MY STORY
My personal journey in the world of hair loss...
Way back in 1980 at the age of just 18, I noticed that I had started losing my hair. Just as my father did and his father did, so I knew there was no getting away with more hair loss to come.
Time to do something about it, was in the era of pop stars just looking into hair transplants. The likes of Russ Abbott and I think Elton John, although I know he went down the hairpiece route...
In the national papers, there was an ad about hair transplants, so it was time to take action.
I gave them a call and sorted a time and place to pick me up, they provided a pickup service. Of we went to Tamworth around an hour and a half later we arrived at the clinic, I remember being really nervous to the point I rushed to the restroom and literally vomited!
Am I doing the right thing, is this crazy just to have more hair on my head. Conflicting messages in my head full of doubt, but I'm here now and I've paid approx £500! This was a large sum of money in the early eighties, I actually brought my own terraced house for £2000! with a brand new central heating system in!
Here goes I didn't want to end up bald so I best start here and get what at the time seemed the right thing to do. The rest well, it's a blur. I can remember it was the worst experience of my life, the injections were very painful. The scalpal sliding through my skin to get the hair follicles out the back of my head was horrendously painful due to the anesthetic not working properly!
Then the injections into my forehead ready to put the plugs of hair in there, this procedure was torturous.
All finished and ready for the journey back up north, can't remember much about that. What I can remember is the horrific pain I suffered that night and the days to follow. No painkillers I had any difference at all, my head swallow what resembled an elephant's forehead. My eyes were black and blue, looked like I'd been beaten up by a group of thugs!
Obviously, I hadn't told my parents what I was doing, so I had to say I got into a fight and I came off worse. This actually is what was believed to have happened for years. At the time I was working down the mines, a time I really look back at fondly.
The work ethic and togetherness of mates down the pit was really something else, but in saying that I could not say anything about the hair transplant. In those days men just didn't do vain things like this, no way not at all.
So the painful experience was to remain within, I remember a close mate going to Glastonbury and get a beating in his tent by a group of lads with a baseball bat. I obviously thought I wonder if he's had a hair transplant too, but obviously not.
It took a while for the bruising and swelling to go down, six months passed I was waiting for the follicles to start coming through. They did but omg they were little circular dots with a group of approx ten in each, it really looked like a doll's hair! Grouped together and then gaps, how clever it meant I'd have to go back for more treatments to fill in the missing gaps!
NO way never again was I going through that ordeal. I'd still got the hair above the transplant at this stage, so I use to comb the thinning hair I had over it.
As I started to recede more it was becoming a problem as you could see the plugs at the front then a gap where I'd lost more hair. It was time to try something else.
I was to leave the coal industry after being involved in the miner's strike in 1984/85, to open a gymnasium with a friend 'Beno' i grew up with from the age of 5. He actually talked me out of going in the armed forces after passing all the tests at Sutton Coldfield, said he just had constant thoughts/ dreams of me being killed in action. We were to open the gym in 1986, a great time to start a fresh new look with a hairpiece!
Last said was great to start with but the maintenance was a real pain in the rear, every four to six weeks the piece was to come off. Washed re weaved into my hair really tight then it would loosen each week with the growth of my own hair it was attached to.
At the time I was also a doorman down our local town, which was a great way of meeting new people each week. But wearing a piece has it's negatives when a girl wanted to run her fingers through my hair! and it was at the time fours weeks in and getting a little loose omg!... time for excuses drawing back from her advances.
I'd had enough of it after 3 months, just shave it off and be done with it. I actually did this on holiday in good old Benidorm, came back with a bronze head a great all-over tan. People said how much better I looked, but what was the scar at the back of my head! This I lived with for the next 30 odd years.
I must say though it didn't stop me from meeting and marrying the absolute girl of my dreams! Next year May 2019 it's our 30th wedding anniversary!
Then in 2011, I enquired about a new hair transplant procedure, yes you read that right this daft old fool was at it again.... mid-life crisis or what! But I was told with hardly any donor hair at the sides and back of my head, it wouldn't work for me. But you could have a tattoo on your head it's a new procedure here on Harley St.
Nah Bill not for me what would I bloody want with a tattoo on my head, bye mate.
He planted a seed I just was curious so let's find out about this...
Yes low and behold it was true and very good results too, just normal lads getting this done at a fraction of the costs of the hair transplant route and NO scars or horrendous painful procedures to go through...
To finish things off I got absolutely slated and ridiculed for being bald at a party on stage at a friend's 50th! I took the hit on the chin as us lads do (or in my case did haha not anymore!)...
But that comedian really got me to take action, which actually changed my life so much I'd like to someday meet up and thank him for taking the p*ss out of me that evening!
I booked in at the innovators of this remarkable treatment for hair loss, I couldn't believe I wasn't going to look bald no more, never again. The pain the silent suffering has gone!
The day came of the first treatment came I drove myself there, got to the place and it just looked like a detached house in a residential setting! I rang my dad and said I think I'm going to leave it, dad I'll just lose my £250 deposit. I can't do this what if it goes wrong etc
He said in his stern voice lad you'll end up looking like me, in fact, you do look like me (Bald) already so get in there!.. that I did.
So 2011 changed my life, the way I felt about myself. I knew it bothered me being bald, but nowhere near how deep I felt about it. How much it did hold me back in ALL areas of my life...
Come and see me have a chat on how I went on and how I've helped changed over 4000+ guy's lives for the better here in the UK, over in Europe, and the USA. I'm just so grateful for getting the treatment myself, but also and just if not more grateful to be able to help other guys out there.
You can only imagine how many different stories and feedback I get, it's truly an amazing feeling.
Thanks for giving your time up to read my story, I really do hope I can help change your life for the better.
One life, live it!
All the best
Daz Day