STOP! Please read my story first!

Disclaimer

The information on this page is purely the thoughts, opinions and experiences of one hair transplant patient (i.e. me). I have no medical background or expertise in the field of hair transplantation or restoration. The purpose of this information is not to promote or demote hair transplantation surgery. I simply wish to tell my story to people who may be considering such surgery. Also please note that hair transplantation procedures today might be different to the one that I describe here (from 2004).

Thank you.

Introduction

Hi there. Well about an hour ago I was standing in my kitchen making my evening meal of sweet and sour chicken. As I was waiting for the rice to boil I started thinking about the events that have taken place, or rather I have put myself through, in the past couple of years. I have had a hair transplant procedure and now I want to tell my story to other people who may be considering similar surgery.

Why do I want to tell my story?

That’s simple, because I wish I could have read what I am about to type when I was considering the surgery back in 2003/4 and I hope that someone will benefit from reading this text.

Hang on. Would I have taken any notice of this even if I had read it?

I don’t know. Probably not.

Why not?

Because anyone who is considering any type of cosmetic surgery (especially at the grand old age of 21 as I was) must be pretty desperate, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory manor. I simply mean that if you are so unhappy or so self-conscious about your appearance that you are considering surgery to improve it then not much will deter you. Even if somebody had told me that only 50% of hair transplant procedures are successful (which is probably not the case by the way) I would have thought “well I’m young and I’ll heal quickly and I’m generally lucky so I’ll be one of those patients who get results that could have been created by god himself”. Yep, I was that stupid.

I assume that you are reading this because you are currently considering hair restoration surgery. And if you are anything like I was (before the surgery) you are probably unhappy with your current hair, obviously! You’re probably self-conscious about your hair. You probably lie in bed at night and think that if you had better hair then you’d be much happier, more confident, have a sexy girlfriend, and life would be generally so much better. You are probably searching the internet for answers to your many questions such as how much does it cost? Are the results natural? Will people notice? Will it leave scarring? Will it hurt? Do I have to take time off work? etc etc etc.

Well by telling my story I hope to provide some kind of answers for you. Answers that are based on my experiences that is, I wish to reiterate that I am not a surgeon and I don’t have any expertise in the field of hair restoration. But if you are still interested in hearing my story then please read on.

About me

I don’t want to be identified for personal reasons so there aren’t, and will never be, any photos of myself before or after the surgery. Sorry! Now this may sound strange but I haven’t actually lost any of my natural hair, YET. That’s right, I’m not going bald. Hell I’m only in my twenties. So why did I want a hair transplant? The answer is VANITY and I’ll be the first to admit it.

I was born with a large forehead and a U shaped hairline which looks like it is receding. It’s been like that since I was a baby. As I entered into my mid-late teens I became particularly aware and self-conscious of this. I got it in to my head that people would THINK I’m going bald and the opposite sex wouldn’t find me attractive. I remember going for a hair cut when I was fifteen and the hair dresser saying ‘Oh you’ve got a bit of a receding hair line haven’t you?’ She then realised that I probably didn’t want to hear that at the age of 15 and tried to dig her way out of the hole by saying ‘but you won’t be worrying about that just yet will you?’ If you don’t worry about something like that at the age of 15 then when the hell else should you worry about it?

So I became very conscious about this and always had my hair styled with a big fringe so that people couldn’t see what was underneath. At one point I got quite depressed about it. So when I got to my late teens/early twenties and heard about hair transplant surgery I thought “WOW, this is the answer to all my problems!. If I get my front hairline straightened up I’ll be more confident, I’ll be happier, I’ll have more luck with the ladies…….etc etc etc”.

The Consultation

So fast forward to my early twenties (20-21) and I go for a consultation at a hair restoration clinic that I found on the internet. I’m not going to tell you which clinic this was because that isn’t what this is about. Anyway, I’d imagine they’re all pretty much the same. So I go in and sit down with one of the surgeons. The consultation lasts about 15 minutes where I tell him the situation and it goes something like this.

He takes a look at my hair and then says something along the lines of:

‘Yeah no problem. You have thick dark hair which is perfect for such surgery. It will look perfectly natural and will leave no visible scars. It will cost £1500 and can be completed with one single outpatient session. Any questions?’

I say something along the lines of:

‘Yes. What does the surgery entail?’

He says something along the lines of:

‘A thin strip of scalp and hair about 3 inches long will be removed from the back of your head, about halfway between the crown and the neck hair line. While your scalp is being stitched back together the thin strip which was removed will be chopped up into grafts of 1 or 2 hairs. Then tiny holes will be made in your head where you want the hairs to be placed. The grafts will be placed into these holes. After the surgery there will be slight swelling and redness around the transplanted hairs which will subside within 5 days, after which you can return to work. It will take an extra week for the cut on the back of your head, from where the strip of scalp was removed, to heal fully.’

As it happens I STUPIDLY didn’t have a long list of detailed questions to ask about the surgery. My main objective then was to simply find out for sure if a hair transplant was a possibility for me and how much it would dent my limited funds. He answered both of those questions pretty well. I hadn’t thought about the details so I didn’t ask many questions. I just left the clinic knowing that I had a lot of thinking to do. “Now that I know it’s possible, should I go through with it?”

