The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Today's the day of the hair transplant.

It's 8:20. I'm supposed to be there in ten minutes. Shit, I'm going to be late. I stuff a few nuts in my pockets, like a squirrel, to eat on the way there. I get out the door and start running. The streets are strangely quiet because it's a Saturday.

I get there, at 8:31 am: one minute late. I'm out of breath. The receptionist greets me. The other staff are still getting ready so there was no need to run after all.

She gives me a tablet: "To make you calm," she says. I don't know what it is, but I neck it and down some water. Pretty soon I'll probably start getting drowsy and then start speaking in tongues.

They take me into an office. There, a woman puts a big black sheet around my neck. Then she cuts my hair with a shaver. It's just like being at the hairdresser's. Then again, I haven't been to a hairdresser's in nearly ten years on account of being bald. So maybe this isn't like the hairdresser's at all. Maybe modern hairdresser's have robots that cut your hair. I honestly wouldn't know.

And all the while, I'm waiting for this drug to kick in. I don't take drugs so I'm probably a lightweight. What's going to happen when this drug starts taking effect? Maybe I'll have no memory of the events to come, just several embarrassing stories recounted to me by the staff later, like how I threw all my clothes off, climbed up onto the roof and refused to come down.

The doctor comes in. He draws on my head with a marker. "I hope that's not a permanent marker," I say as a joke. No, I don't actually say that. I don't want to open my mouth in case I start saying weird things.

The chairs look just like giant baseball gloves. What the fuck? Why would the doctor have chairs shaped like baseball gloves? Are they real or have I started hallucinating? No, as far as I can tell, they are real. But would I have noticed them if I hadn't taken that unknown tablet earlier? Or have I noticed them because I'm off my tits on Valium? I don't know. I've never taken Valium before so I don't know what it's like. I don't even know if what I took was Valium.

The receptionist takes me to the end of the corridor where they have a white background on the wall for taking photos. She takes some photos of my head, from all different angles.

Then I go into the surgery room. So this is where I'll be spending the next eight to ten hours. There's an operating table in the middle of the room. There's also a big TV hanging from the ceiling. "You'll be able to watch Netflix!" the receptionist told me, as if that was a big deal. But I don't see a big TV as a good thing. I see it as a bad thing. I thought about bringing a book instead but then decided against it. Books are probably not sterile.

There's two surgical assistants.

"How are you today?" says one.

"Good, thanks!" I say in what I hope is a cheery voice. I add, "I'm looking forward to this!"

"You look scared," she says.

I am scared. I've never done anything like this. The most surgery I've ever had is wisdom tooth surgery. And that was bad enough for me, thanks.

They tell me to lie on the table, face down. There's a hole for my face to go in to. As I lie on the bed and put my face in the hole, I see there's a TV built into the floor. This one's playing a TV show about Will Smith. Except it's not The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It's another one. He's older and he's going about kayaking and climbing mountains. He must be going through a midlife crisis. A bit like me, getting this hair transplant.

The surgeon comes in. He steps on to the TV in the floor. Now his right foot is blocking Will Smith's face.

"You'll fall asleep for sure." That's what the receptionist told me a few days ago. That I'd fall asleep during the surgery. Well, I don't feel sleepy. If anything, I feel wide awake. Also, the padding around the head hole is digging into my face.

"I'm just going to put some anaesthetic into your head," says the surgeon. "This might hurt a little bit."

Then he starts poking my head with a needle. This fucking hurts.

Now it feels weirdly like a pizza cutter? It feels like he's attacking my head with a pizza cutter. But a pointy pizza cutter, one with spikes sticking out of it.

Next, the surgeon starts taking out hairs from the back and sides of my head. I'm still wide awake. When's this drug kicking in? When am I going to fall into a deep and dreamless slumber? Never, it seems.

After about an hour, they tell me to lie on my side. This is a relief as I can finally take my face out of the hole in the operating table. The padding around the hole hurt more than whatever they're using to get the hairs out, which doesn't hurt at all because of the anesthetic.

They put a blanket over me, "to keep you warm". Weirdly, they put the blanket over my face as well? Maybe it's to help me sleep. Well, it doesn't work. I'm still wide awake.

My job is to stay perfectly still. Which is easy, really. If they can give me hair in exchange for staying still, then I can stay still, no problem.

This blanket's making me hot though. I'm too hot. I wish they'd take it off.

"Is it okay to take the blanket off?" I ask, from under the blanket.

"What?" says the nurse.

I lift my head from the table, making the nurse jump in terror. "I said, is it okay to take the blanket off?" I ask again.

"Don't move your head!" the nurse scolds me.

"Sorry," I say. I put my head back down. Fuck. Staying still is harder than I thought.

They take the blanket off.

It takes them three hours to take the follicles out. They've removed 2,700 follicles from my head. But where are the follicles? I don't know. I assume they're in a machine somewhere. I probably should have done some more research about how hair transplants work before going through with this.

I'm allowed to move again. Now it's time to sit upright so they can put the hairs back in. "Here's the remote," says the surgeon, handing me a TV remote. I flick through the options on the TV. There's Netflix, YouTube, the Disney channel. He has everything.

I put on the latest Marvel TV show, Hawkeye. I soon find out that it's boring. But that's okay, because if I put something interesting on the TV, then the nurses might start watching it and get distracted from my hair transplant. The number one priority now is that they do a good job so I don't end up looking like Frankenstein's monster. Imagine if I put on The Simpsons, and while the surgeon's laughing, he implants hairs into my nose by accident? Then I'd have hairs growing out my nose for the rest of my life. So it's better to watch something boring instead.

Also, I'm not allowed to move again. So I don't want to risk moving my arm to change the channel. If I move my arm, then my head might move as well, and it could fuck up the hair transplant. They've warned me once already to keep still. I don't want to risk another warning.

Then we stop to have lunch. They give me a bottle of water and a massive sandwich with an omelette inside. I eat it alone in an office while stretching my stiff neck.

Then we go back to surgery to implant the last of the hairs.

After the fourth episode of Hawkeye, a movie called Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings starts playing automatically. So I start watching it. It's pretty good actually.

The two assistants are still putting the hairs into the top of my head.

"How are you feeling?" asks one of the assistants.

"Good," I say. "I can't feel a thing. Except for my neck, which is killing me."

"Well, just hold on a little longer. We're almost finished now."

And then before I know it, it's over. Now it's 5 pm. The whole thing took about eight hours. My only regret is that I didn't get to finish watching the movie.

The assistants look happy. "Your head's very soft so we got all the hairs in quickly," she explains. "Now we get to go home early".

My head's soft? I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I hope they didn't accidentally stab my brain while they were putting the hairs in my soft head. I don't want any brain damage because my IQ is low enough as it is.

Girlfriend comes to pick me up. She gets a shock when she sees me.

"What do you think?" I say.

"It's uh.... yeah," she says.

I haven't seen my head yet. There's no mirrors in this place. I soon discover that this is for a reason. It's to stop patients from screaming in terror.

On the way back home, we stop at a pharmacy because I need to buy some antibiotics and antiinflammatories. There, in the pharmacy, I see myself in a mirror for the first time. And Jesus Christ, it's like the front of my head is covered in blood-poked holes. It's covered in little dots of blood. And that's just the front. The back of my head is even worse. The entire back of my head is covered in spots of blood. Hundreds of red spots. It looks like I have a horrendous skin disease.

"It's a hair transplant," I tell the pharmacist.

"Oh," she says. "I've always wondered what a hair transplant looks like."

I still don't feel much pain because of the anesthetic. But that'll wear off soon.

Finally, here are some before and after photos.

Before (this morning)

After