I am thinking about shaving my head. The only thing that stands in the way is that I had transplants about 10 years ago. They were before FUE and were done via the strip harvesting.
This means I have a linear scar across the back of my head as well as one along the side. Although those don't bother me as much I also have the recipient site scarring.
Has anyone gone through a similar experience? If so what did you do? I am a school teacher and I want to look as good as I can but would love to have some advice. I was considering SMP at one point but am unsure of the end result. I'm up against the wire right now and would really appreciate advice from anyone who has gone through this.
Hello CK and welcome to one of the most supportive group of folks on the net!
I am Bald By Choice so I can't give you first hand advice as to your issues. There are, however, several guys on the board who have had transplants and even one who has used SMP to camouflage the scars.
But, my two cents worth are:
1. Most of us are more self conscious of the bumps and scars on our scalps than anyone else can possibly be. The rest of the world simply doesn't care enough about us to be staring at our minor imperfections!
2. I have seen many Before and After photos of people who have used SMP to cammoflage their transplant scars and it really, really looks good! They are not covering a vast bald area with artificial spots, they are only blending the small bald areas of the scars into the surrounding natural hair.
3. What does NOT look good, IMHO is people who use SMP to cover the full area of hair loss. The tattooed hairline ALWAYS looks contrived and is far more noticeable than the natural baldness. Then too, as you age, the tattooed "hair" will retain its color while your remaining head hair turns gray. So, if it were me, I would definitely consider SMP but only to cammoflage the scars.
Thank you for responding. I was starting to think that no one was going to. This is an issue I have been struggling with for awhile now. Today I went and had them cut it real short. By that I mean down to a #2 guard on the sides and back and the scars are definitely obvious as I knew they would be.
The issue I have is the more so the pitting from the transplants. They are not the worst but they are bad enough. I will be going through another transplant procedure to camouflage the pitting. After that if I am still not happy with it I am just going to look into the options for resurfacing and shave it all off.
For pitting I had 4 sessions with a Fraxel laser before I did SMP. That laser smooths out the pitting making the SMP look much better.
For pitting I had 4 sessions with a Fraxel laser before I did SMP. That laser smooths out the pitting making the SMP look much better.
Where did you have the Fraxel done? I have read about that and was interested in do that. If your pitting was smoothed out was the SMP on the top of your head just because you wanted that look? Was the pitting on your head smoothed out enough to allow you to shave without people noticing if you wanted?
Hi, I was in your shoes last year. I shaved down with clippers, no guard last year and have done it since. I have 3 scars from the transplants i had in the mid 90's. It took some getting use to along with dealing with some questions. I looked into smp but just decided enough was enough. . There are days when I second guess myself, that is when I look back at my original post to see all the kind words I got from the fellas on this site. Good luck,