Day 179, Wednesday, July 24th, 2013
My hair is growing back. I am fond of the net results of this process (though less so the initial phases), especially the part where I have eyebrows and eyelashes again, as I found that without them (and with them partially on their way back in), looking at my face in the mirror produced an uncanny valley effect - I appeared almost human, but not quite. It was personally unsettling, if only in a very small way. I'm not that vain, and I don't spend much time pondering my reflection. Like most men, I give myself a little flex while brushing my teeth, nod in satisfaction, rinse, fart, and leave the bathroom without a great deal of introspection. I congratulate myself for looking so fit after bathing in chemicals and radiation, but that's about the extent of it (though I lament the lack of superpowers).
Your hair, when it does come back, doesn't do so quickly, or uniformly. Certain parts of you, for whatever reason, take a while to join back in on your follicular rebirth, and you end up a little mismatched for a while. I think those parts don't like the ideologies being espoused, and are resisting out of principle. Having gone through this process three times now (well, two and a half, I suppose, I didn't get anywhere near to a full head of hair between transplants), I've mapped out the order of operations (at least, for men):
Your moustache comes back first. Regardless of your relative ability to produce facial hair, your moustache has somehow organized an internal coup, and has achieved keratin-based supremacy. This is followed closely by the goatee region, but not the neckbeard region, for some reason; perhaps there was a schism in the party. In point of fact, I actually have to shave far more often now than I did prior to transplantation, and can grow a far more effective beard, in far less time. What would have constituted three-weeks' growth, in the not-too distant past, can now be accounted for in a single seven-day advent. Granted, it's still not exactly what one would picture as being a true or worthy beard, but it is certainly noticeable, and has prompted changes in my facial-care habits. I have no responsibilities for a while, maybe I'll buy a beard trimmer and see how this plays out. Perhaps I'll make an animated gif of it.
After the moustache comes the hair on your head; just not the hair on the top of your head. You begin with the sides, producing a sort of involuntary-Friar-Tuck, if you will. It comes back as, as all your hair does, at first, as the softest, blondest, downiest fluff that you can imagine. Baby chicks do not compare well to the cushion of airy softness that graces your skull-plains. Ash pets my head frequently. Eventually, as the sides begin to grow in enough to develop visible colour, your scalp decides to play as well, and produces a raggedy, though still downy, playing field that no self-respecting football team would go near. I still have about a centimeter of my normal hairline to grow back in, right across the front. I can see the little blondies poking their way up out of the cranial garden, but it's a slow process, and I think rabbits are feasting during the night.
A little behind the hair that we style for our enjoyment, come the puberty-zones. It's essentially the same process, with the testes growing hair last, closely following the armpits. Yes, people also style this hair for enjoyment, but you generally don't get a chance to check out a crotch-based dye-job while walking through a public area. Maybe that'll change with time, people are getting more progressive. "Hey, Dave, nice pubes!" "Thanks!" *Wave*
Lagging long afterwards, your chest, arms and legs grudgingly accept that they, too, are hair producing surfaces and contribute their share, but at a very slow pace. I look forward to seeing if I grow more than twenty-one chest hairs during this process. That was my previous record. Ash counted.
I've never really understood, why, during my mid-twenties, after a fairly successful existence without chest hair, my body decided it wanted to grow some, and even more so, why it wanted to grow so few of them, like a poorly funded civic project. "Hey guys, you know what we need? Chest hair. Ladies love that, right? But we don't want to spend too much, what can we get that's cheap, and won't require a lot of maintenance?"
It's like my chest bought cheap grass seed at the end of the season, scattered it to the winds, dusted off its (metaphorical) hands, nodded in satisfaction, and considered the matter settled, expecting the bison to roam the plains by the next turning of the seasons.
I'm not a hairy man: I have been angrily accused of plucking my eyebrows by several women, over the course of my twenties. I hope the stray brow-hairs that now grow old-man willy-nilly style will assuage the righteous brow-fury of the Bert-brow-encumbered.
"My sexual fantasy is to sleep with Freud's father. MOTHER. FUCK!"
Your hair, when it does come back, doesn't do so quickly, or uniformly. Certain parts of you, for whatever reason, take a while to join back in on your follicular rebirth, and you end up a little mismatched for a while. I think those parts don't like the ideologies being espoused, and are resisting out of principle. Having gone through this process three times now (well, two and a half, I suppose, I didn't get anywhere near to a full head of hair between transplants), I've mapped out the order of operations (at least, for men):
Your moustache comes back first. Regardless of your relative ability to produce facial hair, your moustache has somehow organized an internal coup, and has achieved keratin-based supremacy. This is followed closely by the goatee region, but not the neckbeard region, for some reason; perhaps there was a schism in the party. In point of fact, I actually have to shave far more often now than I did prior to transplantation, and can grow a far more effective beard, in far less time. What would have constituted three-weeks' growth, in the not-too distant past, can now be accounted for in a single seven-day advent. Granted, it's still not exactly what one would picture as being a true or worthy beard, but it is certainly noticeable, and has prompted changes in my facial-care habits. I have no responsibilities for a while, maybe I'll buy a beard trimmer and see how this plays out. Perhaps I'll make an animated gif of it.
After the moustache comes the hair on your head; just not the hair on the top of your head. You begin with the sides, producing a sort of involuntary-Friar-Tuck, if you will. It comes back as, as all your hair does, at first, as the softest, blondest, downiest fluff that you can imagine. Baby chicks do not compare well to the cushion of airy softness that graces your skull-plains. Ash pets my head frequently. Eventually, as the sides begin to grow in enough to develop visible colour, your scalp decides to play as well, and produces a raggedy, though still downy, playing field that no self-respecting football team would go near. I still have about a centimeter of my normal hairline to grow back in, right across the front. I can see the little blondies poking their way up out of the cranial garden, but it's a slow process, and I think rabbits are feasting during the night.
A little behind the hair that we style for our enjoyment, come the puberty-zones. It's essentially the same process, with the testes growing hair last, closely following the armpits. Yes, people also style this hair for enjoyment, but you generally don't get a chance to check out a crotch-based dye-job while walking through a public area. Maybe that'll change with time, people are getting more progressive. "Hey, Dave, nice pubes!" "Thanks!" *Wave*
Lagging long afterwards, your chest, arms and legs grudgingly accept that they, too, are hair producing surfaces and contribute their share, but at a very slow pace. I look forward to seeing if I grow more than twenty-one chest hairs during this process. That was my previous record. Ash counted.
I've never really understood, why, during my mid-twenties, after a fairly successful existence without chest hair, my body decided it wanted to grow some, and even more so, why it wanted to grow so few of them, like a poorly funded civic project. "Hey guys, you know what we need? Chest hair. Ladies love that, right? But we don't want to spend too much, what can we get that's cheap, and won't require a lot of maintenance?"
It's like my chest bought cheap grass seed at the end of the season, scattered it to the winds, dusted off its (metaphorical) hands, nodded in satisfaction, and considered the matter settled, expecting the bison to roam the plains by the next turning of the seasons.
I'm not a hairy man: I have been angrily accused of plucking my eyebrows by several women, over the course of my twenties. I hope the stray brow-hairs that now grow old-man willy-nilly style will assuage the righteous brow-fury of the Bert-brow-encumbered.
"My sexual fantasy is to sleep with Freud's father. MOTHER. FUCK!"
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