By Bob Mitchell
STAFF REPORTER
It never failed.
Every time my wife and children looked at me, their eyes, totally unintentionally I’m sure, always seemed to wander up to my hairless scalp.
It never bothered me but when our cat Sam started doing it, well, that was it.
Time for remedial action.
I thought about hair weaves but my wife Kim-Marie didn’t enjoy the thought of having some stranger’s hair on my head.
Hair restoring lotions intrigued me but they take too long and are hit and miss at best.
The only immediate answer was a hair transplant, using my own salt and pepper locks from the perimeter of my head.
Several month’s after debating-should I or shouldn’t I –I found myself sitting in a dentist type chair at Dr. Larry Fremont’s Hair & Faces International clinic in Scarborough.
According to Fremont, the hairs that grow at the back of your head and sides of your head aren’t prone to male pattern baldness hormones and that’s where donor hair comes from.
As he explains it, you could take that hair and plant it on your nose and it would take root because it still thinks its growing on the back of your head.
Unlike many hair transplant clinics, which charge as low as $5 per plug, Hair & Faces bills patients on a time basis, with the average three-hour sessions costing about $3,000...
Fremont planned to cover a 3-inch-square section of my balding forehead – just enough to give the illusion of having hair where none had been for several years.
While Fremont was suturing my head, assistant Barbara McAuley prepared the hair that was about to be transplanted, meticulously separating the follicles into individual and multiple graphs.
Fremont, meanwhile poked tiny holes in my scalp to insert the follicles as if he were planting a garden of hair.
Each time a hole was poked, a tiny bit of blood spurted out. Fremont said this was fine because the blood would cause the roots to take hold and my new hair to sprout.
Had I wanted to, I could of sat back and watched a Hollywood flick on the television screen perched high in one corner of the room. But being curious, I spent my time in the chair talking, asking questions and watching Fremont’s hands work magic on my forehead.
Less than three hours later the entire procedure was finished and I was ready to leave with about 2,000 tiny hairs eagerly awaiting to sprout from the top of my head.
I didn’t have a full head of hair but I knew that going in. One session usually doesn’t leave balding clients looking like Fabio. I was warned that I would experience some pain that evening, which I did. But frankly, I’ve had worse experiences with a paper cut or being burned by bacon fat.
I was given instructions and pain killers to take over the next several days, including a hair and that had to be worn for the first three or four days to ensure none of the blood under the scalp flowed down towards my eyes.
The only real discomfort I experienced came at night having to sleep at a 45 degree angle as a precautionary measure to prevent accidentally pulling the transplanted follicles out during the night and to prevent aggravating the stitches in the back of my head.
Over the next several weeks, some of the new hairs began falling out, as Fremont said they would. He also said I should expect to start seeing new growth after 3 months.
Sure enough, three months after my surgery, there’s actually quite a bit of hair covering what used to be smooth skin….
My wife and kids still look at my forehead but at least Sam seems to now look me in the eye when he wants something.
And they say man’s best friend is his dog.
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