wow, your skin is healing nicely and it’s looking great!
Thanks, stoppit. 
I realized last week the most significant redness wasn’t directly caused by the electrolysis, but by the moisturizer I was using. Last night I purchased witch hazel to use for the first two or three days following treatment. I’m about to go wash my face for the first time, 22 hours after treatment Wednesday. After soap and water, I’ll wipe with witch hazel and skip the moisturizer.
At that time, I’ll likely be forced 
to agree wholeheartedly with all the experts here - the best after care is pure witch hazel and tea tree oil. (In my case, I use antibiotic cream rather than tee tree oil, but that’s because the neomycin in it doesn’t cause any issues for me. It can irritate some peoples’ skin.)
Tea tree oil is pure. It has antiseptic, anitviral and antibacterial properties. As always, we STRESS that you use if in small dabs. Put aloe vera gel on top of the tea tree oil and see how it works for you. Neomycin may not cause you problems now, but it could later. Keep your ingredients as pure as possible if you must use anything at all. A mild soap and water gentle washing may be all you need as well.
Thank you, Dee. 
Your comments and advice are always greatly appreciated. I’m here to say that Dickinson’s witch hazel was very kind to my skin this morning and this evening after showering. I still have some pinpoint redness in one small area, but it’s nothing like the moisturizer was causing.
Another thing to mention tonight: I e-mailed Margaret today and asked about changing her normal strategy for me, providing a couple of different reasons for the change. She replied later in the day and said it would not be any issue, so I’m happy about that. Essentially, we’ll perform maintenance on the cleared areas every second or third week (depending on the amount of regrowth) and work on clearing more of my chin and neck beneath my chin.
If I haven’t mentioned it previously, my electrologist is an absolute sweetheart, as well as a skilled and talented professional. 
Thanks, Margaret!!
Did you experience any redness for more than a day or two? Does the upper lip swell badly? Just worried about redness and scars but you have sensitive skin like I do. Shaving against the grain on my upper lip too soon and I get irritation and razor burn. always have to cover it up with a little makeup and then it looks perfect. Can you show us another pic of the upper lip?
The appearance of my upper and lower lips hasn’t changed much since the last photo, honestly. With the very sparse density of what little regrowth occurs, the follicles treated are not usually near each other. The redness I have now is on the left side above my chin, where several hairs were removed in close proximity to each other. This was done Wednesday morning and I was back in the office Wednesday afternoon with no need for makeup or anything else.
The only time swelling occurred was when several hairs in a dense pattern in a small area were treated. This was when working to achieve first clearance, and somewhat less when achieving the second clearance. After this, swelling was completely a non-issue. Spreading the first clearance over three or four separate appointments can help minimize the likelihood of your entire lip swelling. My upper lip swelling generally resolved overnight or at most 1.5 days later. Applying ice packs immediately after treatment for 30 to 45 minutes helps reduce the degree of swelling, too.
your results are great. i hope mine come out flawless like yours.
Oh, the results might be approaching excellent, but my skin is anything but “flawless”. I took a picture this afternoon and finally got the focus working correctly, again. It’s incredible how many miniscule details you can see when a high-resolution image is properly focused. I’m beginning to understand why some people with magnifying mirrors can become obsessed with the tiniest little hairs, which absolutely nobody else can see or even notice at all.
is it my imagination or did you picture from page 7 look alot better? could be the digital camera but which one is more real because you show alot of red spots in the digital photo on upper/lower lip and chin. was your skin always like that?
This photo was taken with much better focus and different surroundings and lighting conditions. The less focused picture from several days ago only looked better because it included less detail due to the focus problem. I’m not a photographer, and I’m using my iPhone camera to take these pictures.
If I had never had any electrolysis performed, you’d still see redness due to folliculitis. Go back to the first post on Page 7 where I posted a picture of my cheek, where no treatment has been performed AT ALL. You’ll see redness there, too. My skin is just that sensitive. It turns red all over when I simply splash water on my face in the morning after waking up. I’ve mentioned it before, I don’t have rosacea or any other documented skin condition. It’s just easily irritated. Having the beard removed helps eliminate the worst source of that irritation.
Here’s the same picture taken Friday afternoon in glorious five-megapixel resolution, cropped and color-balanced to tone down the redness some. If you click on it to view the larger image, you can see the miniscule details I mentioned in the original post. This picture was taken at a distance of six inches, while most people’s conversation distance is four times farther, or about two feet.
All the details you can see in this picture are NOT visible to the naked eye, unless you’re invading :o my personal space.
Actually, most Americans stand four feet away when conversing, unless in a crowded room. statistically speaking of course 
that area in the upper middle of your upper lip still didnt heal completely? i remember that from many weeks ago. either way good results. lighting is everything. those digital cameras arent real. thats not how people really look.
If you mean the four or five spots directly beneath my nasal septum, that’s pigmentation in my skin that has remained since the first and second clearances. I’m afraid the moisturizer I use was responsible for aggravating several areas, and this was the most obvious. I’ve switched to using pure witch hazel after soap and water, and I wait quite some time before applying the moisturizer, now. Those will slowly fade over time, but for now they’re technically “freckles”. (You can observe similar pale orange freckles on my cheeks if you look carefully.)
Thank goodness James. I was afraid you might be a ‘close talker’.
Margaret used the full two hours today working to clear my chin. Both my lips and the area above my chin are enjoying the extra recovery time. In the future, she’ll be doing maintenance and clearing new areas on alternating weeks. This will provide more time for newly-cleared areas to recover and stabilize, while still maintaining the cleared areas.
I know individual hairs appear on different growth cycles and full and permanent clearance of an area requires several months of work to achieve. Since allowing my lips an extra week’s break from treatment, they’ve now had two full weeks and there’s more visible (but fine) regrowth on my upper lip than I expected. It’s had almost three months of weekly maintenance since second clearance was achieved, so I wonder if my expectations are set too high, or if maybe the energy is set too low?
There’s been no plucking occurring, so I would have expected a minimum 60% to 70% kill rate during each week of maintenance. Is it realistic to expect more thorough clearance after only four months of treatment? Or could this be the activity of testosterone stimulating dormant follicles into new growth?
Thanks in advance for sharing all your years of working experience. I really appreciate it.
Patience. It is all about hair growth cycles. It takes a minimum of 9 months for every hair to come to the surface just one time. The first six months is the hardest.
Thank you for your quick response, Dee. I understood it generally required anywhere from 10 to 12 months, but I really started having some nagging doubts (as I’m certain most people eventually [or continually!] do) when I saw how many hairs were popping out all over.
Margaret really prefers to zap anything she can see every visit, and now I understand why. If you eliminate it before the client can ever see it, it can’t raise any troubling doubts. I really wanted to move forward with clearing my chin, and she’s almost got that completed. And seriously, my lips really appreciate two weeks to recover, instead of only one.
Thank you again for sharing your vast wealth of experience and knowledge. It’s really appreciated.
I agree, I am also in the 3rd-4th month and losing hope, esp. since I have to take a 3 month break. Trying not to be disheartened as well!