I did it! When I went to Brazil, I didn't have any idea that I was really go-
ing to do this but I saw two ads in
the São Paulo newspaper and went
to check it out. I didn't actually know
anybody who had done this so I was
a little cautious. But a friend intro-
duced me to somebody who had,
and I saw the results and was con-
vinced by what I saw.

I went to the consultation and the
doctor looked me over and ex-
plained how the operation would
go, and took photos. He had lots
of art books in his office of classic
Greek and Italian art. He studies
this classic art, to better under-
stand the human form and apply
it in his work.

We scheduled the operation for the
morning of the very next day in a
hospital in São Paulo. A friend
drove me there at 7 in the morning,
which probably would be hard to
find by myself in a city like São
Paulo. São Paulo is enormous.

It was a regular hospital, with an
operating room with all the equip-
ment, and they also gave me my own private room. They gave me a
sedative in the arm but I was awake
the whole time. They gave me little
injections of local anesthetic in my
scalp, something like what a dentist
gives.

There wasn't any pain, but I had the
feeling like someone was pulling my
hair. They cut a strip of scalp from
the back of my head to provide the
hair roots to transplant. They started
implanting the roots in the front, and
slowly worked to the back. About the
midway point, they gave me more
local injections of anesthetic.

The whole procedure lasted about
3 ½ hours. The doctor said that they
were able to harvest more donor
hair than they thought and covered
more area, so it took longer than
usual. They wrapped my head up in
a bandage and took me back to the
hospital room. They brought lunch
and I rested a little bit and then we
left. They gave me a prescription for
a pain-killer and an antibiotic.

The next day, I went to the doctor's
office. They removed the head ban- dage and washed my head. The doctor told me I didn't need to take the pain medication any more if I wasn't feeling any pain. So I stopped taking it. There wasn't any bleeding or swelling. At that point I was back to normal already, but I had to stay out of the sun for 2 weeks.

A week later, I returned to the doctor's
office to remove the stitches from the
back of my head. A light crust had
already covered my head as the healing process was progressing. It took about a month for it to heal up and that to fall off. Now you could see
all of the tiny roots that the doctor
had placed on the scalp, and ready to
grow. He said they would start to appear in about 3 to 4 months after.

The funny thing was after I got home
nobody even noticed that I had had surgery. They will in a few months when the new hair appears.