Every day, Dr. Houssock and Lindsey talk to people with long-held misconceptions about hair transplant surgery and misunderstandings caused by the various hair restoration treatments sold to us through advertising.
Neither Dr. Houssock or Lindsey ever expected to become an expert in hair restoration, but today it is one of the most impactful ways they help both men and women.
Having cared for thousands of hair restoration patients between the two of them, they deconstruct the 7 most pervasive myths, including:
- Non surgical treatments will bring back lost hair
- When I have surgery, I can be done with medication
- I can have a full hair transplant in one day
- Grafts taken from the back of my head will grow back
Get the truth about what to expect from hair transplant surgery and hear what’s required to truly look natural after a hair transplant.
Transcript
Dr. Houssock (00:04):
You are listening to another episode of Perfectly Imperfect. Hi Lindsey.
Lindsey (00:09):
Hey Dr. Houssock. How are you today?
Dr. Houssock (00:12):
I’m so good. Welcome back to the Perfectly Imperfect podcast.
Lindsey (00:17):
Thank you for having me.
Dr. Houssock (00:18):
Perfectly Imperfect as our schedule as well. Lindsey was running around like crazy and so she’s finally been able to sit down and do this with us and it is the way that it is in our world. They talk about how we have these appointments and we expect you to be here on time, but then patients will say, well, you’re not on time. And then we say, we try our best to be on time, but ultimately when a patient is here, we take as much time as we need to take. Right?
Lindsey (00:44):
Correct.
Dr. Houssock (00:45):
We want you to feel like you get us completely. So Lindsey just rushed in here to get this started today. We’re talking hair, boys, hair, hair for men.
Lindsey (00:57):
Hair for men.
Dr. Houssock (00:58):
Hair club for men.
Lindsey (01:02):
Maybe. I dunno.
Dr. Houssock (01:03):
Well that kind of gets us rolling because Lindsey and I do a ton here. We do head to toe plastic surgery and aesthetic medicine, but a lot of people who don’t come to see us for hair are always very surprised to hear that 30% of what we do is hair. We do a lot of hair.
Lindsey (01:23):
We definitely do.
Dr. Houssock (01:24):
And the reason Lindsey and I do a lot of hair is because we joined a practice that was 30 years old that was one of ultimately one of the grandfathers of modern hair restoration, which is cool.
Lindsey (01:40):
It’s cool. It’s nice to learn under somebody who’s been doing it for a really long time and has seen many iterations of how hair is done.
Dr. Houssock (01:47):
Yes, exactly. And so when we joined, we almost both of us had almost like a fellowship of learning hair because unfortunately in the world of aesthetics and even in plastic surgery, it’s not really taught a ton in training. So we had to learn a lot along the way from Dr. Vogel. And if you had asked either of us if number one, we would be in plastic surgery when we started our journey in medicine, it was no. And if you then said you’d be doing hair, we both would’ve been like, what are you talking about? But it really is, it is a huge, huge part of what we do here, both surgically and non-surgically. And so we just wanted to kind of start the conversation about what does that really mean? What is hair restoration? And more importantly than anything, I think what are the huge misconceptions of what you can expect from treatments when it comes to hair and what would be the realities of what you can really expect to come out of these things? Because her and I, number one, are fighting every day, we are fighting misconceptions, right?
Lindsey (02:54):
Yes.
Dr. Houssock (02:55):
Isn’t that the first problem when we meet a patient for the first time?
Lindsey (02:59):
Problem one I think is misconception, also not understanding how things work. That hair loss is progressive no matter how we slice it. It is progressive and so we’re fighting it throughout time. It’s not a one and done kind of thing. It’s not like, well, we treat you now and then you’re good for the rest of your life.
Dr. Houssock (03:18):
I wish her and I both wish we could cure you, cure you of your hair loss and hair thinning. But the general, there are many reasons for hair thinning and hair loss, but the most popular that is basically preyed upon is the run of the mill androgenic alopecia, which ultimately means male pattern hair thinning and hair loss. I swear there’s not a day that I either watch a TV show or I’m listening to one of the satellite radio stations and don’t get an advertisement for something for hair that’s going to change people’s life. Right?
