PRP
Dear Diary. I did a stupid thing today. I accidentally overrode some of the values in a database I use to make the books I sell on Amazon. I estimate I've erased about ten hours worth of work. Normally I have backups for these kinds of events, but my backups haven't been backing up, so I'll have to fix my mistake manually instead.
I got so angry about my mistake that I was compelled to write angry, scolding messages to myself. Like:
FUCK SAKE YOU IDIOT PAUL, YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING BACKUPS EVERY FREAKING DAY, YOU SANDAL WEARING TWAT
and
ALSO, YOUR LAPTOP IS FILTHY AND HAS CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM STAINS ON IT
Which is true, because my laptop does have ice cream stains on it.
Anyway, so today I did PRP therapy. PRP therapy is a hair loss treatment where a doctor takes blood out of your arm, centrifuges it to separate out the plasma, and then injects the plasma into your head. It's supposed to make the hair on your head grow thick and strong. I don't know how it works exactly. Something about growth factors. Can you tell I have a degree in Biology?
The letters PRP stands for Paul's Really Poor, because the therapy costs 300 euros so now I'm poor. No, it doesn't really stand for that. Sorry if you believed me there. It actually stands for platelet-rich plasma.
Let me tell you: PRP therapy is painful. Christ, is it painful. Imagine getting stung in the head over and over by a wasp. The first time I did PRP therapy, I had no anaesthetic. So I almost cried from the pain. It was even worse than the pain during my hair transplant, because at least for that I had anaesthetic.
Every time I've done PRP therapy after that, I've asked for anaesthetic. I like the anaesthetic. I makes my scalp go numb, and when I touch the top of my head, I can't feel it. It feels like I'm wearing a bike helmet.
But the thing is, the doctor has to use a needle to inject the anaesthetic into my scalp. And the needle that injects the anaesthetic into my scalp is itself painful. So no matter what happens, I'm in pain.
Today I counted the number of times the doctor injected me in the scalp with her needle. It was eighty times. Eighty times. Like I say, I counted. Each time, I could hear the needle going into my scalp. The sound was like a little scratch. Like two strips of velcro being pulled apart: sccccratch.
Also, lying on the bench at the side was - and I have to be honest here - a vibrator. A big ol' woman's vibrator. It's big, it's black, and there's a button you press to switch it on and make it vibrate. What's a vibrator doing in a hair loss clinic you ask? Well sometimes during the PRP therapy, a doctor's assistant will apply the vibrator to my head. Not because I have special sex organs on my head but because the vibrations are supposed to distract me from the pain.
I just hope they only use the vibrator for medical stuff, and if they don't, then I hope they clean the vibrator before putting it on my head.
Afterwards, I was at the reception desk and I said to the receptionist, "I was counting how many injections they were. And I counted 80."
"80 times 2," she said.
"What?" I said.
"80 times 2".
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"The doctor uses two needles, one in each hand. You don't notice at the time, but every time she's injecting you, she's doing it in two places at once."
80 times 2 is 160. So I was injected in my scalp 160 times today. And I paid 300 euro for it.
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