Do you think I would be able to go back to work 1 week after CO2 laser treatment?

I recommend following up with your practitioner about the timeline for returning to work. It's difficult to predict how you'll heal without an in-person evaluation and treatment parameters. For after care, I recommend skin care with vitamin c, b5 hydrator, silicone based scar gels with growth factors and enzymatic washes with papaya enzyme. PDT therapy can help calm inflammation. Typically I recommend adding microneedling/prp to get the best outcomes with texture and tone.  Please see an expert. Best, Dr. Emer

There  are many variables that can affect your healing after a laser. The type of laser itself is important. If you are undergoing standard CO2 laser resurfacing or a fractionated CO2 laser, the recovery time is different. The power settings and number of passes controls the aggressiveness and therefore recovery. Use of PRP topically, after the laser,  can decrease redness and healing time by 20 to 40%. However, the most important aspect is the expert who is performing your procedure. They should be able to help you predict healing times based upon their treatment plan.  Find a laser expert. Ask to see photos.

First, it is important to understand what type of laser treatment is being done. The two classes are ablative and fractionated. Imagine a checker board. If you were to laser all of the red and black squares, that is the ablative. If you just hit the red squares, that is the fractionated.  Depending on the laser settings, you could hit at varying strengths, and the size of the red vs black squares can be altered using the fractionated method.  The ablative CO2 laser remains the gold standard (and has for decades) for skin resurfacing. Its results are unmatched. However, the downtime that I tell my patients is 1 week of looking "like a dog's dinner." The next week, you look like you just got a sunburn. At 2 weeks out, it looks like you got too much sun the day prior. At 2 weeks out, you can apply makeup. At 3 weeks, I tell men they can shave again. Some patients feel comfortable looking red in the office at 1 week but I think most patients will take the second week off. The good thing is that after the procedure there is no pain, so patients can work from home one they recover from anesthesia.The fractionated laser can also be a nice option for patients. Typically, the recovery is just a few days each session. No anesthesia, no pain. However, to get results that rival the ablative laser, >4 treatments are necessary. Patients can go back to work in a couple of days. In the end, the total recovery time is very similar (condensed vs spaced apart) and the results can be similar. Financially, to achieve similar results, usually the ablative laser is a "better deal" as it is 1 treatment, even with anesthesia costs all-in.I hope this helps! Good luck!