4 replies to this topic

[scarsbegonedamnit]

I know this has already been discussed, but i couldn't find anything recent and i want to hear from any new experiences as well as share my own.

So today was my first pixel treatment. I went to the Hummingbird Medi Spa in Ottawa Ontario and had it done and it costed me 470 altogether (with taxes).

I told the esthetician that i was scared of two things- 1. that it wouldnt do anything to my skin and i would be very upset about waisting money or 2. that it would make my acne scars worse and i would be even more upset about paying money to give myself more scars. After reassuring me she started the treatment.

It took half an hour and felt about as bad as doing laser hair removal for any of you that have had that done. She did 4 passes on my face (she said the maximum is 6) but at what setting i am not sure although when i got up after she was done, the machine said 1200 on the screen so i am not sure if that was the setting she used. She put numbing cream on my face only AFTER she completed each section of my face. She gave me some numbing cream for free to take home and told me to put some on before bed and to take advil. She then said when I wake up i can wash my face and moisturize it 5 times a day. She told me to come in on fri so she could see what was happening with my face.

I was only red after when i left and looked sunburned but it didnt hurt too much cause of the numbing cream. After about 2 hours my skin became swollen and puffy in some parts, and I bgan to see some grid marks. It is 4 hours later and my skin is burning like hell like a real bad burn and the numbing cream is definetly wearing off. Also I look like i ran into a screen door and i have very splotchy skin that looks brown and white and red all over. My husband was staring at me and said, "all of a sudden i'm craving a mc"grid"dle from mcdonalds" hardyharhar I am sooooo not looking forward to tomorrow.

I keep examining my skin in bright light because my biggest fear is that i end up looking worse than before but of course i cant tell what is going on right now cause my face is a real hot mess (literally) I am worried I wont be able to sleep because of the anticipation and burning.

I will keep you all posted as to my daily progression and let you know. I have a lot of acne scarring and sun damage at 30 years old and am trying to correct this. I am supposed to go back on accutane (today actually) but wanted to try this first to correct the scarring before going on accutane. If in two or three weeks I am ecstatic about the results i may hold off on accutane even longer and do another treatment first.

I am going to be pretty annoyed if this does absolutely nothing at all. From all the reviews it seems that no one had any improvement with pixel. It seems odd though (since it is supposed to help with scarring) that NO ONE has had any success. Anywho i will let you know tomorrow when i wake up what i look like...Im scared

[scarsbegonedamnit]

Day 2

**** One thing i forgot to mention yesterday is that before she started the treatment she took pictures of my face which i thought was a very good idea****


I went to bed last night and took two advil and put some more of the numbing cream on my face that the esthetician gave me. I should have rinsed the old cream off from earlier that day because it felt like sandpaper being rubbed on my face when i tried to put more on and it didnt numb my face at all but made it burn like bloody hell instead. I just left it cause I didn't want to mess with my face anymore or aggravate it. By the time I went to bed my husband said I loked like a burn victim.

I woke up this morning in the most excruciating pain. I felt like someone poured hot coals all over my face in the night. I wished I was in labour instead.
I was teriffied to look in the mirror but i did. Yep! My fears were founded. I looked like a tomato, and the grid marks were still there. All I thought was THANK GOD she didn't do my eyes cause at least they looked normal. For some strange reason my though my eyes are burning and they are bloodshot (maybe its cause i didnt sleep well what with all the pain and trying to stay on my back all night). How the hec was I suposed to face people looking like this? I was totally beating myself up for doing pixel on a monday and not on a friday. Something tells me though it wouldnt have mattered because from the looks of things this will not look any better for at least a whole 7 days.