Lindsey (03:51):
Absolutely.
Dr. Houssock (03:52):
And so that’s where we meet these patients at that point where they usually have tried some of those things and they say, oh yeah, it didn’t work. It didn’t work. And we always have to explain, okay, well first of all, what was your expectation? And most of the time they think that permanent hair loss is going to be brought back by a non-surgical treatment.
Lindsey (04:11):
Correct.
Dr. Houssock (04:12):
That’s number one. And so the biggest misconception of all is that these medications can bring back hair. And so no matter what medications we’re talking about, none of them can bring back permanent hair loss. So go through your most popular medications for men and what you tell them they can legitimately expect from the medications.
Lindsey (04:35):
Sure. So you’ve got two pretty basic medications that most everyone’s heard of, Finasteride Minoxidil. Usually when someone comes in, they’re familiar with them to some degree, whether they’ve tried over the counter Rogaine, which is Minoxidil or they’ve been on Finasteride at some point or they’ve heard about it, Finasteride is working on the genetic component of hair loss. So I think it’s one of our more powerful for men that we have because it’s working on that genetic component blocking that DHT and it can really help them not continue to lose as rapidly. And I have found, and I think you’ve seen this too in some patients where we do get some regrowth at the hairline hair that wasn’t gone, gone. And now it’s not that it’s growing back, but it was kind of there.
Dr. Houssock (05:18):
Oh, it was like hold it on for dear life.
Lindsey (05:21):
It was there, but now it looks like it looks like I’ve got more hair. Well, it was actually hair that was there, but now it’s stronger again and it’s not miniaturizing. And so you have to distinguish that. And so the expectation isn’t that I’m going to grow hair where there is no hair, but I can bring back some hair that’s faltering. It’s about to go. Minoxidil puts the hair in the growth phase. And so the main rub with Minoxidil is getting everyone understand that you will shed typically when you start it because your hair doesn’t know that it’s in the growth phase already. It goes, oh great, you want me in the growth phase? Let me reset. And so you have reset. That does happen and that can make people panic, but it’s short term. And then the hair stays in the growth phase and you get more hair on your head at one time.
(06:04):
If you think about it that way, because it’s staying in the growth phase, it’s not going through the growing, resting, shedding. It kind of sets itself up to stay. And so those are really nice medications and they work well together. They do two totally separate things. Minoxidil two, I find a lot of people have said, I tried over the counter Rogaine, it doesn’t work. My answer is always, how often were you using it over the counter Rogaine? You have to put on twice a day every day. You can’t really miss, you have to be very regular with it. It’s not that powerful to be able to just kind of do it. I did it a couple times a week, I didn’t see anything. Well, you’re not going to.
Dr. Houssock (06:39):
Yes.
Lindsey (06:41):
So we do have oral minoxidil, which is a lot easier to take a pill every day. And we also use a compounded topical that’s a little more powerful and that’s got a little Tretinoin in it and a little bit of steroid to help calm the scalp from that Tretinoin. But that Tretinoin helps everything penetrate deeper, more effective. So then you’ve got a more effective product, but still twice a day.
Dr. Houssock (07:01):
Right. So that’s the thing when it comes to those medications, and the reason we’re even bringing them up because we are going to talk surgery is that we can’t cure you of your androgenic alopecia. So we need to combat it. And the two ways to this day that are the best to combat it are those two medications. And the misconception number one is that when patients come and say, I’m ready for a hair transplant, and they say, this is the worst. I’m tired of taking medications, I’m ready for surgery. And both Lindsay and I go, oh no, totally wrong thought on this. No, if you’re ready for surgery, that means you are almost committing to medications forever because we certainly, if we decide to dive into surgery, we don’t want you losing more hair and then creating a new pattern of loss and we can’t transplant you forever.
(07:50):
You don’t have an unending supply. And so unfortunately misconception number one is that you’re going to be able to stop your meds when you do a surgery. And that is completely the opposite completely. And when we have younger patients, Lindsey and I won’t even talk to ’em about surgery until they’ve proven that they have committed to medications because the results are disastrous, if a patient comes in is actively losing hair, does not get on medications, has a surgery and then comes back in a year or two, now yes, they might have had a successful transplant, but they’ve continued to lose hair and now they need more hair and more hair and more hair. And Lindsey does the harvest for the FUE surgery and she’ll tell you she only has so much to work with and it never grows back.
