32 Year Old Male from US. Grade 3/4 Hair Loss - Istanbul, TR

Hi everyone,

I am 32 years old and have been suffering from hair loss for the last 10 years. When I first realized that I was losing my hair I was legitimately depressed for about 2 weeks. I started cutting my hair progressively shorter to make the thinning less obvious. The more I lost, the shorter I would go until I got to a no guard with the clippers. I have razor shaved but don't like the feel. Currently, I have grade 3/4 hair loss on the top and some minor thinning on the crown. I have been using Minoxidil for the past few years but only started using religiously (twice a day) about 6 months ago. I have also been using LLLT for the last couple months. At this point I think the hair loss has stopped with the use of these two products but the damage is done. I had looked into hair transplantation in the past but it was too expensive. I just couldn't justify spending $15k+ as I could use this money to save for retirement or pay down my mortgage/car loan. I was researching cheaper alternatives (PRP, stem cell therapy) and I came across Realself.com. I never realized that Turkey was such a popular place to get HTs. I did a TON of research both on realself and other sites, including Dr Maral's. I decided to email some photos to Dr Maral to see what he said and I was amazed at how quickly he responded. I booked the flight for 6 weeks out and here I am today. Im sure that I'm missing some things but this has been long enough so I'll stop here. I'll post another update with my thoughts on the flight, driver, hotel, etc.

Ok so I just got back from the clinic and it's 1am, haha. The Maral Clinic is a machine! They completed AT LEAST 6 HTs today. I got picked up at 3pm. Traffic was bad so we didn't get there until 3:30. Had to wait until about 5 to be seen for the consultation as the other patients were finishing up. I had a nice chat with Dr Maral...very cool guy. He was knowledgeable and honest. We decided in a hairline and I was in the table with hair buzzed and getting the injections to numb the area being worked on at 6pm. After I was numb they started right in in the donor area. They use a micro motor (I assume this where Microefue comes from) to punch small holes. They do this very quickly and another tech follows right behind with small forceps extracting the grafts. This too about 1 1/2 hours. They then numbed the top of my head and the lead tech created the "channels" or holes for the grafts to go in. She was lightning fast doing it all by hand. This took about an hour to open 4,250 holes (this is how many grafts they harvested). I then took a 20 min break for dinner. I believe they pick it up from a local vendor (they're everywhere in that area) and it was very good. I got Turkish meatballs with bread and sliced tomatoes. After dinner the techs went right at inserting the grafts. This took the longest at 2 1/2 hours. Dr Maral was still there when I was done, have me some medication for the pain, swelling, and infection prevention. He told me that I need to stay up for 4 hours sitting upright to avoid swelling and for anything touching the grafts. Apparently the grafts are pretty secure after 4 hours. I figured since I'm up why not write this update! Couple other things of note. The flight was long from the US but it went fine. I didn't have much trouble finding the driver for the clinic. He brought me to the hotel and got me all checked in. The hotel is clean and has all the essentially. Couple of minor complaints. It is fairly noisy, especially when it is prayer time and there are several Mosques in the area. The doors are also fairly thin. Not an issue with my white noise app on my phone. The other problem is that the wifi is very slow in the room. I basically don't have anything to do except watch Netflix and I also can't talk to anyone from home without wifi since it would cost an arm and a leg. Besides that, everything is great here and at the clinic. Two thumbs up. Take a peek at a couple of post op selfies!

I have a few minutes on a layover back to the States to get a quick update in. To be specific in the time frame, my procedure was complete on Monday at midnight so it's actually less than 48 hours. Scabs are formed and hair is growing. I'm really happy with how clean of a job they did. I didn't have any bleeding after the procedure like some others and my donor looked good as well. Once I get the next day photos from Dr Maral I will post them. I am getting some swelling in the forehead and even around the back in the donor area. It just got worse fast and I'm willing to bet it was due to the salty meal that was served on the flight. Still taking the meds (Prednisone, antibiotic, and pain killers) so that should help keep it down as I just took another dose.

p.s. Dr Maral did provide a hat for camouflage but I haven't worn it once. I'm actually getting a kick out of the looks I'm getting. Hey, I'm never going to see any of these people again! I also don't mind talking about it at all. I'm confident in the decision and not embarrassed at all.