“Sculptra for Aging Face Made a Subtle Difference”

If there would be an "undecided" option I would have picked that one. I had one injection of Sculptra 7 weeks ago. Till about week 6 I didn't see any effect. Now when I catch my image in a mirror somewhere I think: hmmm, I look good....I think... but I'm not really sure what changed.

I'm 43 and didn't really have a lot of volume loss. I was at the point where some days I would still think I look pretty good but on other days I thought I look really old. My "pretty days" seemed to get less and less though. Unless I had a good night's sleep, no stress whatsoever and it was the middle of my monthly cycle I was looking tired and old.

My dermatologist recommended Sculptra. I haven't gained a whole lot of volume but it looks like my skin became thicker. My doc recommended to wait at least 8 weeks and cautioned that I might feel my face is getting fat if I get more injections. I wasn't planning to have another injection anyhow.

To summarize:

-the pros: almost all my days are "pretty days" now even though I can't really pinpoint what changed in my face.

- no problems with lumps so far

The cons:

- it's pretty nerve-wracking to wait for the results for 8 weeks. After reading all the horror stories about Sculptra I had many nightmares.

- if you're on a tight budget or have a lot of volume loss then the effect of one treatment might not be worth the costs for you.

I will update the review if things develop further.

Updated on Mar 16, 2010:

Update: It's been 10 month now and since a few weeks I feel like I've started looking older. I think the effect of Sculptra is going away. I wasn't thinking much about my looks over the past 10 month (I was constantly concerned about them before). Now I start worrying about them again. At the time I thought the Sculptra didn't do too much but now I realize that it did. It's funny how our perception adjusts. The tricky thing with subtle gradual improvements is that you don't recognize them until they go away or until you overdid it.

I have a photo from 2 years ago. At the time it was made I thought I was looking great on the photo and put it up on a webpage (probably because I looked better on it than I do in real life). After I had Sculptra I thought the photo was actually not that great and planned to take it down (I thought I look better in real life even though I thought Sculptra didn't change much in my face ). Now I'm looking at the same picture again and think I look pretty good in it - obviously because the face that I see in the mirror looks less good again. Through all this I'm really not sure what the difference is that I'm seeing.  

I thought the Sculptra effect would last longer. I'll probably go back for a touch-up. Too bad that it's so expensive.