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A week from today - it all begins. 
I got the 5 package deal. Next Wednesday, I get to have a Vibraderm facial and my pics taken. Then that Friday - "It's ON"! I took Friday and Monday off just in case I look horrendous.
The girl at the office mentioned I should buy an ice face pack to help with the swelling. Does anyone know where I could get one? She also said to sleep upright.
Does anyone have any advice for me for quicker healing the first few days afterwards? 
A week from today - it all begins. :dance: I got the 5 package deal. Next Wednesday, I get to have a Vibraderm facial and my pics taken. Then that Friday - "It's ON"! I took Friday and Monday off just in case I look horrendous.
The girl at the office mentioned I should buy an ice face pack to help with the swelling. Does anyone know where I could get one? She also said to sleep upright.
Does anyone have any advice for me for quicker healing the first few days afterwards? :ninja:
The swelling only last a day or so.. I think the redness is more of a concern. You'll look like sun burnt for the next 5 days before it slowly fade into a bronzing pink which probably last for 10 days. Well I had 15 mj... if you had 10 or lesser, it should be quite back to normal after the 3rd day.
Maybe some facial mask could be good for you... but my derm advised no toner.
A week from today - it all begins. :dance: I got the 5 package deal. Next Wednesday, I get to have a Vibraderm facial and my pics taken. Then that Friday - "It's ON"! I took Friday and Monday off just in case I look horrendous.
The girl at the office mentioned I should buy an ice face pack to help with the swelling. Does anyone know where I could get one? She also said to sleep upright.
Does anyone have any advice for me for quicker healing the first few days afterwards? :ninja:
I've tried everything to speed up the recovery post fraxel -- here is the best advice i can give you after having 9 fraxels --- avoid hot showers / foods / drinks / etc... also do not scrub even when you are trying to get the blue come of -- be as gentle Jpossible and allow the skin to fall off naturally -- also you should use some very gentle topical green tea extract with some caffeine as well as the eucerin redness relief nightime cream -- this moisterizes very well and will help with the redness -- also drink lots of water, eat healthy, lots of antioxidents, and relax -- the more you look at yourself the longer it will take to fade -- at 15mJ and 250 density i am red for about 9 days to the point where i don't feel comfortable with some kind of coverup, and even then it looks obvious to me that i've had something done.
the redness is good, its a sign that you are healing and that enough damage has been done to induce collagen growth -- if you are getting treated aggressively i would wait until wednesday atleast to go back to work depending on how good you are at makeup.
-eric
Oh yeah, and i forget to mention that i just finished my 3rd fraxel with Dr. Fitzpatrick -- so far my results are unbelievable, maybe too good to be true for now -- but i was treated three times at 15mJ at the higher density [ 250 ] with around 7.1 kJ total output for cheecks / temples -- maybe it was the tns recovery complex combined with taking proline, glycine, methiodine, and vitamin c -- but my scars are barely noticeable for now -- of course i am not going to get too excited untill a few months down the road, but i think the settings he used are right on target for my kind of scarring. its been a pain hiding out for 6-9 days post fraxel at these settings, but well worth it in retrospect. the cost is very high -- about $3500 total for 3 treatments, but i have gotten 1000 times better results than spending 500 per tx and getting 6 fraxels before -- total about the same cash but from some nurses who did not have the same skill or knowledge as Dr. Fitzpatrick.
so, total of 9 fraxels in less than 1 year -- wow this is expensive and tiring! i am done with lasers for the unforseeable future.....
any questions feel free to post them or PM me
-eric
William F. Cothern
Angela Bowers
James R. Bond, Jr. - My dermatologist
Mark Jenkins
William P. Adams
I did a search on Fraxel.com and those are the closest doctors who perform Fraxel. Can any doctor perform Fraxel? Is the one who charges the most going to be the one I get the best results from? Has anyone been to any of the doctors above and gotten good results? And do you think any of them would accept a credit card as payment? Thank you.
