Your donor area was over-harvested. To make matters worse, the grafts taken were outside the permanent zone and the area of depletion goes both too high and too low. The only treatment that really works for this is Scalp MicroPigmentation. Some people suggest that areas like this get covered with body hair, but body hair could be used (possibly 3000 or more body hair grafts).

See here for the best and most certain solution:  https://scalpmicropigmentation.com/scar-covering/

A couple of years ago, I had sudden hair loss which triggered bad anxiety and depression. So much so that I couldn’t function. Last summer I had a dream job between semesters at school, but when I was there I couldn’t think straight my anxiety and stress was so bad that it seemed to make the hair loss worse.  I subsequently had to quit school for a year and put all my money into getting a hair transplant.  Now, one year later, I do have a better head of hair but I hate how much I have allowed hair loss to affect me and I regret that I let it affect me so much. Is this normal?

A World Champion weight lifter told me that he was able to control everything in his life, his body, his health, his education, his friends but the one stumbling block for him was his hair loss as he had no control over it. Many years ago, he had a hair transplant by a doctor who he said “mutilated him”. Yes, he had terrible hair transplants and my job was to fix it. After two surgeries, he looked good and we became close friends still to this day.  He has met my entire family and even taught self-defense to some of my kids when they were in their late teens.

Hair transplants, in your case, did help you with a problem that was out of your control and it is a credit to you that you took charge of your life. It takes courage to get a surgery to deal with hair loss because sometimes there is no other option.

I hear about the self-confidence issue all of the time. You would not believe how many wealthy, very successful people I have performed hair transplants on and the reason driving them is almost always the issue of “self confidence”. A few well known people in the world of tech, some CEOs of fortune 500 companies and some very famous actors, had hair transplants by me in the very early part of their career. We have become friends and the actors, as a good example, absolutely believe that the hair transplants transformed them in terms of their “self-confidence” giving them the freedom to be themselves and to do what they do best without worrying about hair loss. Issues of self-confidence is not something men talk about to just anybody, but to the man in the mirror, they tell it the way it is.  Even Donald Trump has a hair problem and I am sure that is part of his insecurity.  The post below from Reddit shows the importance of family and friends in opening up and talking about hair loss problems.

Received the first "OMG your hair comment" from tressless

No, Finasteride will not help the grafts grow. Finasteride works to accomplish two objectives:

(1) slows or stops the balding process or

(2) prevents shock loss in men under 50 who have a hair transplant.

The likeliness of shock loss for men decreases with age. It is worse for men in their 20s and less so in their 30s and so on.

The degree of thinning that you are experiencing would suggest that you should see a doctor who most likely conduct Bulk Measurements of your hair to determine the degree of the thinning that you are presently having. If the diagnosis is early genetic hair loss, the most common cause of hair loss in young men and you are probably following your father’s balding problem, then the best treatment would be the drug Finasteride, which is highly effective in men of your age, may not only stop the hair loss but possibly reverse it. If you are developing a more advanced balding pattern, the best test to get is the HAIRCHECK instrument test which will determine the Bulk Measurements of your hair.  This will show, over a one-year time frame, how effective the drug therapy will be. Once you know this information, then you and your doctor need to develop a MASTER PLAN which will define what you need.

I’m 29 and I was on Propecia & Minoxodil for almost eight years and I could save my hair till now but recently I am experiencing severe side effect from Propecia so I decided to stop it. I stopped Propecia two month ago and my hair is falling like rain! And I lost half of my hair in two month, what do I do?

We call this “catch-up hair loss” and it is one of the terrible things about stopping Finasteride when it is working well enough to hold on to most of your hair. Unfortunately, the sexual side effects are a complication that most men will not tolerate and eventually a hair transplant becomes the only option.

Ask a family member or a friend for an opinion before you jump in and do something that you might regret. There are many things that can be done for this.  If you are a male over 25, a hair transplant works great. However, I always tell young men like you that “A GOOD DECISION TODAY IS A GOOD DECISION TOMORROW” so if you are under 25, be patient and wait until you know how much balding you will develop.

The "I look fine in the mirror/horrible in photos" effect — what is it?! from tressless