Making my mind up

A whole year went by between having the consultation and going back for my surgery. That was plenty of thinking time so I can’t say that it was a rush decision. As I said earlier I thought it was the answer to all my problems and would make me much happier and would let me enjoy life much more. I was blinded by these thoughts and hopes so I don’t think that anyone could have persuaded me against it.

Throughout that year I thought about the surgery everyday. I would run the whole thing through in my head again and again. What could go wrong? What would be the worst case scenario? Every time I thought of something I didn’t know the answer to I would give the clinic a call and speak to a surgeon. They were pretty helpful in that respect and answered all of my questions honestly.

So it was just down to me to make a decision, yes or no. I had the money in the bank and I had convinced myself that this would make me happier. All I had to do was make the final leap, tell my parents what I was planning to do and then book the appointment. I did it!

Before the surgery

A few days before the surgery I received a leaflet from the clinic detailing the things I should and shouldn’t do before, and on, the big day. Things like I SHOULDN’T eat spicy food, I SHOULD bring with me a loose fitting baseball cap. Simple things, nothing to worry about.

The day of the surgery

So it’s the day of the surgery. I have an afternoon appointment because it’s a two hour train journey to the clinic. I get there on time and they sign me in. I have to wait in this tiny little room while they dig out my consultation notes. The guy who did my consultation wasn’t there that day and nobody else knew anything about me.

So they find my notes and the surgeon, who will perform my surgery, comes for a quick chat. He takes a look at my hair and briefly asks me what I want done. I tell him.

At this point he tells me some information that I didn’t know. You see at my consultation I was told that after the surgery there would be some slight swelling and redness around the transplanted hair. That’s no big surprise right? I was also told that this would subside within 5 days while the tissue healed and secured the hairs in place. So I simply assumed that after 5 days the transplanted hair would be in place and I would have a brand new hairline. I was very WRONG!

What actually happens is the transplanted hairs will completely fall out after the surgery. Hair grows in three month cycles so you will have to wait at least three months for the hairs to begin to re-grow. Notice I said BEGIN to re-grow. Hair doesn’t all grow at once, some hair follicles stay dormant for months. So it will actually take 12-18 months for your new hairline to appear.

This information kind of threw me. I had spent a whole year deciding to go through with the surgery and then they tell me this, literally minutes before the operation. That was an obstacle that I hadn’t been expecting to encounter. I had come this far and didn’t want to go back home and reconsider for another year. I suppose it didn’t really change the fact that I wanted a new hairline so I decided to go ahead with it anyway. They made me sign a piece of paper to say that I had been told this information and that I understand and accepted it. I signed the form and then went through to the operating theatre.

In the operating theatre

The operating theatre looked like a small, pretty old, dentist’s surgery (you sit in a chair similar to a dentist’s chair while they perform the operation). I take off my shirt and sit in the chair. In the room with me, preparing for the surgery, is my surgeon and two young female nurses. One of the nurses passes me a folder full of DVDs and asks me to select a film that I’d like to watch. I select a DVD and she inserts it into the laptop which is positioned on the table in front of me. The film starts and so does the surgery.

The first thing that happened was the surgeon shaved the back of my head slightly so that the hair was just a few millimetres long. He only shaved the thin strip that he was going to remove and use to make the grafts. The most painful bit is next. Four injections of local anaesthetic, two in the back of my head and two in my forehead. After a few minutes my head was completely numb so the surgeon got to work on cutting the thin strip of scalp away. I can’t feel a thing at this point. I know he’s working away simply because my head keeps moving slightly as he does his job. He removes the strip, passes it to the nurses, and then stitches my scalp back together. The back of my head feels very tight.

While the nurses begin chopping up the strip of scalp into small grafts the surgeon begins creating the holes on my forehead for the grafts to go into. He creates the tiny holes one-by-one with a sharp stabbing implement. I obviously can’t feel any pain from this because of the local anaesthetic but I can feel the downward pressure and hear the horrible crunching noise each time the stabbing implement goes into my forehead. Occasionally blood trickles towards my eyes but he wipes it off quickly.

After the surgeon made the holes in my forehead and the nurses had finished creating the small grafts of hair the only thing left to do was to put the hair grafts into the holes. This is the time consuming part. The whole operation lasted about 4.5 hours. It probably took about 3 hours to insert the hairs into my forehead. The surgeon began inserting the hairs. He did about half of them before he left the room and another nurse entered. She took over inserting the hairs and finished the job.

Sitting still for over fours hours in a dentist’s chair isn’t as easy as it sounds. That was probably the most uncomfortable four hours of my life. But the surgery is over now and they showed me a mirror. I looked utterly ridiculous. One nurse described my forehead as looking like a strawberry which I suppose is pretty accurate. Red, swollen, with tiny little hairs sticking out. Now they tell me some more information that I didn’t know.

