Hi,
Just a quick question. I went in for my first laser treatment about 3 days ago. I was getting my face treated with a diode laser. Now, I could be wrong, but I could have sworn the lady said the laser was at 45 at one point. At my test appointment, she said the highest it goes is 60. After reading posts I’ve noticed that most people say the laser is around 35, at the most, when they go. When the nurse did my upper lip, which was the last area she did, she said she would lower it a bit cause that is a sensitive area. After she finished I looked at the screen on the laser and it said 35 joules. So my first question is: Am I getting treatments way to high? I know I should ask, and I will at my next appointment, but I just thought she knew what she was doing. The pain was almost unbearable for me and I began to cry twice during the treatment. My threshold for pain is also quite low so that may be why.
During the procedure the laser broke my skin on my chin. I have a few dots on my face that scabbed up but those are almost all gone. The problem is that I have a huge scab on my chin. It’s about the size of a dime and it looks like I rubbed my chin on the cement or something. When I go to work my co-workers all think I got in a fight. I’ve been putting some Polysporin on it twice a day (the nurse gave it to me), but it’s not healing very quickly like the rest of my face. I know it’s only been three days but my chin looks just horrible. Is the laser too high when this sort of thing happens? Does this mean I chose a bad place to get my laser treatment done? I picked a place called the Berman Skin Institute in Palo Alto, CA. The website is www.bermanmd.com if anyone wants to check it out.
So there’s my questions. Thanks for the help in advance.
Every case is different, but most practitoners choose their settings (fluence, pulse width, repetition rate) based on your skin type from the Fitzpatrick scale.
I’m a type IV, so my skin is kinda dark, but not as dark as someone who is black, and also a little bit lighter than most hispanic skin types.
But I’m way darker than most white people.
One thing that totally affected the amount of scabbing is when my doc lowered the repetition rate from 2Hz to 1.5Hz…
I still had a little scabbing, but it wasn’t as bad, even though the fluence was raised by 3J from the last treatment.
I’m gonna ask the doc to lower the repetition rate once again, this time to 1Hz.
Slowing down the repetition rate gives your skin a slightly longer time in between pulses to “rest” and chill out before another spot (next to the previous spot) is zapped.
If your skin is really light, 45J may not be out of the range that you can be safely treated at, but for my skin type, 45J is about as high as I might be able to handle.
I’ve gotten up to 33J so far, and I may not get that much higher over the course of my treatments. For all I know, 33J-34J might be my max, I guess I will find out the next treatment.