Slowly but surely - New York, NY

I have a roughly 4x6 inch tattoo covering my lower right ankle. I dont love it. I dont hate it. If it had to be there the rest of my life it wouldnt bother me, but Ive started making a decent living, had the extra money, and would prefer it wasnt there. I went to Dr Rand in NYC. He was very thorough and told me honestly that it may not be possible to remove it completely. I also have a couple other tattoos that I had him look at sduring my initial consultation and the price for doing some test spots on both tattoos was just slightly less than doing a whole treatment on one, so I decided to just take my chances and go for it.....Sooooooo glad I did. The procedure itself was relatively painless. My toes felt a little weird if I put my full weight on my foot that evening, but other than there there was no swelling. I was shocked at the amount of ink that had come off the next morning when I took my bandage off, and it has continued to fade since. As the picosure laser is relatively new, I had a hard time finding photos of the healing process when I was researching it before I made the decision to have it done, so I am posting my experience here.

Other than some light scabbing for the first week or so, I had very minimal side effects. Id say about 4 days after the removal my entire body broke out in tiny red itchy bumps. I thought it was just a heat rash (which it may have been), but then it dawned on me that it might have been an allergic reaction to the tattoo ink in my system. I just drank a lot of water and went to the steam room in my gym and it went away.

While I didnt blister at all initially, I did have some strange "blistering" about 5 weeks post procedure. They werent really blisters in the traditional sense, but more like hard raised bumps. I was extremely concerned that they may have been keloids forming, but I just left them alone and they went away on their own over the next two weeks. Beyond that, every place there was a bump has significantly more removal of the ink.

Photos shown with this post are the morning after and weeks following the procedure.

Second treatment today slightly more painful than the first, but still only about 3.5 on a scale of 1-10. I didn't take any breaks this time. Immediately after first session I had the typical white frosting. This time the frosting looked more like milky color. Hoping this means color is coming out easier now! My first treatment was 3 months ago, but I don't remember there being any discomfort after the procedure. My ankle did feel pretty "sunburn-y" for about 30 mins after this one though. Doc said that the healing process can vary dramatically with different treatments even on the same person with the same laser, so I'm playing it safe and staying bandaged up until tomorrow.

A little swollen, but can't really tell unless you look at both my ankle bones at the same time. No pain. No blistering. While there's less pinpoint bleeding this time, it does look like there was comparatively more trauma to the area.

Some fading but not the dramatic results of first treatment.