muac 30% - Colorado

Just finished my first deep peel. Over the past 5 years or so I've played around occasionally with milder TCA peels, up to about 18%, but never consistently. Also, I've been doing regular mild MUAC Mandelic and Fade Peels. I wish I'd done all these more regularly to build up to this stronger deep peel, but oh well, I had this week I'd taken off to work on a work project, so I won't be seeing clients this week and now was my chance. Over the past couple months I had gone as intense as around 15% with TCA, so I'm not starting off totally fresh.

Anyway, I've had some pre-cancerous cells over my entire decollete area, and some deeper crows feet starting (OK let's be honest...well under way) as well as some way worse deeper wrinkles above my outer eyebrows from my face getting smooshed when I sleep. I'm told I look EXTREMELY young for my 43 years, but these deeper wrinkles around my eyes, along with crepey under eyes and eyelids, leave me looking exhausted all the time, and just not as fresh as I could look. Too bad we can't do the TCA on our eyelids!

The procedure: I started yesterday doing my decollete with the same strength I was going to use on my face, to test out how sensitive I would be to this stronger strength. My chest handled it so amazingly well, that I thought my face would be a breeze also. I'm on day 2 now on my chest, and I'm already getting dark brown spots where the skin will eventually peel. So, onto my face! HOLY BURN THE HOUSE DOWN! It's been about 20 minutes since I finished the peel, and the area on both sides of my eyes where it turned the most red, is still on fire. My skin immediately tightened up so much that it has the leathery look under my eyes, which in the past I've only gotten in later days just before the peeling was going to begin. As I was doing the peel I wasn't seeing some of the most crucial areas frosting (crows feet area) so I swept those areas again with the acid-filled Q-tip...completely forgetting that if I've already gone over that area once I increase the potency of the peel by about 25%. So I just got a DOOZY on those areas I think. And yes, they are still burning as I sit here. I think from here on out I'll keep my updates regarding my face only, since my chest area seems like it's going to be extremely non-eventful.

OK I'm just about 24 hrs in and I'm feeling much better about the whole thing. I was worried my entire face was going to swell up and my skin might all immediately just fall off my face :-/ but alas, after about 2 hrs the burning calmed down, as did the redness. Woke up this am with some tightness but not bad. For most of the day I looked mostly normal, if you didn't know me. As I'm into natural products and don't tend to use drugstore stuff like Aquafor and such, I've just been putting argan oil mixed with goldenseal powder on my face and chest. Goldenseal powder has been a miracle medicine on many 3rd degree burns in the past, so I figured it would be a soothing remedy to use on my face. Over the past hour or so my face is getting progressively redder and darker. Will update again tomorrow and/or as soon as something different starts happening.

Oh yay the peeling! Finally! After two days of darkening and tightening, to the point that I could barely make face expressions and had to cut my food up very small, I finally woke on day 4 to peeling today. And this is GOOD, FULL ON, huge sheets coming off. I'm trying to resist helping it along by just staying away from the mirror. I was beginning to think I was never going to peel (well, it felt that way), so this is great progress.

I finally gave in last night and put some vaseline on my whole face, and it immediately seemed to help with the tightness, and then tiny bits of peeling began within a few hours. Maybe it was just time, or maybe the trapped in moisture helped it along; either way, that was a noticeable difference. I'm alternating between using it for a few hours and then CAREFULLY washing off, so that the skin doesn't peel much earlier than it should...kinda like a scab loosens up sooner than it should if soaked in water. I want to give that precious fresh skin underneath every chance to be protected and prepared to meet the world. :-)