Lindsey (08:36):
It doesn’t. And the worst thing that you could do honestly is create something that looks unnatural. In other words, over harvesting the back, so now the back looks really thin.
Dr. Houssock (08:45):
I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. Yes.
Lindsey (08:46):
And the top is really thick and you’re like, yeah, but that doesn’t match up. That’s not how it should look. And so that’s not good either.
Dr. Houssock (08:53):
No, actually, one of the things that patient population, our hair transplant population is they really want to look natural. It’s so important to ’em because they see the transplants of yesteryear that were really unnatural looking, and so they stress the fact that they want to look natural. But the irony of it is if you over harvest the back and you have this thick full head on the top, you actually look unnatural in that way. So we have to be so careful crossing that line.
Lindsey (09:19):
And I think part of what you do so well, and maybe you could take a moment now to explain is the design work of the transplant. And so there’s a lot of thought that goes into that when someone says, well, I’m losing at the front hairline, but also the crown and it’s their very first transplant. And how do you decide how that’s going to go? Because you put a lot of thought into that.
Dr. Houssock (09:39):
We do. And it really comes down to, I wish I had an ending supply of hair, but I don’t. And so depending on how much hair loss they’ve had, we have to decide where we can work and what looks most natural. So Lindsey and I will see somebody and they’ll say, yeah, I know I’m thin here, but I really hate my crown. And we always tell them, if you think about the natural progression, something called the Norwood scale, which we can pop up here, there’s a natural progression of hair thinning. And one of those ways is to have a beautiful frontal forelock with a crown that is thinning. If we were to happen to just choose the crown first and do nothing to the front, if you continue to lose more hair, you’d then have hair here and no hair here, which is not a natural pattern phenomenon.
(10:24):
You will look, you’ll look botched, you will look unnatural. So we always talk about whenever we do a hair restoration consultation, we talk about how the frontal for lock or framing of the face is the absolute number one most important thing first. And once we get that stabilized and you’ve got hair transplant there, that transplant interesting enough will not fall out. The rest of the hair on the top of the head, genetically speaking, it is resistant to the DHT that runs through your veins when you’re a male, there’s nothing you can do about it. But for whatever reason, the hair in the back of the head is resistant to it. So once we place those hairs on the front, they’re going to grow and they’re going to stay. That being said, if we don’t address the front first, you’re going to most naturally have more thinning in the future.
(11:08):
So we do think about that. It’s very anatomic. We don’t just look at you and say what bothers you? And then just make some kind of random hair pattern. We make a very anatomic pattern that really looks at everything, your hairline, your eyes, how far they go, how far your forehead is, what kind of chin length do you have. Believe it or not, all of that matters to make a natural hairline. And so yes, you have some say, but we will make sure that it’s very natural. So when it comes to the transplant, then we say, all right, they’re ready for surgery. And they’re like, great, put as much as you can up there, and then I just want this to be one and done. I don’t want to keep thinking about it. Just take what you can. I want all of it as much as you can and put it up there. And what do we say to that?
Lindsey (11:54):
Yeah, no.
Dr. Houssock (11:57):
Why do we say no to that?
Lindsey (12:00):
Well, like we talked about, you have a finite supply. We tend to not do more than 2000 hair units in a day. And there’s a number of reasons for that, but mostly that’s a pretty large amount. It’s a large amount of hair and it’s a long day.
Dr. Houssock (12:14):
How many hairs is that?
Lindsey (12:17):
Gosh. I mean, you can have groups, you could have single hairs back there. You could have doubles, you could have triples, you could have quads. I’ve even seen a few people with five to a unit. And so we take the whole unit. So we’re not talking 2000 hairs, we’re talking 2000 follicular units, which depending on the person is different.
Dr. Houssock (12:36):
Right.
Lindsey (12:36):
But it covers pretty good territory.
Dr. Houssock (12:38):
Yeah, it really does.
Lindsey (12:39):
It really does.
