Disappointed with Regret (Live and Learn)

I’ll begin by saying I’ve heard some people do have amazing results with Halo. I’ll never know why but I was not one of these people, despite being seemingly a perfect candidate (fair/light skin). My main concerns were texture, large pores, fine lines, post acne marks, acne scarring, beginning laxity, and some sun spots. Overall I was excited to have a fresh, smooth, rejuvenated face. All the things I was told this “miracle” laser would address were what I wanted and short downtime was a dream for everything promised. I waited several years to try the Halo due to the price and then finally had the opportunity to have the procedure done. Some patients really struggle with sensitivity or pain during and after the treatment but I tolerated this very well and even post recovery, was only in “pain” maybe a couple of hours, which could be compared to a feeling of a sun burn which spraying thermal water on the face soothed well. No swelling ever occurred for me, either. Also for reference I am not very sensitive. Fast forward, I healed very quickly but started to notice my skin was looking worse than before. I kept giving it more time thinking it would improve but this was not the case. The texture I wanted to treat was somehow even worse and most upsetting was the pigmentation and discoloration that developed after the procedure which I never had before (I followed post care instructions and used high spf while avoiding the sun). I was also told the “pinking” of the skin was normal (which I read to expect) but this new pinky shade actually never went away for me and it’s not an even, fresh pink skin appearance. Not only do I have this seemly permanent new color (very clear where the provider missed small sections under my bottom lip and under my nose) but also on top of the discoloration appeared melasma looking patches around my nose, under my eyes/upper cheeks, and all around my mouth and chin which hasn’t improved. I was dismissed when I brought my concerns to my provider and was told it was normal, which then after it wasn’t improving for several more months was told, “well you didn’t really have wrinkles so you won’t have very noticeable results” even though they promised texture and tone improvements and new collagen development within the year. The provider even went over some scarring on my temples a few extra times for improvement and there’s literally zero difference. I don’t blame my provider for the poor outcome, although I am irritated by some of the small missed sections around the mouth and chin, but took this as a warning that you never know why you might be the one a procedure doesn’t work on, and lasers come with risks. The price spent hurts a lot, too. I have now spent even *more money just trying to repair the damage done by the halo laser, which also yielded poor to zero results. I’ve had *three additional IPL/BBL laser treatments since Halo to try and repair the hyper pigmentation and discoloration and had absolutely zero results from those and maybe even worsened some of the pigmentation. Also the broken capillaries around my nose show zero difference as well. I went into this whole process with ok skin minus post acne marks, enlarged pores/texture, and broken capillaries around the nose, and the mild sunspots I wanted to eliminate. After now spending *thousands of dollars I still have what I originally started with, plus more. It’s extremely depressing to know you did this to yourself and paid a lot of money to someone else to only ruin your skin. I have now been doing weekly/bi-weekly chemical peels in an effort to fix what I’ve done (I think it’s slowly helping) and hope over the next few years I can reverse some of the damage I’ve done. Lesson learned.