The one thing I’ve learned about getting a hair transplant is that the men who are most interested in the procedure are the ones who don’t even need it.

They ask me all kinds of questions and tell me they are preparing to get a hair transplant in the future, even though they have no obvious indication of baldness.

These are men in their 20s and early 30s who upon closer inspection might show early signs of male pattern baldness, but it is already magnified a thousand times in their minds.

“I wasn’t this bald a few years ago,” a friend told me a few weeks ago. “I want to stop it before it gets worse.”

Then there are the guys who are completely bald. These are men in their 40 and 50s who started going bald, then decided to shave it all off. They show no interest in my procedure. Nor do they show any indication that they are stressing out about being bald.

They are bald and they are proud. And they look great considering they have focused their efforts on getting fit.

Then there are the guys who are in the midst of losing their hair.  These are men in their 30s and 40s who have the receding frontal hairlines and widening bald spots on their crowns.

These are the guys who act like they don’t care about their hair loss but when the topic comes up, they reveal they are completely traumatized about it. Mainly because they have no clue as to when and where the hair loss is going to stop.

It’s like driving your car in the rain and hydroplaning on a puddle, knowing you might be able to gain control of the car but also knowing you could skid completely off the road.

But they are even more traumatized about the thought of getting a hair transplant, not because of the possible pain, but because it would show the world that they were concerned about their hair loss in the first place.

“Bro, weren’t you embarrassed about it?” a balding buddy asked me the other day.

The truth is, there is a stigma about getting a hair transplant. And it probably stems from the hair transplants of yesteryear when men would end up with hair plugs that made them look like dolls.

Today, hair transplants have improved where you can’t tell if somebody went through a hair transplant once their hair has grown out, which can take up to 18 months.

Unless, of course, they dedicate an entire blog to it.

In the video below, Dr. Ricardo Mejia talks about the differences between the old-style transplants and modern transplants.

But despite the advancements made, the stigma still exists and it seems to come mostly from men. We’re just not supposed to care about such trivial matters such as losing our hair.

Women, on the other hand, tend to be more congratulatory about my hair transplant in the way I imagine they are to each other when one gets a boob job.

In fact, they seem to be impressed that I have no shame about the whole process. But I’m a guy who smiles for my mug shots, so I have very little shame about most things.

But my male friends are so embarrassed about it, they tell me they cannot comment about my transplant on Facebook because then it would show everybody else that they are interested in such a procedure. So they watch from afar with great interest, they tell me.

“I would take a vacation and get one, so nobody would know,” another balding friend said.

But getting a hair transplant is not like getting a breast implant where you suddenly show up to the workplace and begin turning heads with perky boobs that sprang out of your chest seemingly overnight.

It’s a long, gradual progress, not much different than the balding process itself.

In fact, today, four months after the operation, I am finally beginning to see some real results. The growth is still sparse and there is still a long way to go, at least another year, but I can definitely see my future hairline.

And I like the way it’s turning out. Stigma or no stigma.

 

It’s been three months since Dr. Ricardo Mejia conducted my hair transplant, which means I am supposed to be seeing the first signs of hair growth.

And I am. But nothing very noticeable in a photo or even if you are standing across from me in a room.

But if you stand up close and stare at my hairline as my friends who haven’t seen me in a couple of weeks do, then it becomes noticeable.

It’s especially noticeable to me when I stand in front of the mirror and notice that some of the new hairs sprouting out are white, which goes to show you age will fuck you one way or the other, hair transplant or not.

But even then, I would rather have a salt-and-pepper head of hair than no hair at all.

To the random stranger who has no idea I had a transplant, I look as if I am losing hair rather than growing hair.

That is why I wasn’t surprised the other day when I was strolling through the shopping mall and was approached by a young lady working at one of those kiosks you see in the middle.

I usually just shake them off because I’ve had a bad experience buying a CD cleaner a few years ago that turned out to be worthless. When I tried returning it the following day, the guy pointed to a sign that said, “absolutely no refunds or returns.”

