Hair Replacement Specialist – Dr. Jerry Cooley Part I
My phone beeped, letting me know that I received an email, as it does several dozen times a day. It was a “request for contact” form that was filled out on my website. “Let’s talk” was the gist of the message along with a phone number and another email address. The day was May 18th, 2015 and the message was from hair replacement specialist Dr. Jerry Cooley in Charlotte, North Carolina. This was early on in my career of being “independent” in the hair replacement specialist field and it was really encouraging to hear from Dr. Cooley.
I’ve always known Dr. Cooley by his stellar reputation and we’ve had a few email chats over the years. Eventually Dr. Cooley and I were able to connect and we discussed what I’m doing now and how we could possible collaborate together. I already had a trip planned to be near his hair replacement specialist clinic since my family lives within a short drive of Charlotte, North Carolina so we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and have dinner one night. I had met Dr. Cooley once before while in San Francisco in 2013 at the ISHRS Conference when he was there to present one of his patients during the Live Patient Viewing session of the conference and I remember his patient being one of three patients that I was truly impressed with. Dr. Cooley exhibited a patient that showed why he is a hair replacement specialist that I’d trust my own head with. The patient had had a complete crown reconstruction procedure and with the crown whorl that was recreated from scratch I recognized that he was on par with my own doctor, Dr. Jerry Wong, with this very difficult aspect of surgical hair restoration. Getting the crown whorl just right is extremely difficult and Dr. Cooley had nailed it, which I told him as much on that day.
When I was finally able to spend some time with Dr. Cooley during my first visit I found him to warm and genuine but constantly thinking. I could see the wheels were constantly turning behind his eyes as we talked about pleasantries and then moved on to the industry and how we could work together. This was the first of many conversations i was to have with the man that would reveal his intellect and hair restoration passion and genius. I was able to spend a full day in his clinic the next day where I witnessed the amazing team of Dr. Cooley and his assistant Brandi during a strip procedure. Four hands working in sync with almost zero verbal communication. They were completing each other’s movements and completing complex maneuvers involving stitching and closing of the donor zone. I honestly hadn’t ever seen such precision in my career. Later, during the implantation of the grafts, I was able to witness again both Brandi and Dr. Cooley placing the grafts for the entire day and they would even assist each other inserting one graft. It was awesome!
This visit set up the plan for my next visit which would have me officially documenting and showing all of you what it is like to visit Dr. Cooley’s office for a hair transplant by a true hair replacement specialist. The first video in the series is below;
I have to admit that I knew Dr. Cooley was Hair Transplant Mentor™ material before I started this documentary all thanks to my initial visit several months before but I was still excited to document how things work in his clinic for all of you to see. In this video I spare you from going through the airport routine with me but I do show you the hotel you’ll most likely stay in if you’re traveling in from out of town and I show you that the journey to the clinic is only a five minute drive. I only do this because I believe that seeing your eventual surroundings, should you decide to have a hair transplant with Dr. Cooley, helps you gain a familiarity with your future surroundings and thus will help you to feel more at ease. This is only part one and more videos will be shared.