Part 3 - The procedure
On August 1, I arrived at the clinic around 7.45 am. Jackie, the receptionist at SMG had me sign some of the forms and ordered the lunch for me.Dr Paul then came in and we went to his office. He drew a hairline on my forehead and asked me whether I liked it. After some discussion, we finally agreed on a modified hairline and I was all set for the surgery to begin.
The surgery began around 9 am. I was given some tablets (probably valium and pain killers) and local anesthesia was given to me at the back of my head. The anesthesia took some time to work on me as I could still feel the needle prick after a few minutes. After some more shots of anesthesia, the back of my head finally felt numb. It dawned upon me finally, why my friends use to joke about me as "thick headed". The strip was cut out and the assistants immediately set about the task of making the grafts. I was feeling a bit drowsy and decided to watch some movies.
Whilst the strip was being cut, Dr.Paul was making incisions on my scalp. By lunch time, he had made around 2500 incisions. I was informed that the strip at the back yielded around 2200 grafts and he asked me if I would like to have 200 more taken out from the donor area, as 2300 were looking to be quite good.
Greedy as I was, I decide to go for 200 more and had a small strip taken again in the afternoon. This strip was one hell of a dense strip and yielded another 400 + grafts. Dr Paul was very much involved with his assistants in inserting the hair grafts. Dr Ron Shapiro was also doing a procedure in the adjacent room and dropped in frequently to check the progress. He exclaimed that my hairline was starting to look really good and quite dense. My operation lasted a marathon 11 hours and I was finally done around 8.30 pm. A total of 2700 grafts were used. Hurrah!
Overall, I was feeling quite happy with how the day went. After a long time was I beginning to feel some sense of pride while looking at my hairline. I would really like to thank the folks at SMG. They have been really outstanding and are very professional in their work and have taken great care of me pre-operative and post operative.
I would also like to thank PAT and all the members of this discussion forum for their honest and insightful discussion on this topic. You guys have been great.