Dr. Cothern is the doctor I am going to for my treatments. He does them himself. I go for my second treatment on 1/19, so to early for me to speak of results.
Kanmi, he takes credit cards, like IDB said I am sure most doctors take them these days.
me and scars, I took the photos down since they mostly just seemed to solicit comments about how I have no scars or they were so small I shouldnt me worried about them. When clearly I have scars, not as bad as some, but plenty enough though. I will be keeping photos for my own and will be glad to email you the results as they progress.
Hey annie this is Tim in West Palm. I believe you are using Laser skin Solutions here and wish you the best of luck. I had 5 fraxels over all and am happy with the results though I can still use quite a bit more improvement atleast I can say I had a substantial positive result and did not waste my time and money.
I was there just this past Friday to try sculptra which is kind of an Industrial Stregnth collegen stimultor to help plump up larger areas like cheeks and chins. I will keep you all posted. Expect to be very red for a few days and quite pink for almost a week. The Fraxel Procedure now is much better then it was over a year ago when I had my first round
A week from today - it all begins.
The girl at the office mentioned I should buy an ice face pack to help with the swelling. Does anyone know where I could get one? She also said to sleep upright.
Does anyone have any advice for me for quicker healing the first few days afterwards?
I'm starting my Fraxels on the 27th!!! I got some great before pictures...I'm hoping that I'll be able to duplicate the lighting and angle and all that along the way for the after shots. I'm sure it will be a crap shoot. Maybe I'll just take lots more and use my judgement about which ones are shot the same.
Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up a controlled situation for taking pictures? As for right now I'm taking them at night when my scars are most noticeable in the kitchen under the flourescent lighting which is the absolute worst lighting. I'm standing with my back up against the kitchen sink in a particular spot that I can place myself in exactly again, looking forward and holding the camera as perpendicularly as possible and not using a flash.
They come out pretty dark but for some reason that lighting and the camera make my scars look worse than they actually ever appear because of heavy, heavy shadowing (like I'm holding a flashlight under my face) and for some reason it also illuminates my pigment loss which is never noticeable. At any rate, you can really see the scars are there in these pictures because otherwise the little buggers are hard to capture on film.
Any suggestions on lighting and camera settings would be appreciated.
Good luck annie, we'll be 2 weeks apart. Please keep us posted on the settings and the over all energy and how your are healing. BTW what is your Fitzpatrick skin type?
nsxlr8,
Do you know what skin type you are and how much are you paying and is it full face?
Violet,
What you are doing sounds good but might be better if your camera had an automatic timer and if you could set it on something steady and repeatable. Definitely avoid areas where lighting coming in from a window can change in your next set of pictures. Good luck with the fraxels. By the way is your pigment loss purely from your scarring or from some other procedure?
IDB, I am paying 400 a treatment for cheek areas only. If I wanted to add the rest (not including neck) it was going to be 900, so that wasnt worth it to me since these are my main areas, although if I get some stunning results and end up with great looking cheeks, I would consider some other areas also.
As for my skin type, not really sure what it is on that scale. All I can say is I have very light blonde hair, blue eyes and burn fairly easily. I am not pale white, because I am outside a decent bit with my job, but definetly no tan and if I was at the beach for an afternoon with no sunscreen I would be an absolute lobster that is for sure.
hope this helps.
IDBNVS2,
Good idea about using the automatic timer and a steady surface. Also, my pigment loss is from CO2 laser. It is only in one small spot about the size of two Smarties side by side. As I mentioned, it's not at all noticeable unless I get a tan which I never do since the sun makes me blotchy with all the topicals I'm on. I actually have a few other places on my body that have not had any pigment since birth and those are whiter than the spot from the CO2 but also only noticeable when I have a tan. So I know that while I lost pigment from CO2 I did not lose all the pigment in that spot. The interesting thing about it is that Dr. Fitzpatrick really focused on that area and said it had been "over treated" by the CO2 laser and I liked that he was so concerned about it. It makes me more confident that I will get great results with him holding the laser.
