It was recently - scarcely a week past - that I underwent the procedure known, in the parlance of modern trichological science, as Follicular Unit Extraction, performed at a respectable establishment within the United Kingdom — the particulars of which I withhold for the present, pending a more complete survey of its efficacy over the ensuing months.
The principal region of my concern lay in the capillary frontier, the noble but receding hairline, which had long yielded ground to the inroads of time and genetics. Accordingly, the campaign began there, with strategic consideration granted to the crown for potential future engagement.
On the appointed day I arrived around 8am. My head, shorn to its stubbled minimum, and clad in a surgical garment of dubious elegance, I was conducted into a chamber — small and sterile — where I reclined face-down upon a gurney, my visage nestled into a ringed aperture. The donor area upon my occiput was demarcated with what appeared to be some sort of felt-tip — and thence commenced the administration of anaesthetic: a series of brisk and penetrating pricks, akin in sensation to the vengeful stings of a dispersed but irate cohort of wasps.
These affronts, though sharp, were brief, and once concluded, the extraction began in earnest. Though some are said to drift into somnolence at this stage — lulled, perhaps, by the tedium of mechanised hum and antiseptic stillness — I maintained full and deliberate wakefulness, concerned that a lapse into unconsciousness might render me guilty of some social indecorum, such as drooling upon the person of the surgeon, whose knee hovered disconcertingly beneath my own suspended head.
The procedure was carried out by a consortium of medical artisans — the surgeon usually flanked by a technician, each assigned their respective hemisphere of the scalp. Their work was steady and long, and I became, over time, inordinately acquainted with their footwear. Over the speakers came the dulcet and non-provocative strains of Queen and Elton John — the latter followed closely by Robbie Williams, which prompted, in my anaesthetised reverie, a whimsical notion: what if there existed a radio station devoted exclusively to singers who had themselves undergone hair transplants? Such is the mind, when left unattended for long hours.
In the end, some three thousand follicles were liberated from the hinterland of my scalp. A pause was granted for lunch, after which began Phase Two: the puncturing of holes to receive the grafts. This task fell to the surgeon once more, and was accompanied by further anaesthesia — momentarily painful, then entirely insensible. The puncturing itself was devoid of sensation, and rather uneventful.
The final phase was the placement of the grafts, one by one, into their freshly wrought domiciles. This fell entirely to the technicians, who worked in quiet rotation. The surgeon, having overseen the architectural foundations, withdrew from the scene. I lay still — preternaturally so — careful not to imperil the precise arrangements by any involuntary motion. Eyes closed, I attempted a state of philosophical detachment, something approaching Zen, though filtered through the fatigue of the body and the novocaine of the soul.
By late afternoon, the undertaking was concluded. The surgeon re-emerged, presenting me with a small bag of sundry items: saline mist for the grafts, analgesics, sterile pads, and a travel pillow of the inflatable sort — all the accoutrements of the freshly altered.
Upon my return home, I anticipated an onslaught of pain as the anaesthetic and analgesics wore off. Yet it failed to arrive. The donor area was tender, as expected, but insufficiently so to warrant recourse to paracetamol. In the days that followed, a curious swelling emerged upon the brow — not painful, but visually alarming, as it descended like a slow avalanche to the bridge of my nose before dissipating entirely.
My early reflections were touched with cautious optimism. A newly visible hairline brings, unavoidably, a flush of satisfaction, attended by the minor dread of imperilling one's investment through careless act. Thus did I pass my hours with monastic care, sleeping upright, ensconced in the neck pillow, drifting into restless half-sleep like a contemplative in his cell.
A word of worldly advice to future initiates: secure for yourself a quality travel pillow with a fastening clasp — lest it abandon you mid-slumber — and prepare your larder in advance. Unless, that is, you relish the idea of wandering your local provisions store or supermarket with the conspicuous markings of a recent follicular redistribution.
For the moment, I remain vigilant, keeping my hands and implements far from the transplanted zone. I have begun a regimen of nutritional augments — biotin, vitamin D, omega-3 — and the chemical custodianship of Finasteride to hold at bay the enemy still within.
The ordeal of shedding — that grim period when the newly planted crops appear to fail before they grow — yet lies ahead. But thus far, I venture to say, the experience has been tolerable, and perhaps, in time, even transformative.