Help! scabs and redness

i have had my first treatment 2 days ago and today on my face. my electrologist insisted that we should do blend.he says that although it is slower than thermolysis, in the 14 years he is practising electrolysis, he has seen a lot better results with blend in terms of efficacy and also that there are less skin side-effects, that thermolyis can cause a lot of redness, scabs etc.
however, my face looked awful after treatment, as if pinched by mosquitoes and the following day i developped scabs. today he changed the settings but still my face is red. i suggested to switch to thermolysis but he insisted that it would be worse.to support his argument, he even offered to offer me extra treatments for free to make up for the longer time blend method takes.
i dont know what to believe. is it normal to experience such redness and scabs? i am also concerned that if this will conitnue for months till the hair follicles are completely destroyed, my skin will completely collapse.

dont fear… redness, scabs are a common thing with electrolysis and they will fade… it takes a couple of hours to days for redness to fade and the scabs (which develop about two days after treatment) will disappear within a week to two weeks or so. So be patient. Regarding your electrolysis in using blend, he probably just feels more at ease with it and more good at it , so if he feels its better then i guess he’s right, but if the long period bothers you and you want to go fast then thermolysis will do that for you.

i use thermolysis and it is fast, but i still got redness and scabing but it isnt the end of the world… they fade with time and with use of aleo vera gel and polysporin.

and remember… whether its blend or thermolysis… both machines are good… the determining factor here is how efficient the eletrolysist is with using the machines. if he/she is great with a certian technique then he’ll do a good job. its all in the art of the process by the electrolysist.

good luck.

Some skin irritation is bound to occur post treatment time. The question is does it last a few hours, or a few days, or a week or more. Either way, as you progress there will be less redness, because there will be less hair to treat.

The hardest thing for new electrology clients is the fact that what ever your first treatment experience, it is probably the worst experience you will ever have with electrology, because there are more hairs, closer together than there ever will be again, AND you had no idea what to expect from your post treatment experience. (that is unless you have read many posts here)

I hope you have gotten consultations from many people in your area. Frequently you find that while one person is better at one modality than others, some are better at the others, and maybe there is even one person who is excellent at all 3. The fastest way to clearance is Thermolysis, but if there is something about your case that makes this electrologist think that he would rather do you in Blend, I would want to know what that is so that I could judge if most electrologists would agree, or if it were just a point of his best skills dictating that course of action for him to do his best treatment. It also helps to know what type of electrolysis machine is being used.

Lastly, I should point out that many clients, Ladies most notoriously, cause their own problems by not heading the after treatment care instructions. I’d be a millionair if I had a dollar for everytime I repeated to a client that one must give the treatment area 24 - 72 hours of being kept clean and dry with only Soap, Water, Aloe and Tea Tree Oil touching it even as the lady is ignoring me and putting on makeup right there in my office! Here she is smearing all kinds of impurities into the open skin, and will blame me for the resulting scabs and infections.

I am not saying that you did this, but many people would have a better experience if they just find a way to ditch the war paint for a day or two and just keep the area clean, out of the sun, and avoid sweating.

the reason why he prefers blends to electrolysis is -i think-that he feels a lot more confident about his skills practising blend.he said that with thermolysis it is a lot easier to make a mistake and there is no way of knowing you made a mistake, also that thermolysis requires high intensities and high temperature and some times when the hair cannot come out, you need to rotate (?) the probe inside the follicle and that can cause burns and huge scabs that eventually leave scars…Is this true?

regarding my type of hair, i had very fine vellus hair covering all my face that after some unsuccessful alexandrite laser treatments turned into coarser, darker hair. according to him, blend will work better for that kind of hair.

i noticed that redness slowly fades away (i had the treatment last monday, 27 december) but i have noticed scars at the points of insertion that i strongly doubt they will ever heal. i am certain that if i continue electrolysis for a year or so my face will be scarred forever.

i think that in his effort to clear the area as soon as possible, he increased the intensity with a disastrous effect on my face. he is doing 3 sec insertions using blend.isnt that very fast for blend?

his machine supplier is a holland based company called “DANCORH”.

