From the moment I noticed that I was losing my hair, I've felt an impending sense of doom. I can remember looking at my hairline in the mirror after a shower at the youthful age of twenty years old and thinking, "Am I going bald?"

Being adopted, I had no idea at the time whether or not my biological heritage included 'chromedomeism', but there was definitely a slight recession going on at the hairline level and nothing that anybody else said could convince me otherwise!

At the age of twenty-seven, with my hairloss well and truly non-negotiable and without doubt, I was contacted by my birthmother and have since found out that not one single male in my direct bloodline sports a full head of hair. In fact, the majority of them are flesh-coloured bowling balls with bodies. And highly waxed bowling balls, at that! So I finally settled into the horrible realisation that the fate that had befallen my ancestors would also befall me.

All along, I knew that hair transplants were an option, however at the time the results were infamously haphazard at best, with most grafting jobs resulting in the classic doll's hair look that people still talk about. A work aquaintance of mine had one done in the mid-nineties, and when he started to wear a hat permanently after the procedure, I knew that something obviously didn't look too crash hot! Not to mention the fact that they were horrifyingly expensive, and hell, (I kept telling myself) my hair didn't look THAT bad...

But bit by bit, over the coming years, it continued to recede and my dreaded impending future slowly became a reality. Every time I caught my reflection in a mirror or looked at a photograph that someone had taken of me, I cringed at what I saw. Where there should have been a smiling, thirty-eight year old guy, stood a balding old man!

So I finally decided that there was no way I was going to let myself go any balder!
I would finally get a hair transplant!

I knew that they had progressed to the point where they could now implant the hair follicles one-by-one, avoiding the clumpy, dolls-hair grafts; the only question to be answered was how they were going to remove the donor hairs. Via strip removal or by FUE? (Follicular Unit Extraction) All along, I intended to go with a strip procedure because for some reason I was under the impression that FUE was far too expensive, but when I discovered that I could in fact afford a respected FUE doctor, there was no doubt in my mind that that would be the path to take.

I was very relieved to be able to take the FUE option, as I've read about potential negatives with removing a large strip of flesh from the back of your head, not the least of which was a permanently visible scar should I ever wish to shave my head reasonably short (as it is now, for example) or possibly permanent scalp numbness due to the severing of the nerves at the back of the head, so why would I put myself through that risk and trauma? As opposed to FUE surgery, where each hair is extracted one by one with a fine needle and implanted the same way into the balding area, and within a week nobody can even tell you've had any work done, apart from some redness which you can excuse away by saying that your head was sunburnt.

So after an awful lot of research I finally settled on Dr Sanusi Umar in Redondo Beach, about fifteen minutes south of Los Angeles Airport. My wife and biological mum wanted to come along for support (that's the excuse they used, but we all know they just wanted a holiday in sunny Southern California!) and so we all packed our bags and off we went!

I've been asked quite a few times why I chose to travel overseas to have a transplant when there are one or two doctors in Australia who perform FUE. The answer is cost! For the price of only 1000 grafts back home, (nowhere near enough to fulfull my requirements, by the way) I was able to afford 3000 grafts AND an all-expenses paid trip to the United States including hotel accomodation! No comparison.

Anyway, we landed in LA on Sunday the 26th of August and on Monday morning, bright and early, I was sitting in Dr Umar's small but comfortable waiting room with the rising sun streaming in through his penthouse windows. After filling in some paperwork with one of his lovely assistants, putting on a surgery gown and getting an initial injection, Dr Umar himself arrived. Now don't ask me why I was expecting to see a small middle-aged man, but I was, and when this towering, well-built young guy who could've easily played for the LA Lakers strode in, I thought I was in the wrong office! Five minutes later, his warmth and confidence had me totally relaxed, and we spent the next half-hour or so discussing where I would like my new hairline.

By now, the drugs were really starting to work and it was time to lay down on the memory-foam chair in the surgery.(To be able to sit/lay for three twelve to fifteen hour days without once getting uncomfortable is truly amazing, and testament to both the chair AND the drugs!)

And so the transplant began! A few injections in the back of the head near the donor area which hurt a little, but apart from that, no pain whatsoever throughout the whole experience. In fact, the transplanted area of my scalp is still partially numb, which apparently lasts for three months at the most, so I still have six weeks to go.

My photo section takes you through the visuals of how my head looked each evening after the three stages of surgery. Just for the record, I plan on updating my photos every couple of months to record my ongoing progress.

Here's the rough drill on what to expect if you have a hair transplant:

The implanted hairs will mostly fall out by around the six-week mark. You may lose anywhere up to 90% of them, but luckily I seem to have lost no more than half. At around the four-month mark, the regrowth should start to appear, and if all goes well, by months six to eight you'll have 85% of them back. At first, I was told, they'll come through 'thin' but by the twelve-month mark they'll have thickened up to their permanent state.

So here's hoping...

Looking and feeling good so far!

Just as a side note, not ONE PERSON back home has noticed my transplant! I was truly stunned! My hair has never been this short before and I guess people were so shocked by my new look that they failed to notice my lower hairline. I couldn't have hoped for a better result!

Thanks, Dr Umar. You're a life enhancer!

Hooray for Hair
October 2007