I chalked it up as a lesson learned. But only after I stuffed the CD cleaner into the guy’s mouth.

I kid. But I was very tempted to do so.

Fortunately, the young lady who approached me did not inspire such violent feelings.

Her name was Maria Andrea and she was very charming as she hawked a product that was supposed to make me less bald.  I tried to wave her off, but she offered to give me a free sample, so I figured I had nothing to lose.

The product is called Revolution Hair Fibers and it’s similar to other products I’ve seen out there where you spray it on your bald spot and it creates fibers  or “magnetic keratin” that mimic your hair. But this one comes in a brush that you rub across your bald spot for instant hair. The fibers come off in the shower, so you must reapply every day.

A few weeks earlier, I came across a similar product on the internet from a company called Caboki. I reached out to the company and asked them to send me a free sample that I could review on this blog, and they sent me back a link where I would have had to pay postage and handling for the sample.

Obviously, the guy who read my email missed the part where I was going to personally review their product on a site that is of interest to people losing their hair.

Besides, I have a personal rule of turning down “free” products that require me to give out my credit card number, so I never followed through with the deal. Especially considering I was only informed of the postage and handling requirement after I typed in my address and after I clicked from a page that promised “no hidden fees.”

But I figured I would go along with Maria Andrea until she asked me to pull out my credit card.

She was from Colombia and had lived in Miami only two years, so our conversation was entirely in Spanish as I tried to explain that I had gone through a hair transplant, so the bald spots should eventually be filled with real hair.

But she was tried her best to convince me that I needed to buy the product to use until the hair starts growing out.

I asked her to take a before-and-after photo with my iPhone, which she happily did and I was pretty impressed in the difference.

But not impressed enough to spend $74 on it.

However, Maria Andrea was quick to make me an offer, telling me she would knock $20 off the product.  She even applied some of the fibers to my frontal hairline, but that hair is still too sparse for it to make a real difference.

She allowed me to snap a photo of her holding the product, which got her in trouble with her manager, who said, “no photos!”

I asked why and the manager said I could take all the photos I wanted if I made the purchase, so I told them both I would think about it as I walked around the mall making more purchases.

As I walked through the mall, I grazed my fingertips over the new hair and it felt as if I had applied hair spray on my hair as I used to do back in the 1980s when I had lots of hair and would attend glam metal concerts. Maybe I’ll dig up an old photo and post one day.

I decided the only reason I would buy the product was because I enjoyed conversing with Maria Andrea, which is a good reason not to spend my money on it, so I finished my purchases and walked outside into the sweltering Miami heat to my car.

By the time I got to my car, I was sweating profusely. And when I wiped the sweat off my forehead, I noticed some of the little black fibers in my hands.

The black fibers continued to fall off with my sweat when I started working out a couple of hours later as you can see in the picture below.

So no, I wouldn’t spend any money on this project. And I really wouldn’t recommend it unless you are certain that you will go through your day without breaking a sweat or getting caught in the rain because it will end up drawing more attention to your hair than your normal bald spot.

But, of course, none of the advertisements address the issues that might pop up because of rain or sweat, two common occurrences in Miami.

So you must be skeptical when considering these types of hair replacement products.

And you must be even more skeptical when considering a hair transplant doctor because many patients end up feeling mislead by unrealistic promises.

Here is Dr. Mejia explaining how some doctors use the term “graft hairs” instead of “hair grafts” when advertising their services, a huge difference that can affect the cost and result of a hair transplant.

You know you’re out of touch with pop culture when you’re excitedly told that iJustine is going to be at an event and you’re like, “who the hell is that?”.

It turns out, iJustine is very hot. Not just in the physical sense but in the celebrity sense.

And more impressively, she did it all through Youtube videos. Armed with nothing but a handheld digital video camera and a laptop, she started producing videos of herself going about her day.

Yes, we’ve all seen people who do that. In fact, Youtube is filled with people like that. And most of them suck, which is why I spend as little time on Youtube as possible.

