Hahaha...Oh boy.

So, to recap, I had my full arms and chest down to waistline done. I have type II skin type with dense, coarse hair all through this area. I'm a male from Richmond, VA.

I took two advil 1.5 hours before the treatment and used 3 thin applications of 5% lidocaine cream 2 hours beforehand. In spite of that, I endured 1.5 hours of complete agony ^^. We started off at 18mm @ 18J, and we got as far as the upper left quadrant of my chest before I had to dial it back to 18mm @ 16J for everything else.

On the chest, I had to take short breaks after each row of zaps, especially around the bony areas. I have to say it was one of the most painful experiences I've ever had. The arms were a cakewalk in comparison. My technician was fantastic. She did everything in her power to make me comfortable.

I had some short term redness and edema (raised areas), but this all went away within an hour.

Everything sounds good. Make sure to avoid caffeine. Also, icing helps. It sounds like the cream may have been put on too thin. You usually don't need to wait 2 hours. Most instructions say 30-60 mins, but you do need it to be thick enough to be effective.

Settings sound good. Once the hair gets finer after a few treatments, it should be less painful too.

Let us know how shedding went in 3 weeks and please continue to post your story in one thread here so everyone can easily follow it.

You know, I figured that the pain would decrease with each subsequent treatment. I said something along the lines of "Oh, well this is going to be the most painful, so the next one won't be as bad." My technician frowned slightly at this, trying to think of a good way to phrase "lol no."

She ended up saying "Well, the hairs may be finer, but we'll be using a higher setting, so I can't promise you that the sensation will change significantly."

It put some things in perspective. But, 7-10 hours of agony is still ultimately worth the result to me. At least the pain is transient. There's been no lingering pain at all.

The reason I had to start early on the lidocaine is because I had to drive an hour, and it wasn't practical to numb up on the way. We used ice-packs of rubbing alcohol and water in a rubber glove. It helped significantly.

So just curious...

Should I be seeing growth as early as...well..4 days after treatment? I mean, hairs that were clearly shaved before my treatment look like they have about that much growth on them. It's not uniform, mind you. On the contrary, it's a bit patchy, and I understand that any regrowth should be patchy...

But I wasn't expecting any growth for a few weeks or so. Am I mistaken?

This is normal. The hairs may look like they're still growing as they push themselves out of the follicle.

Did you wrap yourself up really well in cling wrap after you applied the numbing cream? I find that that and keeping the area warm (say by wearing a sweater) help the cream work better. The numbness starts to wear off pretty soon after you remove the wrap, so it also helps to wait until the last minute to uncover your skin.

So you used rubber gloves filled with rubbing alcohol and water and frozen as ice-packs? That's kind of funny Large gel ice packs might work better, since they cover a larger area and can easily be pressed against one area while the preceding area is lasered. I've brought my own to clinics that didn't provide them.

My question regarding lidocaine -- since it is so expensive is it possible to put it on thick and afterwards when you're taking it off take the excess lidocaine off and put it back in the container?

I'm sure it would loose some potency so that would be counterproductive, not to mention the bacteria issues involved with doing such a thing. Secondly, I ask this with all seriousness: How do you get a cream back into a tube??? Unless the cream was compounded and put in a jar, all lidocaine topicals that I have seen comes in tubes.

You need to wait 3 weeks for shedding. Most of the time shedding doesn't start until week 1 or later even. You can't tell what's happening at 4 days since the hair looks like it's growing out while it's just pushing itself out of the follicles to shed.

You can put cream back in a tube, technically, but as stated for hygenic reasons it is a bad idea. It is also tedious to do, and not recommended for anyone with better things to do with their life. I tried this one day when I was bored using toothpaste, and it worked well.

The tube should not be full, so there is some room for the tube to expand. Instead of pushing on the tube sides as you normally would, push gently on the horizontal seams instead. This pushes the tube back out from flattened to puffed out again; this action can push the cream down and back, creating a vacuum. You can do this so the nozzle sucks up some of the excess cream, or, using a little spatula, "push" small amounts back through the nozzle opening and back into the tube.

At the place I had my laser done, they did have a topical anesthetic compounded for them by a pharmacy, and it came in a jar. It was applied with a little wooden spatula (and no excess ever returned to the jar )

It took 2-3 weeks for my hair to shed after each treatment. As treatments progressed (about 6 or 7th out of 10), it got down to 1-2 weeks, but I don't know if that is typical or just an oddity. After 6 or 7 treatments, I also experienced an odd "secondary" shedding occurring about 6-8 weeks later; not as much hair shedding as the first shed, but definitely some shedding. Of course, your mileage may vary, and almost certainly will, but 3 weeks or so is typical as reported here.

Regrowth should NOT need to be patchy. Sometimes I get tired of repeating this, but this mostly gets unnoticed, so I'll repeat it once more.

If proper settings and application technique is used then clearly the hairs should not look like they are growing at the same rate. At least something should not feel right even if they look like growing, you'd be able to tell they will shed eventually.

Ok, I've gone to sessions at different centers. The first center I went was a part of big chain. If I compare the results I achieved at this center and the ones I went afterwards, the result is that while patchiness wasn't an issue at the first center, I always hit the patchiness wall at my subsequent treatments at the other centers. So, what is the driving difference among the first and the other ones?

Well, several reasons:

1. The practitioners at the first center seemed much trained.

2. Before they treated any area they divided the area with a white pen into smaller areas, and they treated each area individually. They never proceeded into the next area before they finished the current one.

3. Before the procedure they deposited a transparent gel onto the area. The laser head continually blow air forward, so during the laser pulse the gel right on the skin had marks making sure and telling the area under the mark is treated.

4. They hoovered the laser head at a constant speed above the skin ensuring that overlapping is done and each skin part gets close amount of energy. They conducted laser head movements according to predetermined patterns like line by line and etc.

5. They had some sort of device checking on skin and telling which skin type you actually have, so they were able to adjust settings more healthily.

At this center I had never had patchy results or patchy regrowth except once where one practitioner were utterly bad so I had nearly half of the area untreated.

Here is the thing, the latter centers didn't apply any of the above, so they were not able to treat each spot equally and as a result patchiness occurs, and this is what I'd expect since these people are not machines. But there is always these techniques above or similar that will help them minimize the non-uniformity. So, why don't they use these or similar techniques? I think, they just think they are skilled enough to cover all the area uniformly. And, when you tell them it is unlikely, they just ignore you. Because you should not be teaching them their job.

It is not hard to see why so many people with coarse hair having patchy results.