Meet The Artist

My name is Casey Toland and I struggle with hair loss. I started losing my hair at 16 years old and have “gone through the trenches” ever since, trying to find a solution. When I tell you that I’ve tried pretty much everything, I’m not kidding. From hair fibers, to thickening shampoos, to special vitamins, to medications, to laser helmets, to custom essential oil blends, to microneedling, and even as far as going under the knife, multiple times, with multiple different hair transplant techniques; you name it, I’ve likely done it.

The reason I’m sharing this is because it’s a large part of why I’m here and why I do what I do. Losing your hair isn’t a fun or glamorous process, in fact, it can be pretty devastating. Losing your hair directly and severely impacts your self-esteem, your confidence, and can drastically change your appearance, usually for the worse. Losing it as early as I did, I was faced with constant ridicule and bullying, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t interfere with many other parts of my life. I, like many others, started making excuses so I wouldn’t have to socialize or pursue opportunities simply because my self-esteem was devastatingly low. When I finally did go out, I almost always had a hat on to hide under.

When I got to college I started looking into options to treat or cure hair loss, and that’s when the rabbit hole opened up. There’s an overwhelming amount of options out there that all claim to be able to reverse or cure hair loss, and I dove right in, balding-head first. When you’re in a vulnerable place, dealing with something that isn’t easy to talk about, it creates a situation where you’re operating from a place of desperation and that can lead to all kinds of additional issues. At that age, I was the only one that seemed to be losing my hair, so I had nobody to talk to about it and the industry was much more “underground” than it is now.

I began spending a ridiculous amount of money and subjecting myself to everything I could find, to try to find a solution. As I mentioned above, I tried EVERYTHING and nothing worked. Desperate and discouraged, I felt that my only option was to go under the knife and get a hair transplant.

After several consultations, including some of the big companies you’ve seen on TV, I decided to move forward with the latest and greatest technology and get a robotic hair transplant which claimed to be “scarless and painless”. Thinking about all of the gimmicky sales tactics they used now makes me sick and it’s hard not to feel ashamed or embarrassed that I believed any of it. Until you’re going through it yourself, you don’t realize how cloudy desperation can make your judgment — it’s wild. I just wanted the ridicule and degradation of my appearance to stop, and was willing to do anything to achieve that.

Here’s where it gets a bit barbaric, so here’s your warning:

The procedure was scheduled over two days with over one hundred injections of numbing medication directly into my head, followed at least a hundred “sites” made with a scalpel where the hair was to be transplanted. This took several hours, and yes, you’re awake for all of it. You may be numb once the shots take effect, but you feel each and every one of those injections going in. Once the numbing has taken place, you still hear and feel the scalpel piercing through the flesh in your head, and the bloody trails that accompany each incision. After all of the incisions were made, I was sent home and expected to return again the next morning.

The next morning rolls around and we’re right back where we started with the numbing injections — one hundred or so of those all around the “donor area” where they will be taking the hair from, and another hundred or so around the “recipient area”. Now it was time for the robot and here is where it gets especially graphic.

They proceed to strap my head down to a table full of gauze, and position the robot, which they assure me isn’t going to be painful, but rather just “uncomfortable”. As it begins warming up and they ask “Are you ready?”, it strikes me in the back of the head and makes it’s first extraction. Each extraction is a swift jolt to the back of the head — not enough to knock you unconscious (unfortunately), but enough to make you dizzy from the repetitive impacts. To help you visualize what this machine is doing, it is puncturing your head with a cylindrical tube, spinning in circles to cut the graft out, then pulling it out and depositing it onto a tray for transplantation. That process is repeated hundreds, if not thousands of times, depending on the case.

Each puncture was felt and heard and there’s nothing that it can be compared to. While this is taking place, remember that my head was strapped down to a table and I’m awake for all of it. Blood is spilling down both sides of my head and the gauze that I’m strapped down to is filling up and replaced several times throughout the course of the next few hours. Yes, you read that right, it lasted for several hours. It was in these few hours that I realized that I had made one of the biggest mistakes of my life and was paying the price for it in every sense of the word. The procedure was gruesome, archaic, and I have no issues comparing it to medieval torture, and I don’t think you would either if you saw it, much less experienced it. It was the most traumatic physical experience I have ever gone through and I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.

The procedure was over $10,000, and the final result was indistinguishable from my “before” pictures. The procedure that they told me was “scarless and painless” was not only incredibly painful but also left me with hundreds of polka dot scars all over the back of my head. Now I’m in a worse position than when I started and am even more desperate for a solution to now "complete what I started”. Instead of achieving a cure, I had dug myself into a worse position where things continued to spiral downhill. Over the course of the next ten years, I had several more hair transplants (different doctor and different procedure) and have continued to try every new thing that I’ve come across, still with little-to-no success.

I’m now over a decade into this battle and am left with tens of thousands of dollars in wasted funds, permanent damage to my head, and am forced to continue a tedious routine of various hair loss treatments to mask it all. You might be asking why I didn’t just shave it; once you’ve invested a good sum of money and are left with a bunch of scars, it becomes a little bit more difficult of a decision — you’ve started digging yourself a hole and you don’t know it’s getting worse until it’s too late. You’re always told that you’re one more procedure away from the result you want and you can’t imagine calling it quits after spending the money you have or going through the pain of the procedure, especially now that you have scars all over your head.

I don’t like to throw around the term victim, as I made the choices that I did and now I have to live with the consequences, but I can safely say that I regret many of the decisions I’ve made when it comes to hair loss and wish I could go back, knowing what I know now. Although I’ve gone through what I can only describe as a complete nightmare, these experiences have put me in a very unique position to help others who are battling hair loss, and for that I am grateful.

When I came across scalp micropigmentation, or SMP, I knew that I could use my experiences and knowledge about the industry to provide people with a far superior result to what I’ve obtained, at a fraction of the cost, and prevent them from “going through the trenches” themselves. I wish that I would have met someone like me before I started going down the path that I did, as they would have saved me a small fortune, prevented some shady dealings with con-artists who prey upon people who are in a desperate and vulnerable state, and some gruesome procedures that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone.

I can confidently say that I wish I would have gotten the SMP treatment from the beginning; and I can’t express enough how much it would have saved me not only financially, but physically, emotionally, and mentally as well.

So that’s a little about me and how I got into SMP. Now that you understand where my motivation and passion come from I hope that you conclude that you could not be in better hands when it comes to getting this treatment done.

If you have any questions whatsoever, please do not hesitate to reach out.