I really dont know what to do and i am even considering of giving up electrolysis, because i am very much worried about lasting skin damage. i didnt have much choice of an electroligst here in athens/greece.the only alternative is big beauty salons where they try to convince you to buy blocks of treatments from the beginning without having talked to the electrologist first.and in reality they are not electrologists, they are beauticians who work there and i am not sure i could trust my skin to their hands.

It might be helpful for you to post us a picture of your treatment area. I could better tell you if what you are experiencing is a normal temporary post treatment thing, or a long term healing problem.
3 second blend is a very fast blend, however, for really thin hairs, it is frequently not worth the effort to make a 7 second setting. This is an issue of electrologist skill. Without knowing the skill level of the practitioner in question, I can’t comment on this being good or bad. However, anything that could EASILY be treated in 3 second blend, should also be easily treated in thermolysis/diathermy. On the other hand, treating a larger problem in 3 second blend could be a road to overtreatment due to the high intensity that would be needed to treat a really thick hair. Again, without seeing what I am expected to comment on, I can’t tell you which is the case here.

What your practitioner has said regarding thermolysis is what I tell all the would be “Do It Yourselfers” and Potential “Do Each Other Electrologists” out there; when making a mistake in galvanic and blend, one has warning and some time to stop the process and make changes (although with 3 second blend, that is less true) while in thermolysis, you don’t know you have made a mistake until it has been made, and the damage done.

It really sounds to me that he may not be all that confident in his insertions, either his visual aid is not all that great, or you just have follicles that are difficult to insert on.

I agree that you should not buy blocks of time from someone without seeing their work. I also suggest that you get more sample treatments from as many electrologists as you can because frequently the best electrologist in an area is to be found in the most unlikely of places. Just explain that you want to sample their work, and even if you have to pay for one hour, or less to test out their skills, the information gained is worth it.

Some of the best have no office, work out of a spare bedroom, and don’t advertise at all, because they have enough business doing the personal referrals of their current and previous clients.

When you do find the best your area has to offer, do please post their contact information here, so we can answer the next person’s question about who is good in your area.

Keep positive, however, most skin trauma is healed and a forgotten memory in less than 3 months.

To James’s point about skin healing: We’ve done really heavy duty blend electrolysis, and it’s amazing how the skin heals. It just takes time.

I don’t know if this will add to the already excellent advice you’ve got on this - I hope it puts your mind at rest a bit.

I had a fair bit of skin damage from electrolysis - all of it from thermolysis (aka diathermy in the UK), and all from a couple of bad practitioners I had. (I won’t go into all the details here.)

I’ve used thermolysis with other practitioners and been just fine.
I’ve used blend and been fine, no matter what practitioner I used.

Just one other thought: do you think you might be having a reaction to the metal in the probe?
James might be able to add some more on this - aren’t some people alergic to certain metals? Could using a gold plated probe lessen the reaction?

Excellent point.

Some people are allergic to the nickel content of stainless steel. Use of a golden probe would eliminate this. Unfortunately some electrologists are too cheap to either keep these on hand, or even purchase them when requested. You may have to offer to pay for them yourself, or just buy some from a place like Texas Electrolysis Supply and take them to your treatment with you.

As I have said before, Thermolysis/Diathermy/Flash is perfectly safe and effective in the right hands, but is the hardest of the methods to master. Blend is less difficult, and Galvanic is easier still. It also helps that someone doing something wrong in the last two modes has a little warning of the problem before the skin is totally fried.

i have posted a photo in the following link:
http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/lilafotioy/detail?.dir=6d33&.dnm=490d.jpg
where you can see the red marks that my last blend treatment left on my skin-that was 2 weeks ago. i had 3 quarters during which the electrologist removed the darker and coarser hair - mainly to keep the cost of treatment down, as he charges 30 euros/15 minutes.i am not happy with the result, because i would like all visible hair to be removed.the picture i had taken was very clear, but when i uploaded in my yahoo album its size was reduced and i am afraid you cannot see the whole amount of the problem very well.
however it would be very helpful to hear your opinion about the electrolysis method to be used for my case and approximately how long it would take to remove all that hair.
thanks.