Planning for Your Hair Transplant: 6 Easy Steps to Get a New Look

It’s easier than ever to look better and boost your confidence with a little outside help. For men, a hair transplant or beard transplant is one of the best ways to increase long-term well-being. For us at Nashville Hair Doctor there is no happier event than a patient sending us their after pictures full of excitement about their amazing results. But it takes a bit of effort and planning to prepare for a hair restoration procedure and recovery – especially if you don’t want people to know that you’ve had it!

Below we tell you a little bit more about what to expect from the recovery, followed by our tips of how to plan for your hair transplant. 

Physical Recovery Time After a Hair Transplant

The physical recovery time after a Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE) hair transplant is fantastic. It is much faster than that for the so-called Strip Method (also called Follicular Unit Transplantation or FUT), where your scalp will need time to heal from the cut the surgeon places in the back of the head to remove a strip of follicles. 

After an FUE procedure (such as NeoGraft), you will only need a day or two to physically recover. And you’re cleared to engage in whichever physical activity you desire to pursue. This is why professional athletes overwhelmingly opt for NeoGraft over other hair restoration methods.

Social Recovery After a Hair Transplant

So how soon can I go back to work after my hair transplant?

You’re smart to ask this question. While having had your hair follicles transplanted doesn’t create any physical impairment, it does create a visual look you might not want to show in public. After an FUE hair transplant, your head will be covered in a series of tiny red dots from the punctures of the NeoGraft device, both where the follicles were extracted and where they were reinserted. These will scab over and fade after about a week to ten days. At the same time your hair will begin to grow back in the donor area where it was shaved to harvest the hair.

How much time you want to allocate for your look to normalize enough to go out in public again is up to you. Most patients find that the 7-10 day benchmark is a good one. If you want to be super safe, you might want to wait several weeks – by then no one will notice that you’ve had anything done. Please also note that you won’t be allowed to wear any tight fitting hats for some time so as not to damage the new follicles – so covering it up right after the procedure is not an option.

Steps for Planning Your Hair Transplant Ahead of Time

Our Nashville Hair Doctor team has seen many patients for whom the main concern about a hair transplant is to make sure it can’t be detected. They do not want to stand out after their procedure when they go back to work. The key for them is to plan their hair transplant long-term, and to time it perfectly to coincide with their vacation planning. Here are some steps you can take now to plan for your hair transplant later in the year:

1. Request a FREE Quote

In some ways, this is both the easiest and the hardest step. We all know how hard it is to take the first step towards anything new we’ve never done before. So we procrastinate on a decision. However, nothing could be easier than getting a quote for a hair transplant. It’ll take you 10 minutes from where you’re sitting right now, it’s absolutely free, and nothing will happen if you don’t choose to go forward.

Unlike other providers, we promise we will simply be there for all your questions and will not badger you to make a decision or dangle one-day special offers in front of you. We are very confident that our pricing is affordable and that you won’t find many other providers with our level of expertise who can match our all-inclusive price – without any hidden costs surcharges.

2. Virtual Consultation

At Nashville Hair Doctor, we offer all patients – at our Nashville, Memphis, and Louisville locations as well as those traveling from out-of-state – a virtual consultation. Once you’ve uploaded your photos and submitted your quote request, you will hear from Shauna, our NeoGraft Consultant, within one business day. She will get more information as needed, assess your hair loss, and prepare your quote based on the number of estimated grafts to achieve the outcome you desire.

We advise that you then take time to conduct more research and compare with other providers, and consult your calendar to find suitable dates.

3. Book Your Procedure

Booking your procedure early ensures you get onto our calendar way in advance. This will allow you to get the exact time slot that you need. Obviously, the typical vacation times fill up quickly, especially around Christmas and New Year’s when many companies shut down for the holidays. If timing is important to you, having secured the time slot that you want will make your life much easier.

However, we have also worked with many patients who are ready to go and will take an opening coming up next week! Our flexible scheduling is one of the reasons our patients love Nashville Hair Doctor. Just let us know what your requirements are and we will work with you.

4. Secure Financing

To secure your spot, we will ask you for 50% of the procedure price at the time of booking. Again, what you were quoted is what you will pay, including “facility fees,” surgeon fees, anesthesia costs, and even taxes. Your balance is due two weeks prior to the procedure. If you are paying out-of-pocket, you will simply make a credit card payment.

If you use medical financing to pay for your procedure, your payment will come out of the account you’ve set up with one of our four provides. Check out our financing options for more information. If you need help, simply give us a call.

5. Plan Your Vacation

This is the fun part! If you’re planning to take time off while your hair grows back in, you might as well make the best of it. As stated above, we recommend 7-10 days as your “downtime,” but you don’t actually need the downtime to recover. Why not travel to a place no one knows you and enjoy an amazing vacation as an extra bonus?

As long as you make sure you follow all our post-op instructions and are careful about sun exposure to protect your grafts, you are good to do anything your heart desires!

6. Get Your Hair Styled

This might sound puzzling to you, but it makes a lot of sense to get your hair styled before your hair transplant. In fact plenty of time before. For your procedure you’ll need to have the back and sides buzzed to allow for the donor hair to be extracted. Most hair clinics will also have you buzz the top to make transplantation easier, but we do not require it. We understand how important it is for many patients to be as inconspicuous as possible. We therefore allow up to an inch of length on top, fading towards the sides and back.

The ideal way to have your procedure “blend in” is to look more or less the same after as before. And one way to achieve that is by creating the new “hairstyle” before your procedure so that people are already used to it and won’t see anything different.

We hope that we’ve helped you plan for your hair transplant. If you’re ready to get started with a no-cost, no-obligation quote, upload your photos now!

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