However, with a few facts at your disposal, you can get an advance idea of how your hair will look. 1. The more hairs per graft that are used in your hair transplant, the less natural your hair will look. Many doctors still use grafts that contain up to eight hairs. These do not look as conspicuous as the hair plugs of earlier decades, but they do not look as natural as they can, either. They used an instrument called a trephine to cut circular grafts from 2mm to 5mm in diameter. These plugs were inserted into the balding area. Now, a multi-bladed knife can be used to cut long thin strips of donor tissue. The strip of scalp will be about an inch wide and five inches long. Then, the hair transplant doctor pulls the skin together where this was taken out, and stitches it together. Anyone who has had a tooth pulled knows that, if the tooth is deadened properly, it is not the tooth-pulling that hurts. It is the needle going in with medication to numb the tooth that is the real agony. Of course, to follow the dental analogy, after the numbing wears off there is plenty of pain where the tooth was before. You can start out by getting some kind of hat. It does not matter what kind of hat it is, as long as it is fairly loose-fitting so that it does not rub on your new hair transplant grafts. You should not have to put up with this for long. After a couple of weeks, you can replace the cap with sunscreen. You need a way to contact former patients. If at all possible, you need to be able to visit with patients the doctor has treated so they can show you the results in person. You are not asking too much - it is a major commitment you are making. 4. If your doctor says to try a few hair transplant grafts and then decide, run. This is important because smoking makes you heal slower by inhibiting blood from flowing to your skin. It may be hard to do, but if you quit smoking just for the surgery, it might not be so hard. Then, once you have done that, you may find that you want to stay off the cigarettes or cigars even after the hair transplant have healed.