At my last laser appointment, I only had my lower area worked on and not my face. We had agreed that I'd go in with a few days of facial hair growth to make a determination as to whether or not it was worth it to continue on my face. Frankly I hadn't really had a good look at my face in a while as I hadn't went without shaving in a while and having several days of hair growth I do have some areas in my lip/chin and along the tops of my cheeks that she can probably still work on. For the latter she's going to use smaller goggles on me so she can get to those areas. However, she did suggest that I might want to go with some Electrolysis as well.
I had previously made that decision and thought I had a place lined up, but as things are my schedule became an issue and truthfully the place in question had pi**ed me off so I never made it there. This time I got a referral from my laser tech to a place in the same building as they are that they speak highly of so last Friday I called for an appointment. Unfortunately for me I didn't get around to calling until after they had closed for the day, but a very nice woman called me back early Saturday and we setup an appointment for this past Wednesday.
I arrived a bit early and got my paperwork filled out and was taken back a few minutes early. It seems that anywhere I have an appointment these days is running late so being able to go back early was a nice change. We had a brief consultation since I had done my research on the process and knew what I wanted. The laser tech had suggested focusing on my lip/chin since those were the areas that would be the biggest impact at this point and I concurred. Now I did make the decision to NOT have her only focus on dark hairs, but rather on all the hairs. I have a fair amount of white hairs these days, I'm sure some of them were always there, but I do suspect that some of them are from where the laser didn't completely zap things, but either way they are there. Now they aren't nearly as big a deal as the dark hairs, but I figured I'd be happier if everything was gone, so that's what I settled on.
She started on the right side of my lip area and the first few minutes was a piece of cake. However, as she got closer to the center of my lip area, well my lack of pain tolerance kicked in. I know a lot of people say it doesn't or they say it's like a rubber band snapping, well for them I'm happy. For me the center area of my lip hurt - a lot. I suspect it probably hurts less than the laser does; but the laser is only a few zaps across the whole lip and this was hair by hair and I had plenty and the cumulative affect of the zaps started to get to me. She switched to the other side and started working in from there and while it wasn't as painful as the center that hurt somewhat. I assume because I had been worn down by then. As she got closer to the center from that side, I wasn't sure if I'd make it through the whole lip or not, but I managed to. We did agree at that point that I had probably had enough for the day and broke off there.
Once we were finished we took care of the fee, which she adjusted down from the hour I was scheduled for. Many places would not do that and I would not have been upset if she hadn't since they had blocked the time off for me, but I was appreciative that she did so. We got my next appointment scheduled which is actually in two weeks since I do have a laser appointment next week and considering it takes my face a couple of days to recover from that I didn't think doing both the same week was a good idea. Once that was done she gave me some ice for my lip and I was on my way.
I can't say enough about how nice and compassionate she was and she seemed very efficient, though I don't really have a frame of reference to compare her too on that. I'll probably have more to say after the second session as I will be using some numbing cream then and probably some OTC pain reliever beforehand. I elected to not do either of those this time as I felt I needed to know how it felt - I did the same on my first laser session. Plus as she pointed out the upper lip is generally the most sensitive area on the face and while I'm sure there will be some cleanup there from hairs that weren't active this week, I imagine the focus will be on my chin this time. I know from the laser that the chin hurts, but not as much as the upper lip, so....
-M
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