But iJustine has the distinction of appearing not to take herself seriously when in fact, she takes herself very seriously, which is the secret of her success.

But I didn’t find all this out until after I had met her and started Googling her.

The night I met her, which was about a week before my hair transplant operation, she was just another pretty face with some kind of celebrity status. And those are a dime-a-dozen in Miami.

So I decided to ask her the question I’ve been meaning to ask all females since launching this blog.

“Would you prefer a bald man or a fat man?”

The truth is, most women would prefer a chiseled man with a full head of hair, but there aren’t that many to go around.

And when we get older, we tend to either gain weight or lose hair or both.

It’s a question that’s been asked countless times on the internet. And the answer is pretty obvious once you realize women crave sex just as much as men.

They would prefer a bald, fit man over a fat man with a full head of hair.  They’d rather stroke their fingers over a man’s muscular buttocks than run their fingers through his hair.

But iJustine – who is never at a loss of words in her videos – refused to answer that simple question.

Granted, she has the looks, age and celebrity status where she doesn’t have to settle for one or the other, but it was just a hypothetical question. And we all had a good laugh over it as you can see in the above video. She’s a very cool chick.

I bring all this up because it was on the morning after my 43^rd birthday last September that I realized I was on my way to becoming a fat, bald middle-aged man. And I wanted to do all I can to prevent that.

That is why I did not hesitate to get this hair transplant when it was offered to me. It’s been less than three months, so I’m just now beginning to see the results of the new hair.

And although it will take at least another year to see the full results, you can see from the above photo that I’m making progress if you compare them to photos I posted previously on this blog.

The area around my hairline that is slightly shaded is where the hair is growing out.

Meanwhile, I am focusing on my weight loss.

A couple of weeks after my birthday, I was conversing with my friend, Alex de Carvalho at a party, who had recently lost more than 50 pounds through a juice fast.

And he motivated me to start changing my eating habits, which caused me to start seeing instant results.  In a matter of months, I saw my weight drop form 205 to 182 before it started hovering around 185 and eventually 190 where it remains today. I would like to work it down to where it permanently stays at 180, which would be an ideal weight for my age and height at 5’9”.

No longer do I wake up and treat myself to a breakfast of buttered Cuban toast and ham croquettes from my local Cuban diner, followed by lunch, dinner and midnight meals of burgers, fries, wings, pizza, pastas and sandwiches, much of it swallowed with endless rounds of beer.

Now I wake up and indulge in a hemp berry almond milkshake that I prepare in my blender. Although it is banned from being grown in this country, hemp can be imported from Canada.

Contrary to what the government would like you to believe, it will not get you high. Instead, it is packed with protein, fiber, amino acids and omega fatty acids. Mixed with frozen berries, which are packed with vitamins and antioxidants, it makes the perfect breakfast food.

I also started including salads in my diet where I would never eat that before. Usually salads topped with steak, chicken or fish because I’m all about the protein.

And I snack on nuts throughout the day instead of Cuban bread, which is one of the best-tasting breads in the world. And I also got into the habit of drinking vegetable juices that I prepare in a juicer for optimum nutrients with hardly any calories.

I essentially cut out bread, pastas, pizzas, burgers and fried food, but not to the point where I won’t allow myself to indulge every once in a while.

Now my biggest challenge is getting back into the workout routine, which will consist of running on the treadmill and lifting weights, which will help me lose those last stubborn ten pounds.

But losing weight is 80 percent diet and 20 percent exercise, I have learned, so I’m more than halfway there.

And I will reach my goal before my transplanted hair grows out.

But let’s go back to the original question. What do ladies prefer? A bald man or a fat man?

I would love to hear from the ladies. But please give me a more direct response than iJustine did.

It’s been nearly two months since my hair transplant and I am currently in what transplant veterans call the “ugly duckling” phase.

This is the post-operative period in which a patient is not only still healing from the surgical scar in the back of the head, but dealing with the shock loss of existing hair from the trauma of the surgery.

