Ketsele’s Progress Photojournal

[Ketsele]

This appointment: 2024-May-15, 90 minutes
Total electrolysis appointment time: 4,054 minutes (67h34m)
Active treatment time estimated (based on photo timestamps): ~83 minutes

Areas tackled this session:
Left lower leg (back general clearing) 32
Right lower leg (front general clearing) 51

(Click me!) Before photos taken just before electrolysis. After photos taken ~4 hours after the session.

Total time on left lower leg: 1,184 minutes (19h44m)
Total time on left lower leg THIS session: ~32 minutes

Total time on right lower leg: 811 minutes (13h31m) this is going to get me later this is such a dyslexic number I just KNOW it
Total time on right lower leg THIS session: ~51 minutes

Modality, thermo

*Forgot to take anti-histamine before session, oops.

Session & any discomfort: My electrologist decided that the extra scabbiness on the legs this time is probably just because the weather has been so warm, and everything else looked fine–so we ended up continuing with all legs today! We just reversed what we did last week, where the leg we did the back of last time (right) we did the front of; and visa versa.
Mostly the session today was devoid of noticeable discomfort, except for 4-5 hairs on the back of the knee, and 10? hairs around the ankle. Those sucked pretty hard /laughs!/ since they’re in areas that would normally be lidocained, should we be focused on them. I think now that we’ve basically gotten a full clear of the lower legs and are doing clean-up at this point, there will probably be many more non-lidocained leg spots like that.
These leg sessions really are just ALL OVER now. SO much area covered now that the hair is sparse. Very exciting.

After session discomfort/aftercare adventures/healing progress: Still pretty scabby this week, though the newly done areas are I THINK less scabby than the previous, hotter weather-wise, week. No discomfort or itchiness though, everything feels great!
Have been continuing to do dry brushing after workouts, that works well for me!
Also having to resist constantly upping the shave on my arms since the whole point of shaving them is so that the faster-growing hairs cAN grow more visibly than the rest, and we can treat them /laughs/ it’s just so nice not having a hair buffer reducing my sensation and making everything less hot! It’s so strange shaving an area that is being treated, this entire time since last April I’ve been exclusively trimming any treated areas to ensure best hair-availability across growth stages.

Plans for next session: Left side of the groin, since that’s been left as a solo patch for a few weeks now /laughs/ Lidocaine time!

[Ketsele]

This appointment: 2024-May-22, 90 minutes
Total electrolysis appointment time: 4,144 minutes (69h04m)
Clock was covered today, so electrologist used a timer, and we got the full 90 minutes as a result

Areas tackled this session:
Groin (left side, from mid-pubic area to ?mid-adductor? area)

(Click me!) Before photos taken just before electrolysis. After photos taken ~40 hours after the session, waited due to comedic levels of swelling.

Total time on groin: 273 minutes (4h33m)
Total time on groin THIS session: 90 minutes

Modality, thermo

Took anti-histamine 30 minutes before appointment; occluded lidocaine to starting area 30 minutes before appointment (and electrologist applied lidocaine as-needed during appointment for what we would get to in ~30 minutes).

Session & any discomfort: This was a really weird session for me because my mindspace was somewhere completely different–I was having a really important conversation pre-session and ended up bringing my tablet in the car (which I never do) to write to them while in the car (which I never do) to continue to write to them/while they were responding while mid-appointment (which I never do).
Otherwise, I guess it felt more like a “more normal” groin electrolysis. A lot of the zaps closer to the middle felt pretty uncomfortable (no surprise apparently) and I’d kind of zone in and out of how much I was paying attention to the discomfort; or I’d go in and out of if the stimulation WAS discomforting or, er, not. I also got really shivery and cold because it started to feel like all of my body heat was condensing in the one central part of the body we were working on – so in comparison the rest of me was really cold!
Because typing to someone and waiting for responses/just the typing in general on a tablet in an awkward lying down position is, DIFFICULT, haha, I felt like talking with my electrologist was more “condusive” to being distracted from the discomfort (since that’s just, flowing conversation) but of course that wasn’t the point of that tablet chat anyway! Oof.
Definitely felt like I needed to stretch out my left side after the appointment, too; the little like, boney hollow crevice inbetween the very inner connection point of the leg and the side beginning of the groin ? whatever that is called ? felt very scrunched at the end of the session (and the middle of the session, too).

