Zero Result, Cost $5000, a Week of Swollen Face and Tons of Pain

I just noticed that there are two Fraxel catogories: Fraxel Laser is called restore while there is another one called Fraxel repair. It seems like Fraxel restore has a lower average price than Fraxel repair, although the fee I ended up paying was repair's average price. I found a good discussion about the technical difference between these two. http://www.realself.com/forum/fraxel-repair-different-fraxel-laser

I had two deep lines right underneath my eyes, lots of fine lines below those deep lines when I smiled and some acne scars on forehead and cheeks. I was recommended a series of 4 Fraxels for $3800. I was told there would be minimal pain and I could go right back to work the same day after procedure. Both of them turned out to be very untrue. First time, it hurt like hell. I had to bite on something to prevent myself from screaming. Second time, they injected anesthesia in addition to the regular topical numbing cream. But it still hurt so much that I had to stop the procedure after only 5 minutes and rescheduled this to be done under general anesthesia, which cost $500 the first time (2nd treatment) and then reduced further for the remaining treatments because apparently the anesthetia was in high demand. My face was so swollen after each treatment that there was no way I could be back to work right away. In fact, it was swollen (and hurting) for at least a week each time. After the entire series was done, I saw no change in the problems I was trying to address. I was told that it was probably becuase my lines and scars were not that prominent to begin with and therefore the improvement wasn't very noticeable. I agree they were not horribly deep, but they should have told me that BEFORE they recommended the procedure and said "Fraxel will take care of all these." I also do not know whether the lack of result was due to improper operation of the procedure. However, in terms of customer experience, they did a superb job in after treatment care and followup. So I will list "recommend" below although I wish they had "maybe" as an option. Just make sure you do your research in terms of results before deciding and don't buy into their sales pitch. Also don't believe any before-and-after photos as they are all taken with different lighting, makeup, expressions, etc. To a certain degree, these are dishonest practices. Unfortunately, I haven't met any provider who doesn't do that.