“IPL Photo Facial Does Hurt - Dallas, TX”

Well here’s my honest opinion about the entire procedure:

Had my appt at 1:15 on a Tuesday afternoon and had every intention of returning to work after that. After all I had read there was no reason for me not to right.. WRONG! I am a 34 year old Hispanic Female with not quite medium skin tone.

The procedure itself was very quick. But let me advise you that pain face is very different to body pain. I jumped everytime they zapped me with the wand. It is not like a rubber band sting, it is more like a hot burning sensation. If you have any type of facial hair, you will also get to enjoy the nasty little odor of burnt hair.

It does hurt, anyone who tells you it doesn’t is lying. Maybe it was skin tone, but the honest truth is it hurts. Don’t go in thinking you’ll be in and out and no pain associated with it.. BULL. Before I left, I was in pain, and it felt like my face was on FIRE. The esthetician applied a gel to my face that she told me would numb my face for the next 12 hours, but I needed to let it sit for 30 minutes. I gladly let it sit for an hour just to make sure I would get the full effects. It didn’t help, other than having the area around my lips numb, the rest of my face was still on fire. I went home washed off the numbing cream and put some aloe on the areas that almost looked like curling iron burns. The rest of my face had what I call “brown spots” it is not nice to look at.

I don’t consider myself to have bad skin, but I thought I had some enlarged pores right around my nose area on my cheeks, so thought I’d give this a shot and maybe would even help with the few age spots I had. I put Neosporin on the rest of my skin. It looks like I have bad burns on some areas of my skin and it was only getting worse by the minute. If I fanned myself with cold air, that really seemed to help. I drove home with the A/C on in December so my face would not burn as bad….The on fire sensation did not seem to diminish till about 9 that night. I was able to sleep ok that night.

The day after the procedure:

The on fire sensation is now gone, thank God. that really hurt! Now it’s just really sensitive and I'm having little burning sensations in some areas. My face has some very dark spots all over. Specifically my chin where I had some previous-old acne scars. Really weird how that area looks really brown now. I also have these brown dots pretty much all over my face. Some look like dark freckles others are in patches. I have one huge spot that literally looks like a curling iron burn right above my eyebrow and another on my left cheek. If it wasn’t for me having so much to do at work, I would have called in.

The pain is very tolerable now, it’s more the uncomfortable feeling of having to hide under my hair and hands anytime someone comes to talk to me. It is rather embarrassing. My skin looks awful right now.. I tried to cover it with make up but it did not work, I think it almost looks worse.. my skin feels really dry now. I’m sure it has to do with the brown spots starting to scab over. I just hope they fall off soon. Had I know this before, I would have done it on a Friday afternoon and taken the weekend to recover from a hilacious looking face.. will keep you updated on the results.

Updated on 2 Feb 2011:
would I do this again? not at the company I used. I had the worse 2 weeks of my life. I looked like I was some kind of burn victim. Everywhere I went, people looked at me as if I had some sort of disease or had been thru some type of fire. This was not at all what I expected. In addition I felt that after the process, my skin became very sun sensitive and have since noticed a few brown spots on my face that were never there before and a scar from some a pretty severe burn from the process above my right eye brow. I honestly don't believe the girl conducting my process knew what she was doing.