After session discomfort/aftercare adventures/healing progress: My electrologist noticed I was getting [follicular whatever it’s called] where the follicles were creating TOO much oil because of stimulation from our treatment–so they had me pick up a bottle of Finipil and apply a little bit of it to the groin area after my showers (instead of the oil I use for the rest of my body after a shower). Learned pretty fast that the cooling sensation of Finipil is much stronger the closer to the inner labia it goes /snorts/ so I have to be careful with applying it, but hopefully it helps! The follicles definitely are going on an overactive oil adventure, looking at the photos.
Otherwise, I spritzed the area with a little bit of Briotech whenever I was using the bathroom (might as well, the area’s accessible when doing that, right?) which felt like it helped a LOT.
The closer to the center of the groin we go the longer it seems to swell for; I wanted to take photos after 4 hours like normal, but it was COMICALLY swolen and lopsided lol so I waited until 2 days after. The actual discomfort from the swelling is pretty minimal though . . . very ignorable by the evening of the day after my appointment, and pretty much disappeared after that.

Plans for next session: But unrelated to electrolysis, this week has ABSOLTELY SUCKED REALLY REALLY HARD so I’m kind of worried about how my body will react to the session today. What we’re SUPPOSED to do is wax the right side of the groin and work on lower inner-leg groin hair via electrolysis.
Ah well. I guess we can just do arms if my body hates it too much for us to treat, given we are ALREADY playing “the swelling game” of moving around as the body even allows it to happen.

[Ketsele]

This appointment: 2024-May-29, 90 minutes
Total electrolysis appointment time: 4,234 minutes (70h34m)
Active treatment time estimated (based on photo timestamps): ~82 minutes

Areas tackled this session:
Groin (left side, some top cleanup, and going further down on/near left labia)
Stomach (though this took so little time I didn’t try to track it separately) (trail from naval to where top of pubis mound is)

(Click me!) Before photos taken just before electrolysis. Stomach hair photo taken technically "during" because treatment auto-pilot means we didn't get a photo until after some hairs had already been cleared. After photos taken 4 days after the session.

Total time on groin: 355 minutes (5h55m)
Total time on groin THIS session: 82 minutes

Modality, thermo

Took anti-histamine 30 minutes before appointment; occluded lidocaine to starting & most of the work area 30 minutes before appointment (and electrologist applied lidocaine to an additional work area ~15? minutes before getting to it).

Session & any discomfort: A well numbed appointment. I fell asleep in the car on the way over, which I think was FANTASTIC for me. I got like a full mental reset (I had a teeeeeeerible mental health week and was worried that would mean my pain tolerance would suck, but my appointment got to be . . . normal.) and was of course literally physically more relaxed for it.
Most spots were pretty easy, the “top pubis mound cleanup” area was more uncomfortable since it got less numbing time, the “zipper trail” hair down from the naval was not very sensitive – also there was a lot less hair there than I thought?? there are still hairs ?I assume, because why else would they still be there? that were too small for the probe my electrologist was using at the time, but gosh it feels so much better it’s, kind of magical
Last week I’d mentioned there were some spots that ?were not painful? and instead felt ?kind of good? when treated, hadn’t been sure if that was just a blooper or not, but I got that sensation again and I think I’ve pinpointed it to–there is a distinct point on the outer labia where it makes a sharp “curve” outward because there is suddenly more fat in the area. I think the difference in fat distribution and proximity to erectile tissue is why this change in sensation happens. Which, I mean, I’ll take it??? It’s definitely better than that area just outright sucking really hard because of being extremely painful like I kind of assumed. But oh boy – despite being sure that my electrologist has probably encountered almost every response already and I’m sure this isn’t super weird – it’s still a little bit awkward funny. /laughs/
There were enough hairs on the right side that were JUST barely still under the skin, and so we delayed the right side waxing by one more week in preference of more electrolysis treatment time on the left side.

After session discomfort/aftercare adventures/healing progress: Things have been much more comfortable since I’ve been using the Finipil twice a week, there’s a lot less “weird stUFF going on underneath the skin” feeling. I was more comfortable IMMEDIATELY after my appointment than I was last week, too–pretty much the only time I was in discomfort this week was that, immediately after post-electrolysis dinner, it felt kind of funny when I sat up from the Weirdly Soft Restaurant Bench (since I was just, sitting totally normally, not trying to sit “weird” for comfort). Also half a week later when I was attempting to use the body marker on myself to mark for my photos, I guess I kind of stretched the skin more than it’d like by accident when trying to see what I was doing (IT’S SO HARD TO SEE DOWN THERE AAAAAA) and the skin felt like? teary tender? if touched afterwards?

Plans for next session: More left side groin electrolysis (closer to fattier part of the outer labia this time) and right side groin waxing.

I’m really pleased with the progress so far! It looks “correct” when I look down at it. It’s just ??? so so very beautiful?? what an odd sentiment. My drive for pubic electrolysis was wanting to rid myself of the physical discomfort that the hair existing caused me (stop having porcupine spine sensations from inside of my body all the time! stop wire poking me when I’m lying down or working out or moving around when long! stop tangling around my skin and cutting off blood supply to random genital bits on rare occasion when REALLY long! stop stabbing me when I lean forward against the counter so that I can actually see my bathroom mirror when short!) and I wasn’t even sure what I would think of it visually.
So I didn’t expect it to be such a source of . . . visceral visual comfort. Huh . . .

