Hello everyone,

Here is some emotional junk that you can skip if you'd rather just leave treatment advice:

For several years I have been in a deep depression resulting from a series of cysts that caused various scars between my eyebrows. I'm sure you are all familiar with the highs and lows of living with these kinds of facial scars. I am grateful that despite intense acne in my teens, scarring was minimal until I got several cysts within the last couple years that ended up forming these scars. Sometimes I tell myself I almost got away with having bad genes...then I didn't. My anxiety spikes around mirrors and whenever I see my reflection or myself in pictures I am cast into a deep depression of anxiety and self loathing for days afterward. 

I find it hard to look my own friends in the eye while we talk and I constantly hide my face as much as I can with hoods and hats, usually both. I miss being able to love myself and most days the happiness and confidence that come with self-love now seem eternally unattainable. However, I am finally in a position to have cosmetic work done on the scarring and hopefully that can be one piece of the puzzle to reclaiming my happiness. If I decide to undergo treatments, I would like to post before and afters here and hopefully, if I have good results, I can provide hope for other forum lurkers.

Many progress posts I see eventually stop being updated, I'd like to think that those people are now happy with their scars, but I'm afraid that most treatments just fail...

My Location:

I am currently located in Los Angeles. Fortunately, I know there are several renowned practitioners in this area, however, I am open to traveling.

My Scars:

My scarring is mostly clustered at the inner ends of both of my eyebrows. I am most concerned with the large pitted boxcar(?) scar toward the center-right (your left) of my face. Second would be the other pitted scar just above my left eyebrow (your right) and third, on the right again, (your left) is two icepick scars that somehow became connected by a shallow trench after the cyst that created the big scar (the first one I mentioned) finally receded. 

There's a bunch of other dings and scratches in that area but those are the ones that make me feel the most self destructive.

My Concerns: 

First of all, I should say I am opposed to filler, which I am assuming will be a huge impediment to my success here, but I dont see that changing. My other concerns are that this counts as "forehead" skin, which I understand to be much more difficult to get results on, particularly with regards to getting volume back, but also in regards to healing as this area of skin undergoes a lot of "animation". Thirdly, I am concerned that the location being close to the eyes could be prohibitive or risky for certain procedures such as CROSS and even Needling.

Please let me know if any of these concerns are unfounded.

My Plan (please come up with a better one):

Plan A:

Plan A starts with subcision. I usually see this mentioned as the procedure which caused the greatest permanent results (up to 3 treatments). However, I'm quite a bit worried about the proximity to the eyes and if there could be any collateral damage to important nerves. I am also concerned that these scars will have no benefit from this as I can't tell if they are "tethered" or not, but people seem to have results with this subcision on various scar types. Lastly, I know sometimes fillers are used to prevent retethering, however I'd like to avoid that. I've seen some stuff about using suction to prevent retethering but I'm completely uninformed on the matter.  What do you think?

Then, I would like to proceed with CROSS (TCA or Phenol) and RF Microneedling treatments and perhaps finish with a CO2 laser when I feel that I am no longer seeing results from the other modalities.

Plan B:

My plan be is likely most peoples plan Z because it involves grafting and excision. I think it's likely that this is a terrible location for excision. But I would probably start with subcision again, as well as microneedling but to avoid acids that may widen the scars. The more I type the more excision seems very unlikely for me, but I would settle for a horizontal scar in place of the ugly thing in the middle of my face there. I'm open to more ideas on how to angle toward excision.

Plan C:

Harakiri

Doctors:

I've been looking at the typical options in my area including, Ben Benham, Dr. Rullan, Dr. Behroozan, Dr. Rebecca Fitzgerald and Dr. Raffy Karamanoukian. 

I am leaning towards at least starting with Dr. Rullan, mainly due to the overwhelming acclaim I see for him on this site and elsewhere, but also due to his extensive work with Phenol Cross. I also recently read on here that he is known for being quite handy at subcision as well? 

Conclusion

I feel like I'm asking a lot of total strangers to look at my ugly forehead and read all of my brain droppings that I have just strewn across the page above. Any responses would mean a lot to me, even if its just to respond to basic comments, questions or speculations that I may have made in this post. Ideally, I'd like some mad dermatological mastermind to help me create a plan and save my life, but yanno.

Ok cool yall looking forward to talking. Nice to finally be a poster and not a lurker.

Thanks,

Dis_

I hope there is anyone still following this who can help me out

So I still haven't gotten any procedures done but I've had 3 consultations done, one of which was done with Dr. Rullan's staff. All consultations recommended excision, yet I can't help but feel uneasy about it. They were all quick to jump to excision calling my scar "small" and saying it would be no problem and leave "a super tiny scar that someone would have to look very close to see". I'm just feeling like they are always going to say that. They make it sound so reliable and simple and from all my research I know that it is NOT. I don't want to be conned into paying for a botched or doomed procedure.

Something that is slowing me down is that I don't see many threads on here where people talk about scarring in the forehead and glabella area. Most people have the greatest acne scars on their cheeks. I'm "lucky" in a way that i dont have as much scarring as those who have rolling scars on the cheeks but the scarring in the center of my face makes it almost impossible to ignore and frankly I would trade them for cheek scars in a heart beat as at least I would know that they are more treatable. And imo, a botched surgery in the glabella area seems a lot more serious and a lot ore likely to cause worse scarring.

In combination, I see mostly negative talk in regards to excision, particularly with punch excision (which is what my consulting doctors have referred to) and have seen no before and afters of excisions of atrophic scars on the forehead/glabella.

I'm trying to schedule another consultation with Dr. Ryan Heffelfinger in Philidelphia, specifically because of this article: https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1046&context=otof p" rel="external nofollow" style="background-color:transparent"> https://jdc.jefferson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1046&context=otofp

I'm gonna let him come to his own conclusions about my scars and pick his brains about it.

I hope I am not sounding too "woe is me," I definitely know others have it worse, but I've been having some dark days and feeling very hopeless about my situation. I want to start getting treatment so I can at least feel in control of my situation, but I am very sensitive to being had or misinformed by surgeons looking to profit off my insecurity. I don't know how I would handle it, emotionally, if a procedure made my scarring worse.

If anyone has any suggestions regarding anything I've written about I would love to hear it. Thanks so much.