time-consuming process, as each individual hair follicle needs to be placed in a unique little incision. It's *very* slow work, and can run to eight or more hours for a really big transplant, the largest of which run 3,000-3,500. The transplant I got during my FFS was size-limited because of my FFS--quirky stuff from the mechanics of my surgery--you 1,750 follicles. This was not enough to achieve the hairline I needed, but it made a big, big difference.

Now, those follicles require very tender care right after surgery. No washing for 10 days. Spritzing with saline every 30-45 waking minutes. No headgear that touched them, *period*, for almost a week. No sun at all, to the best of your ability.

Failure meant lost follicles that can never be recovered.

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Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

About a month after the transplant, those hairs... All fall out. And the follicles went dormant.

Yeah, it was a shitty time for dysphoria.

And for 2-3 months after? Pretty much nothing.

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Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

Eventually, though, the follicles start waking up and growing again. Month 4.5-6 after surgery is typically a growth bonanza, even if it does look super scraggly for a while.

But as you can see, there's still thinness on top, and those temples are, while feminized, pretty high. So, I had a second, 1,550 transplant. About half of the transplant was to even out my hairline, and the rest was to densify everything.

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Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

The earlier surgical recovery shots I showed were all cleaned by FacialTeam, but my second round was a local guy, and I can't do cleaning the way FT did. It's not harmful this way, but it's nooooot photogenic.

I'm a week postop now, and they put my new follicles in place at maximum surgical density, so I should be good to go after my second recovery. Still, this process is not comfortable and it is *very* ugly, but the soft, inverted U is what I always wanted and needed--and especially when you compare it to my before pics, it's absolutely transformative to the face.

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@Impossible_PhD That looks fantastic! (Or will, once it heals a bit more and grows in.) So happy for you! 😍🥳

Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

@faithisleaping yeah, the hair*line* is gorgeous. The hair, right now, is *horrendous*.🤭

Kelida Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD Thank you for sharing this with us. I’m sure it’s going to be helpful for many women to see the beginning-to-end in detail. Can’t wait to see the results of the most recent procedure after it starts to grow in for real. You’re going to look even more amazing I’m certain.

Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

@kelidanovus Yeah, obviously, it's waaaaaaayp early. I won't have a proper look till June, probably

Brianna Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD remarkable! So much better.
Did it hurt much?

Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

@nosaturn not really. I only ever took Tylenol, and only one even then, for pain management. They offered to prescribe a narcotic for the pain and just like... why???

If you have a competent, capable surgeon, it shouldn't be hurting much.

Brianna Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD have you ever heard of insurance covering it?

Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

@nosaturn I *got* my insurance to approve coverage for it by billing it as the second stage of my facial feminization surgery. Got a letter from my FFS surgeon to back me up,and threw a *wall* of literature at them. I think they decided that pushing back over $6700 worth of medical expenses wasn't worth it.

Diagnosis code F.64.0, ICD-10 code 21137, btw.

Brianna Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD staring this up the wazoo.

You found some great doctors 👍

Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

@nosaturn I certainly did! My primary physician for FFS, Dr Luis Capitan, is one of if not *the* best FFS doctor in the world. He actually wrote/helped write the WPATH version 8 surgical standards of care, so, uhh, can't get better than that.

The second doctor was a local independent guy, but he has a great reputation. The gender clinics in Detroit often send their FFS patients to him for the hair transplant part of their work.

Hanneke Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD wowww thank you for this. This is going on my list for sure! 😍

Hanneke Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD such a good change wow

Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

@h5e I'm glad!!

Tattie (old account)Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD do I understand correctly that this procedure only moves existing hair follicles around? i.e. there's no regrowth where they're taken from?

Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

@Tattie Correct. Hair transplants move existing hair from the back of your head to the front and/or crown. Technically, since some number inevitably don't survive the move, it's a *loss* procedure, but they take the hair from an area where basically nobody ever even notices it and put it somewhere incredibly high-impact, so it *seems* like you suddenly sprout a massive amount of new hair.

Tattie (old account)Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD pretty much rules it out for me, then, I think. Which is what I expected. Sad times though.

Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

@Tattie you think? Because I have seen some *stunning* jobs, far in excess of what you might imagine. We're talking near-total hair loss on top restored from the back.

You might want to look into what's achievable.

Tattie (old account)Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD I'll have to have a look at what estrogen has done, or not, next time I get the hairpiece off. I don't want to go through the entire process and just end up thin all over. I love having a lot of hair.

Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

@Tattie So, you won't notice increased thinness in the donor site--there isn't like a bald patch or something afterward. They stitch it shut in such a way that, after it heals, even a skilled hairstylist should have trouble finding the scar. Just so you know.

Tattie (old account)Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD no, I mean I was already very thin. The only areas I had decent coverage were way back at the back of my head, and I just can't see myself having enough to work with there.

Anyway, gonna end the conversation there because it's triggering dysphoria something rotten.

Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

@Tattie I'm very sorry. 🫂

Tattie (old account)Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD not at all your fault but hugs gratefully accepted ❤️

tesseraph Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD This was so informative, thanks for for sharing! You look like a total darling btw ^_^

Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

@manicpixietransgirl Thanks!

Liva_Battleangel Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD Hey, thank you so much for sharing! May I ask how much you paid for these procedures? I'm currently still waiting for Estrogen to do its thing, but it seems increasingly likely that something like this is gonna be necessary for me as well.

Doc Impossible Jan 30, 2023

@LivaBattleangel the first was as part of my FFS with FacialTeam, which was a fixed €7500. The standalone transplant was $4.50/follicle, so $6700.

Elsa Star Trewyn Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD ⭐ 🌟 ✨ ✨ 🌞

Rachel Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD

Thanks for posting these! I'm excited for you growing out the finished hairline!

After 8 months of (almost) everything I'm better off, but still far away from your first before photo 😞

I haven't tried oral min yet, I'll ask my GP for it at my apt this week. After that it is estrogen or wait till 2030 lol

nicole Jan 30, 2023

@Impossible_PhD thank you for sharing!! 🥰