I was told at my consultation that the transplanted hair would look natural. So again I just assumed that the transplanted hair would be the same density as natural hair. Well I was WRONG there too! Transplanted hair is nowhere near as dense as natural hair. In fact the surgeon told me that the most perfect hair transplant in the world will only be about 70% the density of natural hair, they can’t make it any better than that. I wish they told me this before the operation when they delivered the other ‘good’ news. Those two pieces of information together MIGHT have swayed my decision and I may have got up and walked out of there like I should have done. In fact I should never have been there in the first place but I’ve only got myself to blame for that.

So after the surgery is over they gave me a packet of pain killers, an information sheet about how to look after my new hair grafts, and then they showed me the door. Sitting at the train station waiting for my train home was probably the lowest I have ever felt in my life. I’m not looking for sympathy here, I’m just saying that my mind was a bit of a mess after the trauma of the surgery and all the thoughts that were rushing through my head. It was at this moment that it hit me….what the hell had I done???? I’m 21 years old and I’ve just undergone a hair transplantation procedure. The funny thing is that I’d always been against cosmetic surgery. You do crazy stuff when you’re desperate.

After the Surgery

I was told that the two weeks following the surgery were vital. It takes a while for the new hair grafts to take hold and establish a blood supply. For those two weeks you have to be extremely careful not to knock the grafts out. Any grafts that are still in place after the two weeks are probably going to be there forever. If a graft comes out before it has planted itself properly then it won’t grow back.

After the two weeks, pretty much all of my grafts were still in place so that meant that pretty much all of the grafts had planted successfully. Great! But that doesn’t mean that the transplanted hairs would just start where they left off and continue growing normally. That would be too simple. The hair follicles fall out anyway over the next couple of weeks so that you’re left with an area of skin which is hairless but noticeable scarred and still healing. The new hairs actually take 1–3 months to begin growing again and they don’t all grow all at once. A couple of months down the line I noticed the first few wispy hairs begin to push their way through. Because of the way hair grows (in cycles) it could take between 12 – 18 months for all of the transplanted hairs to make an appearance. So when a surgeon says that you’ll be able to go back to work 5 days after your surgery, you probably can but you won’t be taking with you a brand new hairline!

The Results

So after about 18 months all of the new grafts had begun to grow and I was seeing my new hairline. So in this respect the surgery was a success and the clinic had done a ‘good job’.

But did the hairline look natural?

NO! The hairs that were growing through were far, far thicker than hairs at your hairline should be. Because of this they stuck out like a sore thumb. You could clearly see where the natural hair stopped and the grafts started.

Was there scarring?

Yes of course there was. I have a three inch scar at the back of my head which, admittedly, will only be visible if I shave my head. But there is also tissue scarring at the front of my head where the hair grafts were inserted. This is normally covered up by the hair grafts but if I remove the hair grafts (by plucking) then the scar tissue will be clearly visible.

If I could go back in time, would I go through with the surgery?

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!!!

Would I advise somebody else to have it done?

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!!!

Should another person have it done?

I don’t know, that’s their decision to make. I’d imagine that there are some people in the world who have a hair transplant procedure and love the results. The only advice I can give you is this:

1. Research the treatment thoroughly. Have a consultation with a surgeon and get every answer to every question that crosses your mind.
2. Ask yourself this question - What is the worst case scenario and can I live with it?

Do I regret having it done?

Not really. I remember how conscious I was back then about my hairline. I remember how desperate I was to have it straightened up. And I remember how I thought that a hair transplant would be the answer to all my problems. If I hadn’t gone through with the procedure I would probably still be thinking the same things. It sounds strange but I think I had to go through with the procedure to find out for sure that it wasn’t the right thing to do (for me).

So where am I now?

Well at the moment I think I would do just about anything to get rid of these damn hair grafts for good. However, as I’m painfully discovering, permanent hair removal isn’t that straight forward. There are countless so called ‘permanent hair removal devices’ which you can buy off the internet and use from the privacy and comfort of your own home without any pain or scarring. But I don’t think any of these devices actually work (I’ve tried one of them).

I’m getting tonnes of conflicting information, even from the professionals. I have had three consultations with reputable laser clinics and their responses were as follows:

Clinic 1: Yes we can remove the grafts no problem. When shall we start?
Clinic 2: No sorry, we can’t remove your grafts. Transplanted hair is rooted much deeper into the scalp, lasers just won’t touch them.
Clinic 3: I think we could but we are not going to. Lasers aren’t accurate enough to target single hair follicles which means some of your natural hair will be killed also. Anyway, we can’t use a laser on scar tissue.

Clinics 1 and 3 were actually two different branches of the same surgery!

I haven’t done too much research yet but proper permanent hair removal seems to be a long and drawn out process spanning months or, more realistically, years. I think my best bet would be to research electrolysis so that’s what I am going to do. I would say I’ll keep you posted but I’m not sure if I will make another post after this. I’m not into blogging, I just wanted to tell my story in the off chance that someone out there might find it useful to know when making their own decision.

So that’s all I have to say at the moment. Thank you for listening and if you’ve read this far then you deserve a damn medal. Now go and make yourself a nice cup of tea, you probably need one now.

Yours,

Hair Transplant Guy