Colourful forearm tattoo treated with cynosure/picosure

Hi all. I got my very first tattoo September 2018 and safe to say I chose the wrong tattoo artist. His black and gray work is amazing so I thought I was in good hands but I don’t think he cares much for the style I was going for. He didn’t seem to care about my vision for my tattoo and when I got up and said “so what if I wanted to come back and tweak the colours?” He says “I don’t know why you’d want to”.... because it’s my arm and it’s looks nothing like the photos I showed you? Anyway, after doing some research I felt that picosure was the best way to go for a colourful tattoo like mine. I’m not 100% sure if I’ll continue with full removal or maybe do a cover up later on. At this point I’m really in no hurry to go getting more ink.

Fast forward to today and I just had my first treatment with Tiffany at Urban Lasers and aesthetics in Sherwood Park, Alberta Canada. She used the black hand piece on me first to target the darker colours and said she wold do the red hand piece next time to start on the pinks and yellows. They also have a third hand piece.. can’t remember what one but I’m sure you can find out on the Cynosure website? She started me with a 3.5 spot size and she did 1953 pulses (if that means anything to anyone). I paid $15 extra for the numbing cream which I sat with for about 15 minutes. She elected to use a “blt” cream which is a combination of benzocaine lidocaine and.... something else google probably can tell you. The treatment itself lasted probably 2-3 minutes and was probably a similar level of pain compared with the tattoo on a 1-10 scale but where a tattoo feels scratchy I found this to feel more like being poked repeatedly with a little pin or needle. The dark green spots hurt slightly more than the rest and it was pretty evident that the pink was not reacting as it didn’t frost like the other areas. My treatment cost $380 after tax and tips are encouraged at this establishment.. honestly I felt very okay with leaving a tip as the service from front desk to treatment room was truly wonderful.

I am now about 10 hours post-treatment and can’t resist peeking! I’m so thrilled to see that it looks like the purple and green are essentially GONE? WHAT?!? I could cry happy tears all night long. It makes me feel really optimistic that at the least I can expect to have something really workable for a coverup by next year if I decide to get one! Yay!!!!

Quick update for a few days post treatment.
Healing has been easily less uncomfortable than healing after getting the tattoo. Happy to see still very little green or purple shading remaining, green line work will need more work. Really looking forward to seeing how it looks after hitting it with the red hand piece!

Almost one week post first treatment. Just posting this for anyone interested in seeing the healing journey because I spent so many hours going through reviews on real self leading up to this! Itching comes and goes but I’ve also not done a great job of keeping it moisturized.
Also for anyone interested, I’m quite active, healthy eater, drink lots of water, non smoker, non drinker. Though my skin is quite fair I do tan very easily which is usually a great thing but is a bit of a consideration where tattoo removal is involved. Normally I don’t touch sunscreen so that will be a test for me this summer!