I'm Embarrassed to go Swimming with my Sons

I got the two tattoos pictured below about 15 years ago. The Inca one on my back is a cover up for a shoddy Celtic Band I had done. The detail on the Inca one is great but on its own it looks silly, and I'm not going to get a whole shoulder/sleeve done as I want them both off. I've had my first Q Switched treatment a week ago and these are the results.

First impressions are there's not a lot of degradation but on closer inspection I can see patches of fading.

I've gone for Q switch as it's considerably cheaper than Pico, however, it will take a lot more treatments but I'm not too worried about this as it's winter time. I'm going to persevere with an other couple of Q treatments and see how things progress. If i feel it's going too slow I may cough up the cash for a couple of Picos.

In terms of the treatment itself, I found it relatively painless. Both tattoos took about 30 mins in total and there was a little soreness afterwards, but nothing to write home about. A couple of days later I did get a little bit of itching, but again nothing too bad.

So I've just been for my second treatment, but before I tell you how that went, the update from my first one...

I was a little disappointed that I couldn't see an immediate (first week) change following my first treatment, but after week 5 and 6 there was more and more fading especially around the black sharp edges and red.

I went into the second treatment very confident as I didn't feel any real pain, or have any blistering after my first session. However, it became immediately, and I mean immediately, apparent that the power had been lifted on this session. It was definitely uncomfortable, but not unbearable. The good thing is that the discomfort (I wouldn't describe it as pain yet) is short lived and 3 days after treatment I have no itching or blistering.

Here is a rather poor photo from this morning which is 48hrs post treatment. There is a little bit of fading and fingers crossed more to come over Christmas. My 3rd session isn't for 8 weeks. I'll keep you posted.

Overall I'm happy with the way things are progressing.

So this is a couple of days after my 3rd treatment and you can really start to see patches of skin colored skin coming thru which is really pleasing.

No pain whatsoever this time and the loud "cracking" is less frequent which I believe is because the density of the ink is diminishing.

My experience so far is that most of the fading happens 4-5 weeks after the treatment but so far I'm really happy with the way things are going. The one on my back is difficult to photo but its really colour heavy but that too is fading really well and the sharp black outline has gone in most places.