Dr. Houssock (12:41):
It’s also a lot to harvest for one day you have to sit in the chair and we have to harvest them. And then we have to make your design with many, many, many, many years experience between what Lindsey and I have been doing here and then before Dr. Vogel, what he was doing here. That’s a number that makes sense. And you’ll see, and I address this only because it always comes up in consultation. You’ll see people who say, oh, someone in Turkey had 4,500 or 5,000 follicular units. And I’m going to be honest, there’s two answers to that. One is that if you’re traveling all the way to Turkey, they’re not really caring about your longevity. They’re going to only see you one time and they’re going to do everything they can. They’re going to over harvest you, take everything out, put it all in, and then they’re going to pray it all hits and they don’t really care. They’re not going to see you again. Number two, when people have told me that they’ve had that much, and I see their head, I can tell you that either they didn’t, it was a lie or half of them died because it’s impossible.
Lindsey (13:38):
They’re placed too close. You have that blood supply.
Dr. Houssock (13:40):
Yes. So we can do this in stages. And so the misconception number two is this is a one and done surgery. It is a one and mostly done surgery where I agree with that, where you get the vast majority of your results in that one stage. But it is always very possible, and we are always very transparent about this, that you’re going to want more, you may want to touch up, you may want a second round, you may want 10 years from now a second round because you’ve lost more hair. And all of that depends on you because everybody comes to the table differently, right?
Lindsey (14:11):
Yes.
Dr. Houssock (14:11):
So the person who has no hair on the top of their head, they’re going to need multiple rounds to get the volume they want the person who just needs the temple area, maybe some in the crown, they may be good with one and we’ll see ’em in 10 years, right? So misconception that it’s one and done. Absolutely not the case. And we’re really good about educating about that.
Lindsey (14:33):
I think we are. I think we are. And I think for the most part our patients understand that because we talk about that hair loss is progressive. And so it’s talked about from the beginning, and so you understand we’re in it long term. We’re not going anywhere.
Dr. Houssock (14:49):
Right.
Lindsey (14:49):
We want you to be happy long term.
Dr. Houssock (14:52):
Right. And so again, I wish I could I who wouldn’t, if we could, give you the full head of hair that you had when you were 12 and just to do it all in one day and we all want the world, I would love to give that.
Lindsey (15:05):
Absolutely. I’d like to do it in four hours.
Dr. Houssock (15:08):
That would be great. But unfortunately, that’s just not the way it is. We are working with human tissues that are alive. And so the reality of what can be expected in one round is pretty significant. But within the realm of just understanding that Lindsey and I are not robots and you are not a robot. And so we have to work within the realm of human ability and also your ability to keep cells alive because these things are, they have to have the right environment to take. And if we try to push that envelope, it’s much like fat grafting in a lot of ways with patients who get fat grafting. You have to be careful of pushing the envelope or nothing will live, nothing. So Lindsey, those things that you take in the back, those beautiful, wonderful graphs, they don’t grow back.
Lindsey (15:56):
Nope.
Dr. Houssock (15:57):
Why not? Why don’t they grow back?
Lindsey (15:58):
I’m taking ’em all the way down to the root. I’m taking the bulb so that it’ll live up here. And so we’re actually literally transplanting the hair from the back of your head and putting it up here. There’s nothing left back there. I’ve taken the whole follicular unit.
Dr. Houssock (16:11):
And you don’t notice that it doesn’t bother people that you do that? That sounds scary.
Lindsey (16:16):
So it’s funny because the punch size is tiny, so I wear three and a half times zoomed loops so that I can actually see it using a 0.9 millimeter punch, most of the time. Sometimes with our African-American patients, I need a 1.0 punch just because their hair caliber is a little bit different and there’s a little more curl to it. But yeah, they’re teeny tiny. And so you do look a little bit nutty that day. You’ve got a bunch of little spots that you can see, but usually in a day or two, they’re closed up. They look pretty normal and your hair around it starts growing back in. And we haven’t taken all the hair in a given area. We’re taking one of every 4, 5, 6 hairs and we’re kind of spreading them out throughout the scalp. And so that’s the other reason you are a little limited because you want to make sure you’re evenly dispersed. You want it to look even when you’re done and when it all goes back in, you don’t want to have a patch that’s like, oh, you took all the hairs in this section. That’s not right.