I was going to wash my face with La Roche toleriane but I thought better of it and rinsed my face off with cold water instead. I then put on La Roche toleriane ultra cream. I felt some relief after about 5 seconds.
La Roche Posay is an expensive skincare line. It is used by dermatologists and is considered to be a medical line. Avene is another line in the same category used by dermatologists. These brands have been known to be used by doctors for cancer patients undergoing chemo and are also very popularly used and recommended for those who are undergoing acne treatments. I have used both and cannot recommend one over the other. They are both superior products that work amazingly well and I highly recommend them for people undergoing acne treatments, especially those using accutane. Please don't use that crap cetaphil or spectro gel. It always blows my mind when people say their doctor recommended them (I have never had a derm recommend these and i have had numerous dermatologists since I was 11). They are THEE most god awful products for us people with skin issues.
Anyway so that is the rundown on the line I am using during this process.

After I put on the cream I decided there was no way around it and I would absolutely HAVE to for the sake of everyone around me wear makeup. Well thankfully I bought mineral powder concealer from the spa yesterday after my appointment. My esthetician told me if i had to wear makeup to wear only MINERAL POWDER. Since i was a little paranoid about buying some at the drugstore (cause you never know what is in products really and i didnt want to go tot he store looking like the way i did anyway) I asked her if they had any. She said they have their own line of makeup products called PFXR. So I bought some mineral powder from them which was 30 dollars.

I was very skeptical. It looked like nothing would cover this ugly mess let alone a powder of all things! Plus i was scared that it would burn like hell. I put the powder on very gently dabbing it on with my finger. I didnt want to use a makeup brush because i meant to wash mine last night before i went to bed so that it was bacteria free for this morning but i forgot. The esthetician told me that the most important thing is that my skin does not get infected. Anyway I put the powder on and cant believe it covered all the redness better than aything I have ever used in my life! And i even bought cover fx before and this worked better!
The bad news...The consistency of the makeup after applying it (cause of all the grid marks) is horrible and it looks like i have a million ice pick scars all over my face! I tried to dab the makeup into the holes as best i could but i have like a bazillion tiny holes in my face. This however is better than the redness because from a few feet you cant see the holes. I have to say that now my face is burning since i put on that makeup but no where near to the amount it was when i woke up (i attribute this to the toleriane ultra cream though because it is especially for burning and stinging skin)

I called the spa about the holes all over my face and the lady on the phone said the holes are normal and not to worry but she will have the technician call me as soon as she gets in which is in a couple of hours.

Right now I feel like I dont see how burning my face like i did will make it look any better, and am very dubious about seeing any results. But to tell you the truth at this point in time i would just be happy if i didnt have any further damage done to my face than before i went and had pixel. I feel like the worst is yet to come and i cant believe i went and did this....Mostly i am very annoyed that I will have to hide in the house for at least a week as i tend to get depressed if i dont go out.

I will let you know what the esthetician says when she calls me. Does anyone even read this? lol. well it makes me feel better to get it all out anyway.

[scarsbegonedamnit]

Day 3

So Its Day 3 and I have barely any pain except for when I actually touch my face. The grid marks are still there. The redness is starting to turn dark and there are little brown dots all over as well as the streaking which looks like someone hit me with a belt over and over :s
I am now told I look like a got a sunburn and I also got a tan and then I ran into a screen door and someone drew brown dots all over me with a marker

The esthetician called me back yesterday and assured me that the holes were indeed very normal and not to worry they would definetly pass. I asked her if I was supposed to moisturize 5 times a day then how would my skin peel off to make way for newer better skin? She said moisturizing will not interfere with the peeling and it is imperitive that I moisturize constantly.

I have once again applied the mineral makeup powder to my face today and I notice a lot less holes in my face that freaked me out yesterday.

I don't see a difference in my face because its pretty hard to see anything beyond all the marks all over my face so I am not going to comment on that. If there is a difference I really dont expect to see any for at least 2 weeks or even longer.

I dont think at this time I will be getting anymore treatments done and I am going to start my accutane on Monday. If however I see dramatic results I will definetly be getting more pixel after I have finished my Accutane. The reasons are numerous...I want to get started on my accutane so i have no more issues with acne. I dont want to suffer for a week out of the month every month for 4 months especially during summer. I dont at this time have the money to spend almost 500 a month on my face as i am currently also getting laser hair removal. So i will wait till next year to get more IF the results were great.