Hey annie this is Tim in West Palm. I believe you are using Laser skin Solutions here and wish you the best of luck. I had 5 fraxels over all and am happy with the results though I can still use quite a bit more improvement atleast I can say I had a substantial positive result and did not waste my time and money.
I was there just this past Friday to try sculptra which is kind of an Industrial Stregnth collegen stimultor to help plump up larger areas like cheeks and chins. I will keep you all posted. Expect to be very red for a few days and quite pink for almost a week. The Fraxel Procedure now is much better then it was over a year ago when I had my first round
Why do you think it's better now? Are you still happy with your results, FLA guy?
Good luck with the sculptra! And please keep me posted on that...I am looking into fillers, so I'm especially curious.
nsxlr8,
Did you choose fraxel as your treatment or was that what Dr. Cothern recommended? Did you have to hide out your first few days afterwards or did you feel comfortable enough to do your normal activities. I was told by Cathy (one of the girls that work there) that they could do it on asian skin types but I am still afraid of pigmentation problems. Is your skin totally back to normal now or is it still slightly off color/texture?
Last time I was in I showed Cothern my scarred area and he just mentioned it looked a discolored (darker) spot but didn't really mention the indentation which I can clearly see in certain angles/lighting so maybe I am obsessing.
Good luck with your treatments.
nsxlr8,
Did you choose fraxel as your treatment or was that what Dr. Cothern recommended? Did you have to hide out your first few days afterwards or did you feel comfortable enough to do your normal activities. I was told by Cathy (one of the girls that work there) that they could do it on asian skin types but I am still afraid of pigmentation problems. Is your skin totally back to normal now or is it still slightly off color/texture?
Last time I was in I showed Cothern my scarred area and he just mentioned it looked a discolored (darker) spot but didn't really mention the indentation which I can clearly see in certain angles/lighting so maybe I am obsessing.
Good luck with your treatments.
I think that is often the case...I think we obsess and stare at our skin in all kinds of angles when no one else even notices what we see. When I went in for a consult a few months ago the aesthetician hardly even noticed my scarred areas...she commented on my broken capillaries around my nose instead of the scars! I think a lot of it is that we are far too critical about our skin.
Fraxel is better now because the pain treatment is better they use a strong anti pain cream and use the vibraderm machine to realy get that cream deeper into the skin. They also are going with stronger laser levels which work better on the deeper scars. I think I got more bang for my buck on the last treatment
Hey annie this is Tim in West Palm. I believe you are using Laser skin Solutions here and wish you the best of luck. I had 5 fraxels over all and am happy with the results though I can still use quite a bit more improvement atleast I can say I had a substantial positive result and did not waste my time and money.
I was there just this past Friday to try sculptra which is kind of an Industrial Stregnth collegen stimultor to help plump up larger areas like cheeks and chins. I will keep you all posted. Expect to be very red for a few days and quite pink for almost a week. The Fraxel Procedure now is much better then it was over a year ago when I had my first round
Why do you think it's better now? Are you still happy with your results, FLA guy?
Good luck with the sculptra! And please keep me posted on that...I am looking into fillers, so I'm especially curious.
nsxlr8,
Did you choose fraxel as your treatment or was that what Dr. Cothern recommended? Did you have to hide out your first few days afterwards or did you feel comfortable enough to do your normal activities. I was told by Cathy (one of the girls that work there) that they could do it on asian skin types but I am still afraid of pigmentation problems. Is your skin totally back to normal now or is it still slightly off color/texture?
Last time I was in I showed Cothern my scarred area and he just mentioned it looked a discolored (darker) spot but didn't really mention the indentation which I can clearly see in certain angles/lighting so maybe I am obsessing.
Good luck with your treatments.