Dr. Houssock (17:13):
It’s got to be throughout the back. So that is a way to harvest taking them individually. The other option is that strip procedure, and everyone calls it old school, but it’s because it’s older than the FUE, but it’s certainly still very, very common in our practice. Lindsey and I will harvest an entire strip of the scalp in the back, close that down with sutures, and then you take that strip of hair, we take it under the microscope, our technologists will take it underneath the microscope, cut it into these individual follicular units and then transplant to the top. So that is absolutely still an option. And who chooses what Linds? Why does one choose FUE? Why choose a strip?
Lindsey (17:49):
So you have to figure with a strip, it’s like any other surgery, you do buy the scar, and so you have a linear scar on the back of your head. So I find a lot of our young guys who maybe wear their hair shorter or older gentlemen who wear their hair shorter. Some of our ladies who wear their hair shorter or shave the back up, really, they would have a scar then. But most of our women, I would say on average do the strip surgery because we have longer hair that we’ll cover. And a lot of our older gentlemen who wear their hair a little bit longer will do the strip surgery. I would say those are our two most common.
Dr. Houssock (18:19):
How long does it have to be in the back for us to do the strip?
Lindsey (18:22):
Well, really probably probably about an inch, inch and a half.
Dr. Houssock (18:26):
Yeah, so that’s the thing.
Lindsey (18:27):
If you want to give it a little extra.
Dr. Houssock (18:29):
The problem is that Lindsey and I ask you to shave the entire back of your head if you are doing an FUE, we need that amount of space. And so if you are completely averse to that, meaning that you’re going to have to wait for your hair to grow back in the back, and if you already wear your hair longer, you’re really not going to love that process though, though it’s temporary, you’re not going to love the process. So again, a lot of our women or our men who wear their hair a little bit longer, not just not shaved and know they’re always going to, they prefer the strip because, and they will. I mean, we see strips from the 1990s come in here and they look beautiful. So it’s hard to find them. Along as there’s enough, as long as you’re not planning on shaving your head for the rest of your life, the strip really does well. So it’s still very much an option and you don’t have to commit to that full head shave if that’s daunting for you.
Lindsey (19:22):
And the other thing we do sometimes with the FUE is we will stealth shave people so we can shave sections. And so you grow your hair longer, I would argue an inch and a half to two inches or more as long as you possibly can because it gives us more that we can cover. And then we take out sections and we’ll shave a section here, shave a section below, and then the hair can kind of cover that. And so when it’s wet, it is see-through. But when it’s dry, you really can’t tell that we were even back there. The problem with that is you’re limited on your number. And so I would argue 800 to a thousand grafts is max, depending on how many sections we can do and how big your head is.
Dr. Houssock (19:59):
And you’re not giving us the whole amount and we’re trying to make it natural. And if Lindsey and I over harvest those strips, you’re going to look like a tiger back there when it grows in.
Lindsey (20:06):
Not good.
Dr. Houssock (20:07):
So we’re careful about that. But I will say a lot of our professionals like that, because they don’t have to shave the back of their head, they can go right back to work. They’re not getting the scar. And so if you’re open to multiple procedures with smaller numbers, a lot of times that really works. The downtime for this can really be a couple of days. If you’re somebody who’s open to going to work and recovering, we can find a lot of ways to camouflage this patient population doesn’t want people to know. And so we really do have great ways for you to camouflage pretty early, whether it means wearing a hat or how we cut your hair or I feel like that should be last concern, but at the end of the day, if you want to hide that scar or not have that scar, you may have to shave the back of your head and then you have to plan around that. Right?
Lindsey (20:56):
For sure.
Dr. Houssock (20:57):
That’s really what it comes down to.
Lindsey (20:59):
I think the other misconception that we see sometimes and is that once you get this done, you’re done after and there’s nothing else to do. And that’s not true either. You really have to take care of it.
Dr. Houssock (21:10):
Right, right.
