Venus Viva or Venus Hell

See my attached photos to see what happened to me after having a Venus Viva treatment at Dr. David Marcus' office in Santa Rosa, CA. This is supposed to be a no-down-time or barely any down time. I was told I would need only a day or so to recuperate and if needed could use cosmetics to conceal any redness. When I left the office I looked sunburned which was the expected result but two days later the redness and swelling increased terribly. Upon a call to Dr. Marcus, he told me that unfortunately he had had previous patients with similar reactions and that it was probably caused by the numbing cream they use. Which begs the question: why don't they do a patch test first? I had to take a five-day course of Prednisone to recover. Meanwhile I was holed up in my house for a week, itching like crazy and unable to sleep because of the medication. I had plenty of time to do a little research on the numbing cream and found two articles that cited one possible reaction to it was from the application of too much. It is only my word but after the VV treatment, the nurse who had administered it had to wipe repeatedly to remove all of it from my face and muttered something to the effect that she was having a hard time getting all of it off. So, if we go with the theory that I had an allergic reaction to the cream, there is one possible explanation as to why that happened and one preventative thing that could have been done to test for a reaction pre-treatment. I'm lucky I didn't have something that could cause permanent damage but still I was quite miserable for a week. Did I mention my face itched non-stop or that Prednisone wires you and you can't sleep?