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.

🧵(2/?)

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.

🧵(3/?)

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.

🧵(4/?)

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.

🧵(5/?)

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.

🧵(6/?)

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.

🧵(7/7)