Now....There is a machine I use at a tanning salon called Itan. It is called the omnilux. They have a blue light and a red light. The blue light is for acne. It kills the acne bacteria and requires a series of treatments. I have never used it because they said it makes you break out REALLY bad at first and who wants that? So I never tried it.

The red light is for lines, lesions, sun damage, melasma, large pores etc. It has excellent healing properties and boosts the collagen in your face. It actually helps rebuild and repair collagen. It was originally used by doctors for burn victims and to kill precancerous skin cancer cells. This is the machine I have always used. And let me say it is AMAZING. It heals my lesions from acne very quickly and makes my skin look fantastic when i go every second day for about 3 weeks. The skin continues to repair itself for about 6 months after that and looks better and better each day. Each session costs 30$ but since I have a monthly membership at Itan for 85$ i pay nothing when i go. add up the cost if i had to pay seperately and it would be HUGE if i didnt have a membership.
Anyway my whole point is, I think i am going to go do the omnilux to help with the healing of my skin. I called them yesterday and spoke to the GM about doing this machine after my pixel and she was very enthusiastic about the omnilux aiding in the healing of my skin (which i already knew but i wanted to call to be sure). The only issue is i have to take off my makeup
so thats why i didnt go yeserday. I dont want to have to take off my makeup today either so i may have to wait a few more days or I may just suck it up and go today. I mean we're talking about my skin right????

I will update again tomorrow

[lisa811]

I know this has already been discussed, but i couldn't find anything recent and i want to hear from any new experiences as well as share my own.

So today was my first pixel treatment. I went to the Hummingbird Medi Spa in Ottawa Ontario and had it done and it costed me 470 altogether (with taxes).

I told the esthetician that i was scared of two things- 1. that it wouldnt do anything to my skin and i would be very upset about waisting money or 2. that it would make my acne scars worse and i would be even more upset about paying money to give myself more scars. After reassuring me she started the treatment.

It took half an hour and felt about as bad as doing laser hair removal for any of you that have had that done. She did 4 passes on my face (she said the maximum is 6) but at what setting i am not sure although when i got up after she was done, the machine said 1200 on the screen so i am not sure if that was the setting she used. She put numbing cream on my face only AFTER she completed each section of my face. She gave me some numbing cream for free to take home and told me to put some on before bed and to take advil. She then said when I wake up i can wash my face and moisturize it 5 times a day. She told me to come in on fri so she could see what was happening with my face.

I was only red after when i left and looked sunburned but it didnt hurt too much cause of the numbing cream. After about 2 hours my skin became swollen and puffy in some parts, and I bgan to see some grid marks. It is 4 hours later and my skin is burning like hell like a real bad burn and the numbing cream is definetly wearing off. Also I look like i ran into a screen door and i have very splotchy skin that looks brown and white and red all over. My husband was staring at me and said, "all of a sudden i'm craving a mc"grid"dle from mcdonalds" hardyharhar I am sooooo not looking forward to tomorrow.

I keep examining my skin in bright light because my biggest fear is that i end up looking worse than before but of course i cant tell what is going on right now cause my face is a real hot mess (literally) I am worried I wont be able to sleep because of the anticipation and burning.

I will keep you all posted as to my daily progression and let you know. I have a lot of acne scarring and sun damage at 30 years old and am trying to correct this. I am supposed to go back on accutane (today actually) but wanted to try this first to correct the scarring before going on accutane. If in two or three weeks I am ecstatic about the results i may hold off on accutane even longer and do another treatment first.

I am going to be pretty annoyed if this does absolutely nothing at all. From all the reviews it seems that no one had any improvement with pixel. It seems odd though (since it is supposed to help with scarring) that NO ONE has had any success. Anywho i will let you know tomorrow when i wake up what i look like...Im scared

Im on day two and my skin looks worst today than when i got it done hope they havent scared me. did you get any benifts from the pixel at at all?

Edited by lisa811, 28 May 2011 - 12:38 PM.

[Sophie8]

Am interested in knowing about
pixel (harmony) erbium yag laser. Are you
happy with your results? How is your
skin now some time later? Did you have any side-effects?