Lindsey (21:11):
It’s not like you leave here and go about your life the next day and everything’s hunky dory and everything’s great, and no one will know I ever did it. Well, sure, but there are techniques that we use to help those grafts live. And so you have some homework. And you have to take care of it.
Dr. Houssock (21:28):
It’s like a brand new fresh little garden. You have to nurture it. And it’s not hard to do. It’s really easy to do, but you do have to do it, and you have to give yourself that time to recover. It’s not like going and getting a pedicure. I mean, you really have to do a good job of taking care of it, but if you do, they’ll grow. They want to grow. They want to grow. And I would tell you our guys, they get a whole new lease on life. The confidence is there, it’s awesome, but they still are very private about it, even though everyone is kind of knows about hair restoration. I mean, you see so many famous people getting it now.
Lindsey (22:02):
So many.
Dr. Houssock (22:03):
It’s very common. But the one other misconception, and unfortunately it’s just part of social media and seeing people can portray what they want. Someone might get a hair transplant, but they also still might be using other camouflaging ability, meaning they might be using fibers or color or they’re filtering their photos. And so yes, it’s important to be excited about your result, but there is nothing more important for Lindsey and I than to prepare you for what’s realistic. I will not, we are straight shooters when it comes to that. Social media is not a straight shooter and neither are the commercials, the commercial showing literally hair transplant quality just by taking a pill. It should be illegal, but it’s not, it’s marketing. Half our consultations are really dispelling misconceptions because of how bad the advertising is out there, right?
Lindsey (23:01):
Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Houssock (23:03):
It’s crazy.
Lindsey (23:03):
It’s nuts. And one thing that I think they don’t ever show and our patients definitely experience is when hair transplant grows in, it’s kind of wiry.
Dr. Houssock (23:11):
Yeah.
Lindsey (23:11):
It’s got a different texture for a little while, and that can last a year even. We’ve seen it up to 18 months. And so in the photos, oh yeah, my hair grew in at four months and it looks fabulous and it looks just like all my other hair. And it’s like, well, maybe, but probably not, probably not.
Dr. Houssock (23:28):
Probably not. And it depends on what kind of hair you have. So people’s results are very dependent on what you come to the table with. Lindsey and I can work on anyone’s type of hair we work with, doesn’t matter very thin and fine to the thickest and curliest hair. We love it all. It all has its pros and cons, but your result will be based on what you come to the table with. If you have really thin hair, that hair is not going to cover as well as a beautiful, thick, full curled hair. So it’s just reality. So again, part of the consultation is us being realistic with you about that and what you can expect.
Lindsey (24:03):
And we also can’t change the color. So our salt and pepper gentleman will sometimes say, could you just take all the dark hair? Uh, no, no, I can’t. First of all, I’m going to put dye on it so it’s all going to look the same to me. But you want that. You don’t want to have all white hair left in the back and then dark hair up top. It won’t look natural. And so as nice as it sounds, it’s not real. You got to take what you take.
Dr. Houssock (24:28):
The interesting thing about salt and pepper hair is it actually we love taking care of that hair.
Lindsey (24:33):
It’s great.
Dr. Houssock (24:34):
Something happens when you lose the pigment to your hair. It feels thicker and healthier. It’s very unusual. You would think it would be the opposite, but when we see a salt and pepper head, we are thrilled.
Lindsey (24:43):
It’s great.
Dr. Houssock (24:44):
Yeah, the coverage is really good. So we don’t get deterred by that at all.
Lindsey (24:49):
No.
Dr. Houssock (24:50):
But yeah, I mean there are these transitions, and ultimately when you come to see us in practice, we have so many before and afters that we can show you. I will tell you it’s a private group. So I have more before and afters from my body contouring than I do my hair because of the patient population. There’s just a little bit more private. But that being said, we’ve been doing this. Now I have hundreds and hundreds of cases to show that. And so we can find people who are similar to your hair quality to give you an idea as to what to expect.
Lindsey (25:22):
And we do the same for PRP where we try to show a similar ethnicity, similar hair type, because everyone looks different. And then it’s not really fair if I’m showing you someone that’s not your hair.
Dr. Houssock (25:31):
Not at all. It’s not fair.
Lindsey (25:33):
It’s not going to look that way.