[Thermo]

I have to say, looking at these progress shots, your electrologist is fantastic and deserves applause. It’s very clear you’re making great progress and your skin condition looks perfect.

[Ketsele]

Ahh thank you so much, Thermo!! I’ll be sure to pass your compliments along /smiles/. The confidence that the work is great is fantastic to have, too /giggles/!

[Ketsele]

This appointment: 2024-June-5, 90 minutes
Total electrolysis appointment time: 4,234 minutes (70h34m)
Active treatment time estimated (based on photo timestamps, and minus waxing time): ~66 minutes

Areas tackled this session:
Groin (left side, some general cleanup and further down labia)
(Waxed right side of groin)

(Click me!) Before photo taken just before electrolysis. Apparently I ?forgot to take an after photo? so it's just the single before photo.

Total time on groin: 421 minutes (7h01m)
Total time on groin THIS session: 66 minutes

Modality, thermo

Took anti-histamine 30 minutes before appointment; occluded lidocaine to the work area 30 minutes before appointment.

Session & any discomfort: I’d been worried this appointment would be a little ?funny? because of what I noted with electrolysis on the fattier labia area last time, but that actually didn’t come up for whatever reason. Maybe hormone levels, maybe stress, maybe it being that it’s just where we were the whole session pretty much; eh who knows.
Despite the area it actually was NOT a more painful groin session than normal; it just felt like a, very “normal” session. Still preferable to doing legs, legs suck /laughs/. I actually reflected during the session about how funny it was, just how Normal:tm: it’s become to just lie down and be a little bit uncomfortable for an hour and a half!
For whatever reason though, my body responded with a LOT of stress when we switched over to waxing, I wasn’t really able to get the nerves calmed down properly and was literally too exhausted to look up at and be excited about the work like usual. There was also a lot less hair than when we waxed last time, so the feeling of the wax being sticky and pully as it was spread against my skin was weirdly unpleasant. Not sure why I was just so SO tired. Still, glad to have it done!

After session discomfort/aftercare adventures/healing progress: I continued using the Finipil twice a week, but fell out of spraying myself with Briotech whenever I used the bathroom, and I could immediately tell a big difference with how agitated/bumpy my skin was . . . so I should try to get back into that, it seemed to help a lot.
I also had to cancel my session on the 12th, because . . . I broke out into splotches of purpley-red sunburn-looking welts on my shoulders/upper arms & chest after taking a shower (which is near where we were supposed to work on), and an hour after said shower my skin had only gone down to looking how it NORMALLY looks after a shower (very slightly red and splotchy in those areas–normally this goes down in ~15 minutes though). So I vinegar soaked and washed the absolute stars out of my shower head and also called my apartment/got them in contact with maintenance & the manager to get a special exception with my apartment to have them install a water softener (because the water here has always been a problem). I’ve been staying on their asses about it to make sure they can’t just quietquit on and ignore the request haha, so we’ll see how that goes.

Plans for next session: The plan had been (on the 12th) to do underarms and arms, to give the groin a break . . . presumably we’ll do the same thing now, my electrologist and I didn’t explicitly talk about it.

[Ketsele]

Just wanted to give a small update; I thought it would look really funky to have mostly-reliable weekly updates for a full year and then suddenly a month+ of nothing without ANYTHING being mentioned.

I’m still doing weekly electrolysis (though this pause in updates originally started because my electrologist got covid, so we had to skip 2 weeks)
but
A lot has happened to me; a lot has changed in my day to day life and my basic everyday lifestyle. So it’s been really difficult to find time to do my journals at the same time I’m adapting to these changes actively happening.

Keeping track of the time (hours of electrolysis; calendar time between electrolysis) is something I’ve always been really proud of and so I don’t want to outright quit; so I’ve been slowly trying to get through my backlog and try to organize all of my photos into a better folder structure. My hope is that I can make some kind of bare-bones time/photo based entries for the appointments that I didn’t do journals for, and then resume with the experience journals once I get through the backlog.

I will say something that has been very funny about groin electrolysis is that for the last 3 weeks I’ve had this experience of: “okay I just finished, and I’m not hungry” “it’s 20 minutes after I finished and I am starving” and then either I inhale an entire pick-up meal in 5 minutes OR I get really lethargic and sick for the evening if I don’t eat so. Very energy intensive! Doesn’t even seem to matter if I ate on the car ride TO my appointment or one to two hours before the appointment, either, same thing happens.
Reminds me of how folks get really hungry after an hour and a half or two hours or tattoo work, too.

[iLikeDIY]

Here’s to getting to that 100% clear mark! Look like you’re close, keep at it!