smilingeyes

Okay, I finally had 4 excisions done today after making and breaking several appointments out of fear.  It wasn't as bad as I thought although I am definitely not going to be running around out of the house until I get the stitches out next week.  Had my mother-in-law drive me since I was scared and it took about 20 minutes from start to finish.  

I had 3 excisions on my cheeks under my eyes, and one on the side of the bridge of my nose.  The doctor injected each ice pick with anesthesia (spelling???) which was the most painful part of the procedure.  Then he used a 1.5mm punch on all 4 sites and did 1 stitch closures on the 3 on my cheeks with a 2 stitch on my nose.  I have had all of these scars for over 20 years, but he said all scars are old after 6 months so it didn't really matter.  

This is the first round.....am looking to do 2 more rounds with 4 each time, then finally finish it all with the Erbium laser.

He chose excisions instead of punch floats or punch grafts because he said my ice pick scars are fairly small and not quite as deep as my chicken pox scars.  We will do punch floats on those.  Also, we didn't have to do punch grafts because the skin around the scars was fairly healthy and wouldn't be pulling on my stitches in any way.....if I had had more severe damage with more skin tension from scarring, then we would have gone the punch graft route.

I will take picture tomorrow when I take the bandaids off and post them.

Ok, I've scheduled my punch grafts for March 30th and just ordered some 50% TCA from Loganwood Skincare (figured while I had downtime from the punch grafts I would also do some TCA Cross).  I also called and spoke with Richard because I had a slight problem ordering online (some weird quirk in the system).

Anyhow, he said it was very, very important to clean out the inside of the scar with acetone to make sure all of the oils were out of the scar.   Now, I've been reading about doing TCA cross....have followed (more or less) most of the new posts since people began doing this, and have never read about anyone cleaning out the scar, let alone cleaning it out with acetone.  

Maybe I just missed it in my reading, but has anyone else done this as a prep step?

Many thanks for any responses,
Nancy

I recently switched to Olay Total Effect products because they were getting such great reviews at makeupalley.com

However, when I spot treated with Dan's BP, something in the BP reacted with the Olay products and caused my face to swell up, and turn intensely red and itchy in those areas.  

So, I'm just posting this as a warning for anyone else who might be thinking about straying from the Regimen as outlined by Dan.  

Hey all,

I was looking for some real before/afters of smoothbeam and found this place in South Carolina which takes and posts before and afters.  Some are of patients at the clinic, others are from the various websites (candela, obagi, etc...) but I do not think any are retouched.

Have fun viewing!

http://www.implantfo...om/heavenlyspa/

BTW, you have to scroll down the first page a bit before you get to the pic section...

Ummmmmm, it could just be me, but I just don't see anything there.......