Couple that with the redness and sparse hairs that are sprouting in my frontal areas and it’s pretty evident why they refer to it as the ugly duckling phase.

But if you look at the above photo and compare it to the ones I’ve posted here since the operation, you will see that I’m slowly making progress.

The ugly duckling in Hans Christian Andersen’s famous story grew to become a beautiful swan, so I’m hoping to least emerge with a decent head of hair.

It’s almost like puberty but instead of waiting for that first pubic hair, you’re waiting for that first sign of real hair growth in your bald spots.

Dr. Mejia tells me the first signs of real growth won’t be evident until at least three months after the operation, so I have at least one more month to go. And other veterans on the hair transplant forums I’ve been visiting say it could even take longer.

One guy who goes by El Nino on the Bald Truth forum broke it down this way, based it on his own experience.

Surgery Day – Not too bad and over in a day.
Next 14 days – Some discomfort and trouble sleeping.
Up to 3 months – Ugly duckling stage and the worst period.
3 – 4 months – Native hair should be returning and the start of growth of HT.
4 – 6 months – A lot of new growth which should become more visible.
6 – 10 months – More growth of HT hair and maturing of earlier growth.
10 – 12 months – More maturing of the HT.
12 – 18 months – Final result.

So it’s going to be at least another year before we see the final result of Dr. Mejia’s work.

Yesterday, I swung by my hairdresser, Frezia, to get my hair cut for the second time since the operation and she is very impressed so far from what she’s seen.

Considering there has not been much hair growth, she was focusing mostly on the donor scar on the back of my head, which is nearly invisible now.

There are some spots where I can feel some scabbing but other parts where I can run my fingers across it and it’s like there never was a scar there.

Dr. Mejia stitched it up using the tricophytic closure, which he describes in the video of this blog post.

Frezia said Dr. Mejia did a good job of removing the donor strip higher rather than lower on the back of my head because she had one client who ended up with a scar very low and it made it much more difficult to conceal with his existing hair.

Check out Frezia in the video below. If you’re in the Miami area, I highly recommend her whether you’re a man or a woman. She is an artist. Check her out at Evolution in the Gables.

In reading through these forums, you can see there are a lot of doctors out there who just don’t have the experience or the talent to ensure a quality hair transplant.

The forums are filled with horror stories from patients having to fly to other states or countries to see surgeons that are qualified to remedy the damage that was done by previous surgeons.

I’m glad I’m not going to be one of those people.

Here is  a video of him removing my stitches two weeks after the operation, a procedure that I’ve read could be very painful.

I had been off the pain killers for a week and the worst I felt was a slight tugging.

It’s been just over a month since my hair transplant and almost all evidence that I even had a transplant is gone.

The scar on the back of my head almost invisible thanks to Dr. Mejia’s tricophytic closure where he overlaps one layer of skin over another to allow the hair to grow through the scar.

And as far as pain and discomfort goes, that’s never been a factor, which was a little surprising considering some of the stories I’ve read or heard.

But having said all that, I still believe I am balder now than I was going into the operation. That’s normal, according to the doctor and other men who’ve gone through transplants, but it does make me a little impatient.

Dr. Mejia says I should start seeing some results in another two months. And the final results will be evident in another 11 months.

Right now, I have some sparse transplant hairs that have not fallen out since the surgery, so maybe that’s the beginning of the new growth.

Below is a photo I took two days after my surgery when I had to show up to court for my arrest documenting the Occupy Miami eviction, which shows the areas where eventually I will have real hair.

And here is a photo I took yesterday, a month after that court date, where I had just stepped out of the pool, meaning my hair is wet and making me look even balder, showing there is plenty of empty space for the 2,799 hair grafts that Dr. Mejia transplanted to fill.

One of the reasons I took several weeks to update this blog was because I had stupidly deleted the video footage from my camera during the operation in an attempt to make more room in the hard drive.

I blame the Valium and Lortab because I never do such stupid things. Usually, cops are the ones who delete my footage.

But thanks to the latter, I have plenty of experience in recovering the footage, but even then, it’s still a lengthy process, especially when it involves so many clips.

