Hi Everyone,
New to the site (well as a member - i have been browsing for about 6 months).
I wanted to post something that might give people a bit of hope.
Now I know i never had really bad acne scarring, but i did have scars. I broke out badly about 4 years ago and i have attached two pictures of the scars it left. It took about 2 years, but in the end i had almost no scars left - and this improvement came from basically no treatment - just a few mild 30 - 50 % glycolic peels. I attached a third photo of my skin after 2 years - and please not all these photos were taken with a high quality digital SLR camera, so they pick up every blemish. The one photo of me with the crazy makeup actually makes my scars look worse than they were. I think it is the amount of makeup i had to wear for the shoot and the harsh lighting - so again - I want to you know that sometimes your scars may look worse than usual - but thats not how they normally look.
I'm back here because i recently had another bad breakout, that left me with slightly worse scarring, and I am trying to give you guys (and myself) hope that the scars will go away (at least for the most part).
Anyway, i urge you not to rush into any intense treatment before waiting a couple years to see what improve you get naturally. Being so fair, chemical peels weren't really risky for me and i am currently doing a mild q switched 1064 laser for my new scars but i dont expect it to do much. Basically in my opinion is if you have to sign a waver i would say it has some risks and i would wait.
Thinking about at home dermarolling but may take my own advice and wait on that too.
I know its hard to be patient - i am the most impatient person i know - but im also trying to remember my last experience before jumping into anything that could cause more damage.
Good luck
Thank you so much for your post, it has given me hope!
I have your very same scarring post a horrible break up last year. Accutane cleared me up but I now feel very self conscious about my scarring even though I know it's not as bad as some people have it.
Can I ask you with how much frequency did you have your chemical peels?
Thank you again!
Hey I would say i had about 3 or 4 peels over the course of 4 months. Honestly I wasn't too on top of it because my mom was the one who found out about them for me and I was living 6 hours away from home at the time. She found them at a clinic where she got her vains zapped. So I was home for 4 months in the summer and I got a few done then, and maybe another one over thanksgiving (canadian so early october). I would say my skin was in decent condition about 9 months after the end of the bad breakout and it was pretty perfect with maybe a couple remaining ice pick scars after 1.5 - 2 years.
This is great to see. It does give some of us hope. I have pretty serious box scar acne scars. I removed one and reduced the appearance of two with a jessner peel. Chemical peels can do wonders for scars and I dunno why some many people refuse to believe it! I don't have any before or afters but I wish I did!
Thanks for posting this rkcat!
Oh and don't bother with derma rolling its a pain in the ass. It hurts, you gotta buy numbing cream if you're using a roller that's bigger than .5mm and you bleed. Chemical peels are better and you can get the same results faster. I think derma stamping is better but I haven't tried though I'd like to. Your skin looks great and I wouldn't bother with needling. Stick to your peels because they're working great for you.
hey have any of you heard of medical microdermabrasian? i was thinking of getting it done on my face for some scarring that i have. the place i am going to get it done is at a plastic surgeons office and they claim that it can remove most scarring when done with suffusion ultrasound. from what i have read it's like having 3 glycolic acid peels for each treatment and it helps a lot with acne as well. they said that i would need 6 treatments spaced 2 weeks apart.
it cost $175 per treatment with the suffusion and ultrasound but if you buy 6 of them its like $875 total. surprisingly here in pittsburgh its not that expensive to get work done by a plastic surgeon. this same guy mentioned about doing co2 on my chin for $700 total and then i saw another guy that was more expenesive but wanted to do the 1540 fractional laser at $300 a session but i want to start out with this medical microdermabrasian and go from there. apparently the machine they have is state of the art and this guy is from beverly hills so he is well known. i figure i can start with something that isnt invasive and go from there.
Oh that is a pretty good price if it works as well as they say. And yes I think your plan is solid, to start with that and then work your way up if you aren't happy with the result. I actually think the q-switched laser has helped me a bit or maybe its just my skin doing its natural healing but from studies I read it looked like I could expect 30 - 40% improvement which is fine with me considering im only paying 75 dollars a treatment (mainly just getting my cheeks done) and she said I only need like 4.
They are pretty similar to the ones i have in my before pictures, i guess people tend to always scar the same way, except they are slightly worse,but still have been classified by both my derm and aesthetician as mild. My derm tried to get me to do fraxel re:store but i fear fat loss or some other kind of permanent damage and i don't think my scarring is bad enough to risk it or pay all that money for something that may not even help that much, at least not without trying other safer and cheaper options first. And like i said, time and mild treatments have done wonders for me in the past. Sometimes i get so upset about my scarring my mind starts wandering into the territory of more drastic treatments and the main reason i posted this was to help myself and others remember that time and mild treatments often help more than a lot of doctors say they do.