18 Years of Regret :(

Hi. When I was 16 I stupidly woke up one morning and went to the tattoo shop. I didn't give any thought to what I was doing and just picked an image that I thought was cool and got tattooed. It is a black panther and it's on my breast (apprx 3 inches by 1.5 inches in size). For the first year I liked it. I was going out clubbing a lot and it suited my lifestyle back then. In certain tops you could see the top of it and I thought it looked edgy. Now I'm a 35 year old mother of 2 and it's just not me anymore. Luckily no one really sees it apart from my partner as it's quite low down, even in bikini's I can still hide it but I really detest it and it would be nice to be able to wear a V-neck top for example without fear of my tattoo showing. For years I've considered tattoo removal but I've been biding my time I guess.

So nearly 4 weeks ago I went to see Wayne at the Reset Room and I had my first picosure treatment. He's charging me £250 a session. I was nervous about the process but it wasn't bad at all although I do think I have a high pain threshold (going through labour with no pain relief is definitely tougher lol:) He used a cold air machine and I took 2 nurofen beforehand and it took around 3 mins to laser. I would describe it as a rubber band being flicked on your skin, not really the hot oil splashing that I've read about but maybe that's just me. Anyway, the tattoo felt a little bit like sunburn afterwards and I developed some blistering and then the whole tattoo scabbed over for around 2 weeks. I left it alone, didn't get it wet apart from to gently wash it once a day and I used Aloe Vera and kept it bandaged up until it had healed.

Now I have seen a really good amount of fading to my tattoo from this 1st session although the pics might not show it. Some of the shading has disappeared and the dense lines are breaking up into small dots. There seems to be some brown now instead of black in some areas and it's kind of tricky to work out what the tattoo is. I'm really impressed so far and it still seems to be changing every week :). A few things go in my favour so I'm hoping to achieve complete removal. For one thing its black, secondly its around 18 years old and thirdly it's really close to my lymph glands and heart so there's a good blood circulation in that area.

Regarding Wayne, he's a really nice guy and made me feel completely at ease and he seems to know his stuff. Picosure is more expensive but it's working for me so money well spent in my opinion. I'm trying to be patient and not rush for my next treatment so initially I was thinking about waiting 8 weeks but I might push it to 10-12 weeks as it still seems to be changing. One thing I tried to make sure of was that I got plenty of sleep while it was healing as I'm a strong believer in your body repairing itself while you sleep. Anyway, I'll keep updating as I go through this process. Good luck everyone :)

So I'm approaching nearly 7 weeks since my last session (I did want to hold out at least 8-10 weeks) but patience got the better of me so I decided to get zapped today. I'm having my treatment with Wayne at The Reset Rooms in SoHo, Central London and I just turned up today but luckily he was able to fit me in although next time I'll make an appt. Anyway, I've been really impressed with the fading so far and when I showed Wayne he was equally enthusiastic. The shading seems to have been wiped out from the 1st session. I do have a lot of dense ink though but that has faded in colour and when I look closely the lines are breaking up into small dots.

So I asked Wayne about the settings on the machine and whether he could crank things up. He did a bit but he wasn't happy with the clouding of the tattoo so he turned it down a bit. I think he was worried about any potential scarring, bless. Anyway, it was slightly more painful this time. I don't know whether that was because the settings were stronger or because the skin has already been traumatized from the first treatment so perhaps it's going to be more sensitive. However, it was still very bearable and took only a minute or 2 to zap (my tattoo is approx 1x3 inches in size). It's now around 6 hours later and I've developed a few very small blisters but in general it's looking how it did the last time which is angry and red. I'm using Aloe Vera Gel and keeping it covered now until it's healed up. I'll update again once the scabbing has gone as I should get a good idea of how much fading has happened by then. Good luck everyone.