The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. Today was my second hair transplant. I had the first transplant two years ago. The first transplant was for my hairline. This second hair transplant is for the bald spot on my crown.

I arrived at the hair clinic at 9:10 am. I started to feel nervous as I approached the clinic. I thought about just turning around and going home. But I went inside. The receptionist was waiting for me. A middle-aged woman named Olga.

"Hi Paul. How are you?"

"Good."

"Before we start, I need you to take these."

She gave me three pills: an antibiotic, Valium, and a sleeping pill called Somnibel. She also gave me a plastic cup of water to help me swallow the pills.

I was disappointed. Just three pills? I hoped there'd be more. I wanted to have an outer body experience and float around the ceiling, watching myself from above, and peeking down women's tops.

I took the pills. Olga showed me a small changing room. There was a chair and a locker. A hospital gown wrapped in plastic. Disposable slippers, also wrapped in plastic.

"Take off your shoes, jumper, and shirt, and put on the gown and slippers. I'll see you outside"

She left the room. I took off my jumper, shirt, and shoes. I put them in the locker. I put on the slippers and the gown. I managed to tie the gown at the back by myself.

I opened the door. Olga was waiting. She took me to an office room, a room with a desk and computer. Three surgeons came in, wearing green gowns and caps. I felt surprisingly calm. Maybe it was because I'd done all this before. One of the surgeons drew on my head. Then another one shaved my head. Then I was taken to the operating theatre. An operating table. A metal trolley.

The first step was anesthetic injections. I was told to lie on the operating table, face down. My face fitted in to a cushioned hole in the table. All I could see was the floor. Someone put a blanket over me in case I was cold. Then one of the surgeons started injecting anesthetic into my scalp. Over a hundred injections. It felt like being stung by a swarm of wasps, if the wasps took turns stinging me. Meanwhile, another surgeon held a vibrator to my head. I could feel the vibrator pummeling my head. The idea was that the vibrator would distract me from the pain of the injections.

Once the anesthetic was in place, the next step was for the surgeons to remove follicles from the back of my head. They asked me to lay on my side. Then one of the surgeons used a special tool to extract the follicles. He was using something that looked like a pen, except instead of drawing, it cut chunks out of my skin. It felt like he was stamping my head over and over. After each stamp, they'd take out the piece of skin with tweezers. I couldn't say for sure though because they covered my head with a blanket.

At one point I must have fallen asleep because I suddenly woke up with a jerk, scaring the surgeons.

"Sorry," I said.

It took about two hours for the surgeon to remove enough hairs. 1,800 follicular units, which is about 3,000 hairs.

The surgeons prepared my follicles while I had lunch in a small office room. I took a photo of myself in the bathroom mirror and sent it to Girlfriend.

The third step was to make holes in my head for the follicles to go into. A doctor called Sonia cut 1,800 holes in my head with a diamond-tipped blade. I couldn't feel a thing.

"You must be patient to do this job," I said.

"It's not boring," she said. "I find it interesting. It's not as simple as just cutting holes in someone's head. All the hairs have to be placed in the right direction and distribution so you get a natural appearance.".

The final step was to insert the follicles back into my head. First one of the surgeons gave me a TV remote. There was a TV attached to the ceiling.

"Watch anything you like," she said.

The only app they had was Amazon Prime, unfortunately. It was full of all these sub-par films I'd never heard of: "Talk To me", "The Last Supper", "Nowhere Special", "Jungleland", "Un Cel de Plom". And all the films looked so serious. The people in the posters were always glum and frowning.

Among the crap were some good films, like Interstellar, Edge of Tomorrow, and The Matrix, but I'd already seen them and wanted to watch something new.

I continued scrolling through the films. And scrolling. And scrolling. There was a film called Guns Akimbo. The poster had Daniel Radcliffe holding up two pistols, even though Daniel Radcliffe never properly went through puberty so he still looks like a 12-year-old boy, and so he shouldn't be holding pistols but something innocent like a kite instead. Then there was a film called The Vast of the Night, which I'd heard about aliens, so I pressed play. But the first five minutes of the film were about a high school basketball game and there were no aliens so I pressed the Back button.

I tried watching the new Blade Runner film. The first ten minutes were about a replicant landing a spaceship on a farm and then walking around the farm. The replicant then killed another replicant. Then he went home to his holographic girlfriend. I couldn't see the point. I pressed the Back button again.

There were too many films to choose from. When I was a kid we'd go to Blockbusters and there would only be ten films in the New Releases section. And whatever we chose, we'd watch it from start to end, even if it was bad. There wasn't all this choice like we have nowadays.

Meanwhile two surgeons were working over me like chimpanzees, putting the hairs back into my head. They periodically sprayed my head with water to clean off the blood.

"What's the matter, you can't find anything to watch?"

"There's too much choice."

Instead of scrolling through the films mindlessly, I tried to think of a film I actually wanted to watch. I decided on the new James Bond film. So I searched for it. But it wasn't there. I searched for another film I wanted to see called Bird Box Barcelona. That wasn't there either.

There was a film called Fatman where Mel Gibson plays Santa Claus. I didn't want to watch it but I pressed play anyway. The plot is about a 12-year-old who hires a hitman to kill Santa after Santa leaves him a lump of coal. I couldn't believe how bad these films were. Maybe most films were bad when I was a kid too. I just don't remember the bad ones.

"Can you turn over for us?" said one of the surgeon.

I turned over on the table, face down. I couldn't see the screen anymore. But the surgeons left the film playing, so I could still hear the movie: Mel Gibson dubbed in Spanish, gunshots, and screaming. And that's how the rest of my hair transplant went: me lying face down, listening to gunfights and screaming. The surgeons didn't seem to mind the noise.

The surgery was over. I went to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror, ready for something bloody and grisly. Instead it was just me. I didn't look any different. Not until I turned my head, that is, and saw the back. The back of my head was inflamed and red and there were hundreds of tiny red dots, like I'd been attacked by a hive of bees.

My head felt fine, probably due to all the anesthetic. My back was sore from lying in awkward positions all day.

I felt happy. Happier than when I'd walked in. Maybe it was the fact the hair transplant was over. Maybe it was the drugs they gave me.