So the above video is of the actual procedure, which I should warn you, includes some graphic footage of the back of my sliced open with Dr. Mejia removing a strip of hair, then sewing it up as he explains the trycophitic closure.

I was a little restless during the operation despite having taken two Valiums and two Lortabs because I wanted to ensure everything went well with the video production.

Luckily, Dr. Mejia is not uptight and has a sense of humor because he dealt with it perfectly.

Then after I was sewn up, I received a call from the Miami New Times about a story I had posted earlier that morning where I described how the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Homeland Security Bureau had been monitoring my Facebook page hours before my arrest, indicating that my arrest wasn’t as random as they had tried to make it out to be.

Despite being high on the medication, I was able to give a somewhat coherent interview.

Now that I have those videos posted, I should be able to update this blog on a more regular basis. I have a video of Dr. Mejia removing the stitches as well as a few videos of Dr. Mejia explaining different aspects of a hair transplant surgery that I plan to post in the next couple of weeks.

Today marks exactly two weeks that I allowed Dr. Mejia to slice a strip of scalp from the back of my head, sew the two remaining flaps of scalp back together again, then pierce the top of my head multiple times with a sharp instrument, followed by inserting 2,799 hair grafts in the holes he pierced.

I’m sure he’ll have a more clinical way of describing the procedure, but that is exactly how it appears in the photo gallery below.

I felt no pain during the operation, thanks to the anesthesia, Lortab and valium. And I’ve felt very little pain since, which is amazing considering all the slicing and jabbing and prodding and sewing that was done up there.

I still have a bottle of Lortab in case it does start hurting, but other than the occasional throbbing from the back of my head, which is my cue to pop a pill, I’ve felt very little pain.

And I’ve gone days without taking a pain pill.

Sometimes I forget about the stitches in the back of my head and I run my brush against the scar, which causes a sharp pain.

But other than that, I have to run my fingers along the scar to remind myself I went through this procedure.

Most of the stitches feel as if they have fallen out, but I am still supposed to see Dr. Mejia this week so he can remove what is left.

As expected, I’ve lost much of the hair he transplanted as you can see in the photo above, which I snapped Sunday morning. In fact, I may have even less hair than I did going into the operation.

But that is also normal because hair gets lost during the shock of the operation, but it grows back again.

The truth is, we won’t see the full result of the transplant until a year from now, which judging from what others have written in certain hair transplant forums, can drive some men crazy with anticipation.

Some of the men on these forums complain of redness on their scalp weeks and months after the operation, but as you can see in the above photo, any redness I have seems to be fading away fast.

I was supposed to take it easy these past two weeks, but I’ve had court dates and media interviews regarding my arrest covering the Occupy Miami eviction in January as well as photo assignments, so I hope all that activity did not screw up the doctor’s good work.

I wore my hat for the interviews because my hair was still looking funky from the operation. I posted one of the interviews below. It was conducted in Spanish, which means I resorted to Spanglish several times throughout the interview.

The other interview has yet to run, but it will also be in Spanish.

For the first few days after the operation, I experienced a lot of itching on my scalp, but that was only because I was not allowed to shampoo the top of my hair.

After the first week, Dr. Mejia told me to shampoo my hair vigorously, including the top part where the grafts were placed as well as the back where the stitches were, which probably caused some of the hair to fall out, but he said at that point, the grafts were already secured inside my scalp.

Meanwhile, I am still continuing on my permanent diet change, which has led to a loss of 20 pounds, but now it’s time to get back into the gym and start toning up the muscles again.

I started the diet change in October when I was weighing 205 pounds, eating a lot of greasy, fried food and starchy carbs.

Even when I would go through phases of working out intensely, I would only be able to drop down to 195 because I never adjusted my diet.

So after my 43^rd birthday in September, I realized I wasn’t going to shed the weight unless I changed my diet, so I started eating salads, which I had never done before and little snacks of nuts and berries throughout the day.

