Melasma Treatment with Fraxel Worked

I have had Melasma on both cheeks, upper lip and a little on my forehead for over three years. I went to see 8 aestheticians before I found one I thought I could trust. I told me aesthetician, I did NOT want IPL as I had read on here it would make the Melasma worse. She encouraged me to do IPL, but she understood if I was nervous. She started with one layer of TCA/Jessner peel. It worked a bit. Next month we did two layers of each and I saw better results. Then we decided together to do IPL on the lentigos that we NOT in the Melasma area. I told her I wanted to try it out first and she completely agreed and understood I was nervous. The results were good, less brown spots. The next month, we did IPL again and I finally decided to do a piece of the Melasma. Notice how many baby steps I took, there is NO NEED to do your entrust your entire face to a procedure at once. Take it slow! The results were amazing. Is it totally one, no, but it has lightened significantly. Don't be alarmed though after you get it done, mine looked like coffee stains for a full 8 days. And follow directions, do not exfoliate any of the coffee stains or peeling skin off! Now I am going to continue treatments of TCA/Jessner peels and IPL every other month. My skin looks so much smoother and I don't feel like I have to hide so much with makeup. It is not totally gone, but man it is such an improvement. Also, I REALLY follow the directions - don't peel my face and NO SUN AT ALL!!!! Also my 600$ includes two IPL treatments and three peels

I decided to get Fraxel after giving up on all sorts of lightening creams and products that are meant to treat melasma pigmentation. After I finished nursing, I went to the dermatologist who introduced the idea of using Fraxel. It was the first time I had heard about it, so I said I would think about it. Brochure in hand I researched for more information and testimonials of others who had fraxel for pigmentation. Online I saw lots of comments about other treatment like Intense Pulsed Light which sounded way too painful and not entirely effective.? There wasn't much out there about Fraxel (hence my reason for sharing!). I learned that fraxel was really effective and had fast recovery time--important to me. I went for it. In total I had 5 sessions. Let's just say I was lulled into a sense of "ah, no big deal" after my first 2 visits--spaced apart by 2-3 weeks. My dermatologist suggested I take valium before my 3rd session. I ignored him.? Oh how I regretted that. The pain for this session was intense. Tears flowed from my eyes. I would have yelled out if there wasn't anyone around. At the next dreaded two sessions I got pain meds which helped. In each case I had swelling the day after and red skin. Some skin flaked off too...but not so much I couldn't be seen. After all of this effort I can say it really did a great job on removing the pigmentation plus gave me much smoother skin texture.