I said I would reserve judgement until 6 months, so here goes!
My position at the moment is : I'm happy with the hairline, even though a lot of the new hairs are quite wiry. The area further back on my scalp has not yet filled in fully, and I expect it to take a few months to thicken up. But I am seeing growth back there. Again, the new hairs are growing, but they're individual strands (from 2 or 3 follicular units), so I hope they will improve over time and reduce the visible thin patch towards the back of my scalp.
In terms of how far back Dr Ilker went, I can see now that there's still going to be a thin patch on top once everything's grown in. But hopefully I will be able to hide it with clever styling or just plain old concealer (my crutch of choice). A different surgeon might have put fewer grafts in the front third (behind the hairline) and covered my whole crown, but what he did was probably a better long-term strategy. I can have the crown filled in at a later date once I've established how much more hair I'm going to lose. Hopefully the Finasteride will counter some of that loss, or at least slow it down.
The main thing is to concentrate on the positives so far and not worry too much about how it's going to grow in later. I've had a few hair complements, which is amazingly gratifying! A friend who I'd told said her boyfriend noticed something different about me, but couldn't figure out what - and another who said they liked my 'new haircut'.
I'm still self-conscious about the back of my head, but I think having an actual hairline is amazing! By the autumn hopefully it will all have thickened up nicely.
