I had a very bad hormonal acne outbreak, which I never had before, that messed up my near perfect skin. After months of humiliation and undergoing a regimen to stop the outbreaks, I was left with some really bad scars. I got a total of 3 dermapen treatments in over a year. I was just looking in my phone and wanted to share some of my pictures.
I've been dealing with too much sweat ever since I was a kid. Problem areas were my hands, feet, and armpits. Growing up, the first two were manageable, I could wear socks, and keep my hands to myself and my own belongings, but the armpits were less manageable. I would have huge ovals of sweat that was visible on my shirts. I had to change shirts regularly, avoid certain colors, and avoid certain types of clothing fabric that would make the sweat a super visible dark spot. I usually opted to wear active wear/sports gear that had dri-fit and what not. Well being an employed professional now, I can't exactly wear my preferable clothing and so there are many moments where I feel embarrassed and am forced to attempt to hide (usually by getting into an awkward pose) my drenched water spots. There were also times of body odor as well. After trying deodorants, anti-perspirants (including dry-sol), and even botox twice for $800 each, so $1600 total, I opted to skip my 3rd round of botox and try something more permanent. Cue in miradry. My mom told me to look it up and so I did, reading about what it was, many reviews (a bunch on here in fact, which is why I feel I should do a review to help out the community as well), and other information, I decided to try it and go to a location that had great reviews. I skipped 2 places closer to me and chose to drive out 1.5 hours for a San Antonio location, Texas Dermatology and Laser Specialists. I'll run through my day with them next. So I book one of the first appointments of the day (I had to leave my house before they were even open for the 1.5 hour drive out) and have to do a consultation. I called them up and asked if I could do both the consultation and procedure on the same day since I had to drive quite the distance there and my schedule was starting to get busy. If not, I had a few other days, basically the next week only where I could attempt to schedule an appointment in. The lady who answered was extremely nice and asked the physician about it. The physician said that it was hard to get it the same day since the doctor needs time (the operation was said to take 1.5-2 hours in many reviews), and that there was quite a bit of prepping (believe me there is). I then came in believing I would do the consultation today and the procedure another day. The check-in was simple (I used zocdoc to do it online) and the wait time was within 5 minutes of my appointment time. The physician asked me questions about why I wanted miradry and then explained the entire process to me, always asking if I had questions and answering them if I did. The main doctor also came by and introduced herself. After the consultation, we began starting to look for a day to schedule an appointment and then luckily for me, another staff member showed up and they said they could try it today if I was okay with the 3 of them juggling me to keep everything going. Really wanting to do it today, I was happy to accept their offer. The procedure itself is pretty simple. First you must not have hair on your armpit. You can trim it yourself, but my doctor did it for me, so they can measure the armpit size and see where to do the procedure. After making sure it was nearly hairless, they cleaned the area and added the ink-marking that basically put an oval on my armpit for them to know that was the operating area. They then proceeding to make the dots and "x"es on the ink-marking darker and more noticeable by using some kind of marker...it might have been a sharpie. After that they cleaned it again and then began putting on the anesthetic to numb my armpit. The doctor said there was a new type of procedure to make it more efficient, effective, and less painful. She did 4 shots of the anesthetic on half of my armpit and then did the saline or whatever the other material was called to make my skin plump up. She then did another 4 shots to numb the other half and then did the saline skin plumper upper again. Repeat that process of a total of 8 numbing shots and then the 10 or so saline shots on the other armpit. Lastly, she started the miradry suction at level 5 saying that was the most effective and highest level. She used the hair blow-dryer-looking thing that applied heat for 20 secs and then cool for 20 secs on all the marking spots. There was a total of 37 suctions per armpit for me with some overlap. After that the procedure was done, I was given 2 ice packs and instructions on what to do after the procedure. I was asked if I had any other questions and told to email or call in case anything arises, and that they would keep in touch with me as well. I was then on my way. So again, the procedure was simply: 1) mark both armpits 2) 8 shots of numbing and 10ish shots of saline for both armpits 3) suction microwave hair-dryer thing 37 times for both armpits Since each suction takes 40 secs, and then you have to move on to the next one, each armpit really did take about 30 mins, for an hour of total operation with that only being step 3. Steps 1 and 2 are the prep that takes the rest of the time to make it a total of about 1.5-2 hours. My armpits are sore and I've been told to ice them, clean them with antibiotic soap, and take some pain killers and anti-flammatories. I have no qualms about the operation and now I just need some time to see the results. I'll post updates every now and then and I'll change it to definitely worth it when I see the most likely successful results =]. -Andy P.S.: The place I went to said most people only do 1 procedure and don't do the second one since they do most, if not all, on level 5. It's 1995 for the first time, and if you want the second time its 950.
I don't believe I sweat excessively but I do sweat and my clothes do start to smell after a few uses. I won't even mention how lovely female hormones are when they mess with your BO. Well my dermoltogis told me about miraDry and I decided to try it out. Some patient even reported no underarm hair after treatment. No sweat, no odor, no hair? - Sign me up! Updated on 17 Apr 2015: I decided it was important to show before pictures because I do have incision scars under both arms from a BA I had about 2 years ago. I have my BA documented on this site as well.
