Tattoo Removal - Cardiff, Wales

I've been monitoring my progress carefully for the last two and a half weeks. The fading happens over time so there isn't any noticeable difference yet. However, one area has caught my eye, and it's on the top star where we used the 4mm spot size and had pinpoint bleeding afterwards.

Due to the settings used, there is a lot of superficial redness and I am sure that this will clear in a few weeks or months. What I've noticed on though is that there has (hopefully) been excellent fading underneath. I was debating posting about this as I have made a few predictions in the past which have later been wrong, so this could again be one of them - sorry!

Anyway, I've attached a photo, and you can see that things are still quite red. On the areas with the arrows (particularly on the right-hand side) the redness is more of a pink colour, so it looks like there's little to nothing left underneath.

I won't know for sure what's going on until this redness heals, and thankfully it's just post-treatment redness and not anything chronic, but what I'm really hoping for is just one little gap in the star, which would mean that an area has finally broken up.

If my prediction is correct, then this leads me to wonder if pinpoint bleeding is actually what I need? I've never had pinpoint bleeding before and for ages I've thought that my ink is just very deep down. Could it be that I need a more brutal session to break up this resistant ink? Should I go for the 4mm all over next time with high power? It'll be really sore afterwards!

Has anyone had good results after pinpoint bleeding? It would be great if these areas faded even more over the next few months and cleared completely.

I'm still taking the lymphatic thing seriously. I have now added a mini trampoline and milk thistle to my daily routine. There's not a lot more I can do!

I thought it might be interesting to gather a bunch of answers to this question to help build up some sort of average timeframe.

As we all know, our bodies work to remove unwanted ink for weeks after treatments, but I was curious to know just WHEN you really start to notice a difference? Do you notice a change within the first week after laser or do you find that it takes more time? Weeks? Months?

I appreciate that everyone is different, but would love to hear your own views. :-)

I made the long trip to London yesterday and finally had my treatment with the newly released PicoWay, free of charge. As I'm trialling the laser it was also confirmed that I will be receiving more treatments with the laser going forward.

I had quite an audience at the treatment: Dr Maria Gonzalez who performed the treatment, the GM of Syneron-Candela (lovely lady called Michaela) and a lady named Naomi from Maria's PR company who took photos in the case of the treatment being published. A few members of staff at the clinic also observed. I asked if we could film the treatment but the short answer was "It will melt your camera", so I decided it was best if we didn't! Naomi the PR lady could only take photos when the laser wasn't operating.

I know this is all very new stuff so I'll try and be as detailed as I can. I won't pretend that I know all the technical bits as I don't, but what I do know is that we began using the 4mm spot size on the top star which caused pinpoint bleeding, with little pain. This was quite slow and the rhythm was a bit like: zap, lift and move, zap, lift and move, zap. The skin didn't rise much.

Maria then explained how she much prefers the 6mm spot size and so we used that on the next star. This was more painful and much faster; constant zaps while continuously moving the laser. There was no pinpoint bleeding but the tattoo raised A LOT afterwards (much more than in the attached photo as that was taken during treatment). We saw some brilliant frosting and the snaps were nice and loud too.

With the forearm tattoo we simply used the 6mm all over, avoiding the scars. This one did hurt a lot, obviously because there is still quite a bit of ink left to react.

This was basically the treatment in a nutshell. It will be interesting to see which spot size works best! I used no pain relief or cooler during.

The next thing to do is wait, and I'm going to wait about 6-8 weeks before I post my progress. I hope this is ok.

In the meantime I'm going to drink tons of water, lemon water, green tea and keep up the dry skin brushing. I'd really like to see something worthwhile from this.

That's all for now. Happy to answer any questions if I can!