Just finished my 13th session: this time two hours and 1,425 hairs. My chest, stomach and back are almost hair free. After the last session I didn’t see anything for nearly a month, but after 2 months there were a decent number of new hairs. I’m hopeful the end is near.
Today was painful as hell: even with about sixty lidocaine injections I was almost in tears. Still, the gain is worth the pain.
Attached pix show skin immediately after treatment.
I like the way you said, “there were a decent number of NEW hairs”.
Most clients say, “all the hairs are back!”, which is inaccurate. Yes, some hairs that were treated may return because some hair germ cells remained behind, but if the Electrologist is zapping the hairs really well, there shouldn’t be many.
I’m always glad when you show pictures right after treatment, Kostik. The area looks like a really scary battlefield, but that is a hopeful sign that killing has taken place. It clears up nicely as you have shown in other pictures.
I hope you can return in a week or so and show the Hairtell friends how well this heals, in light of these pictures being so mosquito-ee’ red and swollen.
In the future, I will post more cases where I show the before and after, but I will also put in pictures of the ugly in between. Of course, statistics of time, cost and insertions made will be included.
THANK YOU FOR SHARING AGAIN, Kostik!
Picture after 24 hours. The redness is almost gone, just the insertion marks show. Note only 785 hairs were removed from the front vs. over 3,000 during earlier sessions.
Very nice! Thank you.
Why was there still a lot pain after 6 liodocaine injections? Was the pain immediate after the shots or did it start hours after initial shots started to wear out?
With icing (no lidociane) I can only handle 2 hours of electro per session on torso especially lower torso.
Hah, not 6 injections but around 60. He spent a good 15 minutes numbing up my front, and again later my back. I didn’t keep exact count, but I think that’s about right. A lot!
Why did it still hurt - because the area is big, and the injections didn’t cover it all. She zapped a few remaining hairs on the upper arms, which hurts like hell, and on the sides around the rib cage, which hurts like hell. Luckily he was able to numb up my neck area, where she cleaned up all the hairs below my “hair line”. But my goodness, it was numb for hours!
Just to be clear - there is no pain in a numbed area. And there is no residual pain: if I feel the needle going in, I know it’s going to hurt! But the pain lasts only a second. It’s murder, though.
I guess I’m more sensitive than most, but ice packs don’t help me much at all. Without lidocaine I couldn’t do this.
Does this also have anything to do with the skill of the practitioner?
I’m not in any way trying to brag or be annoying, but I can handle 3 hours of body work with no problem, maybe with an Aspirin. Kostik is obviously getting great results and so he should stick with it, but I wonder if there’s something about the technique of his operator that’s making it more painful than it would be with someone else (I experienced one session once that was EXTREMELY painful). Of course, it could also depend on the depth/thickness of the hairs, maybe?
In any case, your progress is amazing, Kostik!
I guess I just don’t want to scare other people off from electrolysis… I think that, for a lot of people with a lot of practitioners, you definitely wouldn’t need the lidocaine. I’m personally scared of numbing stuff (and shots!), so I’m glad this has been the case for me!
Kostiq you’ve had 13 sessions- was each session2 hours long or did you do longer in the beginning? And how spaced out were you’re treatments? I’m just starting to look into electrolysis and you’re results are amazing!
pain sensitivity can vary drastically from person to person…
Most of my clients don’t even ask for any type of topical (and I don’t have a doctor here, so no injections). On the other hand, I have people that start wincing in pain before I even put the cap on the probe holder and for them, it’s lidocaine + Laurier IBPs. A few others will put EMLA and a wrap on at home before coming in.
I don’t think I’ve done an area where nobody has used a topical, nor likewise, an area where nobody has gone without one.
It’s not a competition over who hurts most or who has the highest pain tolerance… but everyone’s sensitivity does vary and how painful a session is varies from electrologist to electrologist too.
Things like how well you slept, your hormone levels, the weather, etc all play a role in sensitive as well. I have people that typically don’t need anything and then they come in for a session after a night where they didn’t get much sleep and everything hurts.
I never used a topical anywhere until i started on the center of my neck. I think pain levels has a lot to do with physical state as Emancipated states, and sometimes the area being worked, and the modality itself, as some are more painful than others.
No the sessions have varied from 2 to 4 hours. I think the maximum number of hairs I had removed in one session was over 4,000. Near the beginning, when I looked like a deciduous forest, I could hear “beep beep beep beep” as she was clearly zapping away pretty quickly. As the hair density inevitably thinned out, the sessions became less efficient, with more time spent icing new areas and looking for new hairs.
But electrolysis is amazingly effective, and I can see that I am close to being done. It’s painful but worth every tear and every penny!
Funny because I also observed that as less hair is coming back and time is decreasing per sessions, there is noticeable inefficiency in overall time management because she spends more time searching for spread out hairs with her magnification. And now thinner/vellus hairs are more difficult to do fast insertions on because she can’t see them as well. So I’m wondering if there is sacrifice in treatment energy efficiency as smaller diameter needles are used to compensate with struggle with vellus hair insertions?
My remaining hairs are not thinner than the earlier ones. I don’t get into the medical or technical aspects of the matter. But I see that the new hairs can be just as thick and coarse as the old ones - there are just fewer of them. And they take longer to reappear: after this clearance I will probably not see one for a month. But in three months I expect there will be a few, and I’ll go back for another treatment when I’m sick and tired of seeing them.
I am interested in connecting with you to compare electrolysis journey. After 1.5 years of electrolysis, my hair is still very coarse and thick. At consultation with a new electrologist that I went to last week, I was told that over the coarse of time- hair should get thinner. (Unless hair is broken off at an angle, at which they will not be able to get the hair properly until a few sessions).
How many hours have you had over 1.5 years? What area? Did you go every week? Every three weeks? Every four weeks? …
Dee: I’ve been doing chest, stomach, back and neckline. I go every 2 months or so. It’s almost an all-day ordeal - it takes me about 1-1/2 hours to get to the hospital, I’m always early for my 8 am appointment and they’re always late, then there’s the BP and weight check, all the icing and injections, and then we get started. Time on the stopwatch usually runs 2-3 hours. I think once I did 4 hours. Then she covers it with aloe vera gel, and I wait to pay and get my medicine cream. It ends up taking all day!
A pic from this morning attached - 4 days after.
Unfortunately I don’t pay any attention to the technical aspects of electrolysis. But I don’t see why hair should get thinner, if what we’re seeing are new hairs in the cycle that weren’t killed before.
I don’t know exactly how much electricity is used to zap a follicle, but I suspect it’s enough to kill a small animal - probably anything up to a guinea pig. Otherwise it would not be so #%*€£¥ painful. So my guess is that when a hair is killed, it stays killed - it does not come back as a shadowy reincarnation of its former self.
Thanks for your information, Kos. Your picture looks fantastic!
I will ask hairgal the same questions:
How many hours have you had over 1.5 years? What area? Did you go every week? Every three weeks? Every four weeks?
I have no idea what is going off in Kostik head to make such wild and weird assumptions 
Unless you have hair all over your back and front or wish to transgender I have no idea personally why men wish to get rid of chest hairs.
I would be gutted if my husband got rid of his, I like to run my hands over my husbands chest when we are laid in bed together or on the sofa and he loves me doing it too. Trust me women do not mind at all there are many other things a women looks for than a hairless man it wouldn’t register on most women’s radars.
The 4 days later post looks great as if nothing was their x