ABOUT SIX MONTHS AGO, I was in Annette’s salon for the usual: a
relaxing shampoo and scalp massage, a trim, an adult beverage or two,
and some randy conversation. For 30 minutes every other month, Annette
gives me the perfect dose of life therapy, and I leave her boutique
feeling renewed.
Unfortunately, this particular visit took an uninvited turn. Annette
was just getting started when she politely said, “Uh- oh. You’re
getting a little thin up here.”
I snatched the mirror from her
hand to get a better look. There it was. A tennis ball-size area near
the top of my crown that was all but hairless. How long had that been
there? Probably since the last time I looked at the back of my head.
Day
by day, I’d watched my forehead grow larger. My hairline was making a
painfully slow and systematic retreat. Every strand that found its way
into my bathroom sink was another harbinger of the spiritual death of
my virility. But that was the hair loss I knew about. When Annette alerted me to the balding on the back of my head, I knew I had to do something.
The
first and easiest option was to shave it all off. Many men have
embraced baldness as a fashion trend, transforming their melon into a
gleaming, manly orb. But most of those dudes are blessed with stunning
good looks, unnaturally fit bodies, or that certain je ne sais quoi
that makes a clean pate attractive. The 12 women I’ve dated seriously
who are now married to someone other than me can attest that I have
none of these qualities. Voluntary baldness was out.
There were
other, less intensive and not so expensive solutions, such as miracle
shampoos and mysterious laser re-growth treatments. I did some research
and found little more than a few shreds of data detailing their
success. I passed those methods off as hocus-pocus. I briefly
considered a hairpiece. But I’ve seen hundreds of rug-wearers in my
day, and they’ve all looked ridiculous. I was not about to join their
hair club.
All of which brought me to hair transplantation. You
hirsute types might not be familiar with the process. A doctor takes a
swath of your scalp where hair is abundant, slices it into tiny grafts
of one or two follicles each, and then plants them in the parts of your
head where hair is thinning. It’s the most permanent and promising
solution. But it’s also the most expensive and painful. After a few
weeks of poking around hair-transplant web sites and a bit of
soul-searching, I scheduled a free consultation with one of the more
reputable surgeons in town.
The first thing my consultant did
was unfurl a map-size piece of paper that had several sketches of the
tops of heads in varying stages of hair loss. He asked me to select the
one that most closely resembled my own appearance. He immediately
disagreed and selected a different likeness with far less hair than I
had. Soon, the surgeon joined us and proceeded through the same ritual.
He compared me to a sketch of a man who was almost bald. I’m
a salesman by trade, and I recognized the situation for what it was: an
aggressive sales pitch intended to create a sense of urgency. I was
being told to adjust to a lifetime of hairless embarrassment, unless I
was ready to shell out thousands of dollars to restore my manhood.
Right.
The cost. Although hair transplants can be done with as few as 200
grafts, this is rarely enough for most patients. In my case, I’d need
somewhere between 800 and 1,600 to get the results I wanted. At about
$7 per graft, I was looking at anywhere from $5,600 to $11,200. Even
worse, my doctor told me in a matter-of-fact way that I might need two
surgeries. Extreme hair transplant cases may require as many as 4,000
grafts. Any head in need of more than that is probably beyond rescue.
I
scheduled a transplant procedure of 1,500 grafts. The surgery was for a
month later, but my hair care started immediately. I had to take
Propecia—for the rest of my life. Hair transplant surgery only moves
your most resilient hair to areas where balding is most likely. The
rest of your hair is still prone to fall out unless you take a drug
designed to keep it in place. My prescription costs me about $45 per
month.
I got a restless night of sleep on the eve of my surgery.
Knowing you are about to have your head split open is no cure for
insomnia. I should say right now that my doctor and his staff were kind
and professional. But the surgery itself was a long, gruesome ordeal of
stabbing, cutting, poking, and prodding that I hope never to go through
again.
During the 30-minute surgery prep, I asked for something
to soothe my nerves. Within two minutes I had a needle shoved into my
arm followed almost immediately by a sweet feeling of tranquility.
However, this did not prevent me from sensing the assistant pushing a
needle into my scalp to apply the local anesthesia, one small injection
at a time.
The assistant let me choose a movie to watch to make
the time go by while the doctor worked my head over. I wanted to pick
something that my attending nurses would enjoy, so I asked for My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It wasn’t available, so I begrudgingly opted for Honeymoon in Vegas.
Now,
with my comfort fully addressed, my doctor went to work. Although
detailed and delicate, the surgery itself was not gentle. The first of
its three stages was what had me most on edge. The doctor shaved, cut,
and removed a donor area from the back of my head. It was like a thin
strip of bacon about a quarter-inch wide and 6 inches long. The wound
bled heavily like most head wounds do, although I was stitched up
within minutes and a towel was wrapped tightly around my head.
I
was now past the point of no return. What used to be a part of my head
stewed in a petri dish. As I sat there, unamused by the overacting of
Nicolas Cage, three assistants dissected my donor tissue into hundreds
of small micro-grafts made of one or two follicles each. This took an
hour, and the throbbing in my head intensified as I sat there in my
constricting gauze turban.
Once the grafts were separated and
counted, an assistant told the doctor I had produced 1,582 grafts. The
transplant was ready to begin. The doctor told me to expect a scraping
noise while he poked the holes in my scalp where the grafts would be
planted. An assistant counted aloud as he made each incision. I’m still
not sure why the incisions made a scraping sound, unless it was because
the blade was hitting my skull. The doctor made the cuts in three
areas: at the front of my hairline; throughout the top of my head to
give my hair more thickness there; and at the rear of my crown, where
Annette saw trouble and where I needed the most help.
After the
holes were poked in my scalp, the three assistants congregated around
my head and put the grafts in the holes one at a time. One would place
a graft, then she’d press with her thumb like she was pushing in a
thumbtack. After a few hours of prodding, the local anesthesia wore
off, and my head began to burn. It took a final dose of local to finish
up the eight-hour surgery. I originally signed up for 1,500 grafts; I
got the extra 82 for free. Gosh, that was nice of them.
For two
weeks following the surgery, I could not exercise. To wash my hair, I
had to put special soap in a cup and then pour it over my head. The
doctor gave me some pain medication, but I still felt the headaches.
The 1,000-plus wounds in my head scabbed over, and for days I felt like
the ultimate test subject for Head & Shoulders.
It has now
been two months since my surgery. Those who know about it say that my
hair looks fuller, but they are most likely fooled by the fact that I
have gone almost five months without a haircut. The balding area near
the top of my head still looks thin, but my doctor told me it would
take up to five months or more for the transplanted hair to grow an
inch and a half. Now, my greatest concern is of the neurotic
variety. I’m still struggling to justify the $11,000 I spent to assuage
my insecurity. I carry the receipt with me as a reminder of just how
deeply I’ve succumbed to vanity. But it will all be worth it if it
means I’ll be able to visit my dear Annette for several years more.
Shane Keller, a sales associate for Yahoo, has made self-improvement a priority.
