Just another day in Paradise.

Just another day in Paradise.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

My face.


 No.  I'm not going as Freddie Krueger for Halloween.  Although I may want to consider it.  Yesterday I donated my face to science.  And here are the results.  It actually looks much much worse in person.  I wish you could see it.  No, actually I don't.  No, actually I do, or I wouldn't have taken half a dozen photos of myself and put them online.

I've donated plasma, been a hair model (not like in a Pantene commercial, but as in if you let them do whatever they want to your hair, the color is free!), a mystery shopper, a taste-tester, and pimped myself out in various other completely voluntary ways, but this one is worth documenting.  It started off as an opportunity to get a scar blasted by a new laser that the staff in Ben's office were training on.  The scar is on my forehead over my right eye.  I put it there myself while testing an Ecuadorian herbal product that removes moles.  It works.

But, as happens when you go to a plastic surgeon's office (or to a Vietnamese nail salon) you get more services offered than you had planned on getting...or felt you needed.  Actually the latter part is not completely true.  I have plenty of melanin that has worked it's way up to the surface that I would love to jettison.  So when the opportunity presented itself, I capitalized.  Plus I think these procedures are really expensive.

The pictures below are from yesterday, right after the procedure.  I am intrigued by the pattern, which looks as if I fell asleep on a miniature honeycomb.  A very very hot one. I didn't get to see the laser doing it's thing because then I would be blind (or have 20/20 vision), but it felt like a fine point pen was applying molten lava on my face, accompanied by snapping and popping and the smell of burnt something...skin I guess (not chicharones).  They had kindly applied lidocaine to my face prior to, but I'm not sure it made a difference, because they hit a couple places that hadn't been numbed and it felt the same.




Yesterday it wasn't so bad, except that I looked completely ridiculous with 2 cm of Aquaphor on my face.  I would like to blame the petroleum jelly for my awful hair, but no, that's just how it looks in general.  The photos below are from today.  When I asked the doctor how much "downtime" there would be, he said only 3-4 days and you will just look like you have a sunburn.  Uh, yeah, if I lived on the first rock from the sun. But pain (and ugliness) is just hyperpigmintation leaving the body.


I had been planning on going to the gym this morning as usual.  But in an effort to not make people feel uncomfortable, I stayed home and had an ice cream bar to kick off Miles' birthday.  If my face gets worse I will make sure to let you know. 



Day Three Update - Not much better. Maybe worse. And I didn't get the 20/20 I had hoped for.

Day Five - Almost out of the woods.


Day Six - Flaky.  Not sure if my skin is better than it was 7 days ago or if it is just relatively better from a few days ago.  Ben says the results continue over a course of a few weeks.

8 comments:

TOVAR said...

Well, at least you didn't have to pay for it! I think that deserves another tropical vacation or a vacation to a beautiful Alaskan summer vacation---just sayin'. Good luck. That looks super painful

m.m. said...

Is it supposed to remove dark spots? I had a laser treatment for acne once. It is probably similar. At least from the looks of it. It was horrible, and I wouldn't let John come see me (we were dating at the time). Good luck!

Damaris said...

let us know how it goes. I have dark spots on my face and would like them off, not even layers of make up would cover them my dark spots are the result of a beautiful girl.

sara said...

uh, i was away from my computer all weekend and i missed this post! what the heck! i'll call you tomorrow.

TD said...

This is crazyness! Seriously...

JMK said...

What in the world did you have done just incase Todd ever suggests I can say "no". I think I'll stick with the topicals until you show me an amazing "after" shot!

JMK said...

Todd guessed it was that laser. I really could benefit from that! Hmm. Can't wait to see the results once healed!

Ashley Locke said...

Oh my gosh!! Crazy!! I can't wait to see more updates!