I cut back on booze and when I do drink, I order wine or vodka with soda instead of beer, which can be extremely bloating.

But I purposely kept myself out of the gym during this adjustment because I know how famished I get after a good workout and I did not want to slip into my old eating habits.

My goal was to establish a permanent diet change to keep the excess weight off permanently rather than a short-term diet, which causes short-term weight loss, only for it to come back once I start eating like crap again.

But it’s been more than six months with the new diet and I don’t see myself slipping back, although I do indulge occasionally in a burger or pizza, but now it’s all about moderation instead of an everyday thing.

And because of that, my weight now hovers around 185 instead of 205, and I now wear a size 32 jeans instead of 34, something I had not done in ten years. I would like to keep my weight around 180, which is ideal for my height of 5’9”.

Actually, my goal is to reach 177 pounds just to say I lost 30 pounds in a year because I was weighing 207 at my heaviest last year. The idea is to shed as much fat as possible, then rebuild with muscle.

Saturday night, I drank alcohol for the first time since the operation while celebrating my mom’s birthday. It was Cinco de Mayo, so I finished a bottle of tequila with my crazy Tia Marita.

Now for the pictures that Blanca snapped with my Canon 5D and 100 mm f/2.8 macro lens, which is the perfect operating room lens. I will also be posting a video from the operation this week.

When you live in Miami, Jupiter might as well be another planet instead of a 90-minute drive north on I-95. It’s just not a place we visit from the Magic City. Tucked away in the northernmost point of Palm Beach County, it’s not even on our radar.

But that is where Dr. Ricardo Mejia is based, one of the most respected hair restoration doctors in South Florida, a man who has been practicing hair restoration for 15 years. He has even been featured on CNN

Dr. Mejia has agreed to do a hair transplant on me this Monday in exchange of me documenting my progress on this blog. But considering it can take up to a year to see full results, I will also be writing about health, diet, exercise and dating.

As a 43-year-old single man with a receding hairline, it finally hit me that I am no longer the spring chicken that I once was, so I decided to take an active role in maintaining my health, looks and mental energy.

I recently shed 20 pounds after making some serious adjustments to my diet, mainly cutting out starchy carbs, especially breads and fried foods, and replacing them with nuts, vegetables and lean proteins.

And once I recover from the hair transplant, which can take anywhere from a week to a month, I plan to kick off a serious exercise regime, maybe even check out that crossfit rage.

But the most interesting aspect of this blog will be about dating. Four decades of my life have gone by and I’m just as clueless about the opposite sex as I was in high school. No, not really. I used to think women were flaky. Now I know women are flaky.

But they think men are flaky as well. And they’re right about that. But who wouldn’t be having to deal with all their flakiness?

However, despite all this flakiness, many of us still try our hardest to attract the opposite sex, which is why thousands of men each year allow doctors to cut into their scalps, slice out strands of hair follicles, only to replace them on the other side of their head.

Let’s face it. Not all of us can lose our hair and still be named People’s Sexiest Man Alive as Sean Connery was a few years back.

But even if Sean Connery did decide to get a hair transplant, who’s going to tell him he is less of a man? Or for that matter, who’s going to tell me I’m less of a man?

I’m sure many of you will, which is all right with me. If you know me from my nationally renowned Photography is Not a Crime blog, you will know that I welcome all comments, even the insulting ones.

One of my plans on this blog is to post short video interviews on men and women about lessons they’ve learned in life, especially about business and dealing with the opposite sex.

My goal would be to break down this communication barrier that seems to exist between the sexes. I’ve been a journalist for as long as Dr. Mejia has been restoring hair, so I know how to ask the hard questions.

And the women I’ve spoken to about this love the idea because they have much to say. We’ll see about that.

But in all seriousness, it was a very smart and creative woman who brainstormed and organized this project; my good friend, Blanca Mejia, who is Dr. Mejia’s sister.

 

Blanca is pictured above with me and another good friend, Alex De Carvalho, who recently lost about 50 pounds and inspired me to change my diet.

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