My Electrolysis experience: questions and grieving

Hair Removal Methods Professional Electrolysis
#1

My first tech didn’t look very sanitary and left me with inflamed skin for more then a week, so I went to a different person, with very good online reviews and many years of experience.

When I told her about my first experience, she said that
a) my hair is actually red and people with red hair usually have weak skin and stubborn hair. (the hair on my head are brown with a bit of red undertone, and my chin and lip hair look rather black to me)
b) my hair follicles are pretty deep (I just plucked out a hair from my brow and its 3-4 mm deep)

because of all that I will most likely have hard time during my electrolysis.

And hard time it was! Extremely painful, but after two advils and emla application it became somewhat bearable. I understand that its normal to have some pain. She used Blend.

After treatment I applied Epsom salt compress to help with swelling and used a lot of polysporin (these two were recommended by her)

Got pretty bad scabbing for almost a week after the treatment. Those on the upper lip didn’t look like little round scabs, but more like larger scabbed areas.

After scabbing has gone on my chin, it left red marks which didn’t go away by the time next appointment was due in two weeks.
I told her about red marks, but she said its ok to treat the area again, and its better to treat it now because young hairs are easier to kill.

There were 3 appointments 2 weeks apart and now after scabbing has subsided I looked closely at my upper lip and OMG! noticed some small scars and indentations. (/crying)

Its now 1.5 weeks after last treatment

chin

After all this lengthy explanation I’d like to ask you some questions:)

  1. Is it really possible to have such troublesome skin and hair that bad scabbing and some scarring is inevitable and I am destined to have hard time with electrolysis?
  2. Are those marks normal? I hope they will go away…
  3. Is it really better to have appointments so close apart to treat younger hair and is it ok to treat an area that didn’t heal 100%? It kind of feels like she’s rushing me
  4. Should I just ask the tech to go easier on me, or should I run for the hills?

I feel like I’ve ruined my skin :cry:

#2

Electrolysis is a bit of a invasive process, you have to allow your skin time to heal.

Just my two cents!

#3

Do I need to wait for all these marks to go away before doing another session? It might take at lease several month from the looks of it…

#4

You’d be surprised, skin is actually remarkable in the healing process. If it were me doing the treatments i would keep going with the sessions and if this is what you feel comfortable doing, then ask her to take it easy around the areas that you’ve noticed look a little tender.

By the way, your after treatment actually looks surprisingly good, to me at least.

#5

This pictures were taken 10 days after the treatment. Upper lip was scabbed for almost a week and now I have these marks left:( (circled in pics) and chin is still red

#6

The ultimate goal of the operator is to minimize the impact of electrolysis on the skin while still delivering enough punch to destroy the hair. Operators aren’t always perfect and to me it would be impossible to notice the small indentations, which will likely heal with time, just by looking at the area. The red marks you see on your skin is actually the healing process taking place… nothing much to worry about.

I’m just a DIY’er but it’s my personal experience

#7

My concern with chin was that she was treating it again before it healed completely.

#8

I don’t think this looks bad at all. Scabbing for a week? That is okay. The scabs couldn’t have been too big if they were gone in that time span.

Just another opinion, but I think you are fine and I wouldn’t hesitate to work on you, unless you were showing me that you are terribly concerned. In that case, I wouldn’t touch you for 6-8 weeks. If you were still concerned, I would say 10/12weeks.

#9

dfahey, could you look at those marks in the first two pic please, is this a normal outcome?

#10

Perhaps try and see a dermatologist if you’re worried. Funny thing is when something bothers us so much we tend to over think things sometimes…

#11

Compared to other pics of face reactions/healing that I’ve seen on topics here, your photos look normal. I wouldn’t even call those scabs or inflammation. If you can’t tolerate those microscopic imperfections 1 week after electrolysis, I don’t think you will find that miracle electrologist that could do better work than that.

Look at this thread carefully and see how her face healed very well when her reactions were much more intense than anything in your photos. http://www.hairtell.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/98879/My_electrolysis_diary.html

#12

I looked at them on my iPad, stretching the picture to enlarge it. I see nothing that concerns me about your healing. If you want to submit a better quality picture than you already have, I will be glad to look again.

Let me add, that I see some little red marks that look slightly indented on your chin. Those should smooth out and fade. Talk to your electrologist about this, so she can decide how to prevent large scabbing or scabbing altogether. See what she can do for you. Fenix posted Karii’s link, which would be good for you to peruse.