Need your advice and opinion

Hello everyone!
Thank you for this great website with vast amount of information about hair removal. I learnt a lot from it. I undergo electrolysis on legs. I started it in 2013. Did one complete clearance with one electrologist within two months. All my hair grown back.

I went to another specialist and complete another clearance within two days by marathon sessions (it was three months after first electrologist finished her work). I had a lot of redness, scabs, itching and so, but it worked. I noticed hair reduction and started to believe in electrolysis. For some personal reasons I took a break almost three years and decided continue electrolysis in 2016. I was very dedicated this time. I found electrologist in my area who has positive reviews, she has more then five years experience, she was train with Dectro and has Apilus Platinum at her office. After a consultation and trial session on smal area everything looked promising. The only thing is that she was very slow, but I was ok with it.

Within six months I did two complete clearances. I came in every two-three weeks and she did 2-3 hours treatments. Then I decided to see if I can notice any improvement and waited about 4 weeks for another session. I was very disappointed when I see that all my hair grow back (I have never seen my legs with so much hairs, even when I just shaved them with no electrolysis) There were huge number of ingrowing hairs during 4 week waiting. I went to the doctor and checked my hormones to see if anything is wrong. Everything was in normal range.

Then I scheduled a consultation with my electrologist where she told me that I will be able to start seeing some improvement only after 10 months if I come every two weeks for 2 hours session. I was not fine with this answer and ask what exactly she is doing on my legs (program, timing, probes and so on). We used Synchro with Program 5-7 for legs. My another concern was than I didn’t feel anything while she was working on me. No pain at all. Sometimes I didn’t even had scabs on my skin after treatments. She used insulated probes 04, 03, 02 on different appointments. After a talking with her, I asked her to increase modes on her Apilus Platinum, to use probes 04 or 05, and be very precise with inserting the probe into follicles. Last week I did 2 hour session. We came up with Synchro Leg 9 modes where we manually increased time to 0.3 sec with 86% power, we used insulated probe 04. I finally started feeling that something happening during a procedure and after I had scabs that for me this is a good sign.

Yesterday I was at another appointment. We started working on the same settings, but I barely feel anything and I saw that hairs didn’t slide out as easy as it was last week. I ask to try higher settings and bigger probe. We ended up to Synchro leg 9 with 0.32 sec with 88% power, probe 05 (she said this is the biggest one). She inserted probe pretty deeply. But still everything looked different and I didn’t feel much pain or anything and this morning I see only a few pink dots on my skin, that is absolutely different from what I saw last week next day after treatment. It looks like I don’t have any redness, red spots and probably won’t see scabs from it.

I am very worried that there is a huge difference of the result of two procedures, and I feel that something is wrong. I thought may be her machine malfunctioning and it needs to be checked. I cannot come up with any idea what we can change to improve treatments and finally start seeing hair reduction.

I would very appreciate if you can share your thoughts with me and may be it’ll help me to consider other options for treatment. I know there are many great professionals and just kind people here, so please help me with your advice.

It sounds exactly like the symptoms of a defective probe holder cord. Synchro-9 should leave a smoking hole in your skin!Usually these problems are worse better depending on cord placement or intermittent

Have her replace the probeholder .

Edit: Dont get treatment until the probeholder is changed.A “suddenly good” connection will deliver the full energy…and WILL leave a smoking hole in your skin.

In all these cases you are not asking the right questions. The questions are: "How many hours do you estimate it will take to clear the hairs from my legs? If we get to that hourly estimate, will I be finished? And, if not much happens, what will you do to ameliorate the situation?’

You don’t need to get involved with treatment particulars (although feeling NOTHING from the treatment is a big "no-no’). If your electrologist was actually taking YOUR suggestions, that means she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

If your electrologist gave you a nice "fat’ estimate of 100-hours, would you have even started?

It’s like this: would you get on-board an airplane and not know where it was going? And yet, that’s what patients do all the time. They pick an electrologist based on "reviews,’ if they were "nice,’ in a pretty office, had the most modern equipment … and so on.

Maybe you go to a restaurant because it has beautiful decorations and friendly staff (not bad, mind you)? But I go to restaurants that have good food! And, I don’t have to tell the chef how to cook it!

Seana, thank you for your advice! My next treatment is this afternoon and I will definitely take your suggestions and ask her to change the probe holder.

Michael, I actually asked her those questions about estimates for treatment to be finished. She said that she couldn’t give me exactly how many hours, but after 10 months seeing her every two weeks I can start seeing the result.

I am getting involved in treatment because I do want to be involved. Because it helps me feel more confident and follow the treatment with knowledge of what and how everything is working. Especially when I feel that many professionals don’t care much about their clients and cannot take responsibility for service they provide.

If she gave me 100 hours estimate, I would start anyway. But I’d probably schedule a consultation with other specialists to see if their estimates would be much different.

What’s your advice on how to pick the right electrologist (if not recommendations, reviews, equipment, trying it on small area and so on)? They may tell you estimate hours and even promise to give your money back if there is no result. They even can give you papers and consent to sign to agree about it. What would you do if you didn’t see result after estimated hours passed and you already paid a lot of money?

Update: I just came back from my appointment with my electrologist. She took to consideration my complaints. After a few minutes talking she said that she was going to conduct treatment on her second machine which is Apilus XCell (she also changed the cable with probe holder on Platinum). But she was not sure if it could be the problem. She did it just to be on a safe side. We also talked a lot about possible reasons why I don’t feel pain or discomfort during treatments.

So when we start working on XCell (Synchro, leg level 9, 0.27sec, probe 04). The first zap was so painful that I asked switch to lower setting, I was not able to tolerate that pain. We ended up working on Synchro leg level 7 program and it still was painful, but tolerable for me.

What a huge difference between treatments! Once she started working with me this time, she noticed a huge difference on how hairs slides out easily compared to previous treatments. She admitted that something is definitely wrong with the machine or cable or probe holder. I’m so glad I was persistent enough to take her attention and keep complaining until problem was found.

The only sad thing is that now I can explain why after two complete clearances I got regrow of all my hairs back, no improvement at all. So, six months of treatment and more than 1500$ thrown away. I have to get back to square one and start all my treatments over again:(

I can’t thank enough Seana for sharing her thoughts about this problem and she was right! This is a huge input into my treatment. Hope I will get rid of my unwanted hair very soon! Thanks again:)

You’re welcome!
Synchro level 7 is still really high by the way. I remove course hairs with 3-4 all the time.

Seana

Yes, I totally agree with you. I am thinking to switch to level 5-6 on my next appointment;)