Dr. Houssock (25:34):
No, no. I mean, it would be great if we could just show you the thick, curly haired people and say, look at how beautiful, but ultimately, if your hair is like mine, it isn’t going to cover the same. And you need to know that. So we give you almost a report card grade of how good your hair is at coverage when you see us in consult. So you leave here with a real knowledge of what to expect. And yeah, you might’ve expected more because of what is out there and the advertisements that are out there. But neither of us will ever feel bad about being completely transparent. And because of it, we rarely have an unhappy patient that matters. I think whenever it comes to, it doesn’t matter if we’re talking hair or if we’re talking cosmetics, or even when we’re talking about injections. No, the unhappy patient stems from the patient who did not have expectations that were jiving with reality.
(26:24):
And quite frankly, we take ownership of that. And that is our job. In a consultation before you have a procedure to be extremely open and honest about what you can expect. And if we lose you because we’re honest, neither of us are going to lose a wink of sleep, we’re going to be thrilled that we caught that. You shouldn’t have invested in this treatment because your expectations were not going to be met. And everyone gets saved that way. But that’s so rare. It’s much more common for patients to come back and say, I’m so glad you were so honest and open about the realities of what I can expect. And because of it, that just perpetuates them being happy in the end, right?
Lindsey (27:04):
Sure, absolutely. I always say if someone’s unhappy, I didn’t explain something.
Dr. Houssock (27:09):
Yeah, it’s on us. And so we do take that seriously, and we do try the best. Now we’re human too, but we try our best to explain. And also we also can’t, we’re not, what is it, we’re not able to tell the future. We can’t tell if you’re going to be, we have ideas about experiences that we’ve had and that we know how people have fared, but we never really know for sure. And so yes, this is a live moving being, and we can only tell you what the chances are. And the rest is really truly up to chance, right?
Lindsey (27:42):
Yes. Yes, a hundred percent. And I think some of our younger patients who come in are sometimes a little bit frustrated because they want surgery. And the answer is, I can move you forward to talking with Dr. Houssock, but you need to show stability first. We need to get you stable. We need to get things calmed down to where you’re not rapidly losing. And then that’s the point where you move forward. And we’ve had a lot of patients who have done the right things and then we have now transplanted them, and they’re transplants growing it, and it works. It works. But had we transplanted them when they first came in, we would’ve all been unhappy.
Dr. Houssock (28:18):
It’s our job to protect our patients from making mistakes that they just truly didn’t know was the answer. Right? We are the professionals in this particular thing, but we always say, we know you’re disappointed and you want your hair transplant tomorrow, but I promise you, if you follow this regimen and you do these medications, we love the surgery. We would do it 24/7 if we could. So if we’re saying, wait, it’s because we want you to the best result. Yes. What do we say? I’m not Jiffy Lube. We’re not like traveling salesman. We are a medical practice and we want your best result. So trust us. And if you don’t trust us, that’s fine too. If you decide to go somewhere else, that’s fine too. But in the end, Lindsey and I are going to sleep well.
Lindsey (28:58):
Yes. Yes, we will.
Dr. Houssock (28:59):
Alright, Linds, well I think that covered what to expect, at least when it comes to the transplants. At some point we’ll probably dive more into, Hey, what’s the day like? Because I think that people wonder what’s our day? And so probably on another episode we will dive a little bit further into our schedule.
Lindsey (29:19):
I’ll give a little preview, there’s a lot of sleeping.
Dr. Houssock (29:22):
Not for us though.
Lindsey (29:25):
Not for us. We’ll talk about it.
Dr. Houssock (29:27):
Talk to you later.
Lindsey (29:28):
Carry on Dr. Houssock.
Dr. Houssock (29:30):
Bye-bye. Carry on. Perfectly Imperfect is the authentically human podcast navigating the realities of aesthetic medicine. JEV Plastic Surgery is located in Owings Mills, Maryland. To learn more about us, go to JEVplasticsurgery.com or follow us on Instagram @DrCareHoussock, spelled D-R-C-A-R-E-H-O-U-S-S-O-C-K, or just look in the show notes for links. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it and subscribe to Perfectly Imperfect on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you’d like to listen to podcasts.