IDB, fraxel was what I chose. I went to see him with that in mind. Cathy is also the one I spoke with before going in and for the consult. He really didnt say much other than yes he thinks it is the best thing for me. They didnt have anything new to tell me that I didnt learn on her and other websites, the wanted to show me the same old photos that are on the fraxel site, so I didnt even bother with those. He didn't seem overly concerned with much and really didnt say a whole lot for the consult and at the first treatment. I have definetly met more personable doctors before. But I could care less about that as long as the treatments turn out well.
Actually I went back to work the next day, I was planning on hiding out for fri, sat and sun. Minimal swelling and by Monday the redness was pretty well gone and by mid week I think all of skin that bronzed had come off. I would say with in a week, I was completly back to normal, I am very fair so it went from very red to bronze to back to white just with in a few days. I thnk the mild sunburn is an accurate description. I wouldnt go out partying shortly after with my red face, but have no problem going back with just day to day things though.
My after treatment healing combo consisted of aloe,emu and triceram. I think it made a nice combo.
I dont know if maybe he didnt treat me as aggressive which led to the quick recovery. When I go next week I am going to get more infor on his treatment plan for me and see if he will crank it up some. I dont want to be wasting any treatments. Cathy said they like to start out slow to see how your skin will react.
For comparision sake I will say my skin was worst off initally from the last time I had laser hair removal on my cheeks and neck and was much more painful to. I think recovery time was quicker and the pain less with fraxel than laser hair removal.
I wish they had some pictures of THEIR patients to show, but they didnt. I thought that was a little discouraging. There are rules in place about patient info, but you think they would have something to show you or somebody would have signed a release to let them show their face even if their eyes were blurred out or something.
I plan on letting them show my pictures if they ask me to use them.
Fraxel is better now because the pain treatment is better they use a strong anti pain cream and use the vibraderm machine to realy get that cream deeper into the skin. They also are going with stronger laser levels which work better on the deeper scars. I think I got more bang for my buck on the last treatment
Hey annie this is Tim in West Palm. I believe you are using Laser skin Solutions here and wish you the best of luck. I had 5 fraxels over all and am happy with the results though I can still use quite a bit more improvement atleast I can say I had a substantial positive result and did not waste my time and money.
I was there just this past Friday to try sculptra which is kind of an Industrial Stregnth collegen stimultor to help plump up larger areas like cheeks and chins. I will keep you all posted. Expect to be very red for a few days and quite pink for almost a week. The Fraxel Procedure now is much better then it was over a year ago when I had my first round
Why do you think it's better now? Are you still happy with your results, FLA guy?
Good luck with the sculptra! And please keep me posted on that...I am looking into fillers, so I'm especially curious.
Oh, okay. Thanks!
How many treatments are you having this time?
Kanmi: That is terrible! Are you using topicals?
Fraxel is better now because the pain treatment is better they use a strong anti pain cream and use the vibraderm machine to realy get that cream deeper into the skin. They also are going with stronger laser levels which work better on the deeper scars. I think I got more bang for my buck on the last treatment
Hey annie this is Tim in West Palm. I believe you are using Laser skin Solutions here and wish you the best of luck. I had 5 fraxels over all and am happy with the results though I can still use quite a bit more improvement atleast I can say I had a substantial positive result and did not waste my time and money.
I was there just this past Friday to try sculptra which is kind of an Industrial Stregnth collegen stimultor to help plump up larger areas like cheeks and chins. I will keep you all posted. Expect to be very red for a few days and quite pink for almost a week. The Fraxel Procedure now is much better then it was over a year ago when I had my first round
Why do you think it's better now? Are you still happy with your results, FLA guy?
Good luck with the sculptra! And please keep me posted on that...I am looking into fillers, so I'm especially curious.
Oh, okay. Thanks!
How many treatments are you having this time?
Kanmi: That is terrible! Are you using topicals?
No I hate topicals .. they only make my acne spread and worsen.