Give yourself a break, this Spring Break April 3 – 10. Have a facial, peel or microdermabrasion…then get a second facial, peel or microdermabrasion FREE. We have 6 different facials and 13 different peels, so your service is matched to your skin type and need.
(The second service can be scheduled anytime through May 29. Complimentary service is of equal or lesser value. Cannot be combined with other offers.)
Ageless Remedies of Alpharetta is doing a Beauty Workshop day, Wednesday, March 31. Dr. Mark Grimsley will be doing a presentation, showing Before and After photos plus answering questions. He has two sessions scheduled. One is at 10:30 and the other is at 4:00. Please give us a call to secure your seat in this informational session. See why all of our patients are SO happy with their Fractional Treatments.
Lines and wrinkles have been banished. The lines around my eyes are nearly 100% gone. The rough texture on my forehead and checks is smooth. The uneven pigmentation on my check bones is gone. The dark circles and bagging under my eyes is 90% gone. WOW – that was the biggest thing I noticed, yesterday.
Seriously – my treatment was Wednesday afternoon and it’s Monday morning. I am very surprised how quickly the redness disappears. Yesterday, my hairline and the base of my neck were the only areas that indicated that I was red. (Because you could see where the treatment area stopped.) I have been peeling since Saturday. It looks like it will end today. To conceal the peeling, I just apply the Clayton Shagal Cohly Gel and the Priori Barrier Repair Complex every 3-4 hours.
So if you are trying to time when to have a fractional – Thursday is good. You would take off Friday plus have Saturday and Sunday for the weekend and be ready to go back to work Monday. If you had some redness or peeling on Monday – you could wear makeup.
Pictures go online tonight.
I worked at little at the spa yesterday and today and was too red to not say anything. So I made a “Name Badge” and explained my non-beautiful look in a beauty providing service. It was pretty funny. All of our clients were terrific and said they were interested in how I was going to finally look.
One of our Fractional clients was in for other services today – Saturday. She looked awesome and said that based on what she saw, my outcome was going to be tremendous.
She did make one of those rewarding comments….”We are going on a trip in a couple months and the family needed to update their passports. One of the things about passport applications is that you need to retake your picture. I did it and compared it to the photo of 10 years ago…and you could not see the difference. I was happy!” So she liked the results from her fractional treatment. She also said, which we know to be true, that she is continuing to improve. More of her lines are disappearing and more smoothening of the skin texture. (It’s been about 5 months.) After a fractional, our wonderful bodies repair and improve continuously for 4 to 6 months.
So the fractional results are immediate (within 5 – 7 days, after the redness completely disappears) and over the long term.
Another of our patients asked how long are the results good for. The answer is a long long time. What I mean is that the Fractional CO2 laser sort of resets the clock and if you maintain and stay out of the sun without block, your skin will look younger for years.
In the not too distant past, a laser resurfacing procedure required 2 weeks of downtime while you recovered and shed layers of skin. This new Fractional CO2 treatment is shaping up to be terrific. I will get the same results and will have stayed home watching TV…or doing taxes for a couple days. I should have minimal or no peeling.
Based on how my skin reacted the first 36 hours – I am very excited.
Dr. Grimsley and I exchanged emails. He wondered how I was doing and what I was noticing. I let him know about the swelling and redness. I also told him that I was surprised that it didn’t hurt. He said that all was normal…even the not hurting. The numbing cream that is applied before the treatment does an excellent job.
He said that the first 24-36 hours are nearly behind me and it’s all good from this point forward.
I told him that we would have a before picture + 24 hours + 48 hours posted on our website, in the Fractional Laser Resurfacing pages, after the weekend.
I am noticing. For those of you who don’t know me. I have skin type 2 – I have Austrian ancestory, but tend to burn easier than most skin type 2s. My sun damage: spots and wrinkles are currently covered up with the redness and puffiness.
You don’t peel with a Fractional Treatment. I am putting on the moisturizer then the Aquaphor to keep the skin hydrated. One mistake that I made is that I went for almost 6 hours before reapplying the moisturizer. When I finally went to reapply, my skin texture was rough and felt dry. A patient doesn’t necessarily peel after a Fractional Treatment. However, in order to not peel, I can’t go longer than 3-4 hours before reapplying. While I may have some peeling, it isn’t necessary to get the results I want and can have.
Mark
It is 24 hours since the treatment. There’s absolutely no pain. I do still feel sunburned but not hot. I am red as expected. My face also has some swelling around the eyes where I had triple passes. I was not uncomfortable, so I wasn’t taking any Ibuprofen. However, Denise – one of our injectors chastized me…saying you need to take Ibuprofen every 4-5 hours to combat the swelling. So I did. I felt better and I think it did relieve the swelling.
Dr. Grimsley said that I shouldn’t do any strenuous exercising. Oh shucks. So I spent the afternoon working on taxes. Ugh.
As my first few hours progressed, my face continued to feel warm and tight. Yes – it does feel like I was out in the sun, without a sunscreen, for a couple hours too long. Not pain. It was OK!
I did two more rounds of applying the moisturizer and Aquaphor, found an old pillow case and went to bed…anxious to see what I was going to look like in the morning.
He did a single pass over my face. He went over my rough texture skin areas and sun-damaged, discolored areas around my jaw line and tops of my cheeks, a second time. It felt no different than the first pass. He did triple passes around my eyes. Genetically, under my eyes I get crepey wrinkles and lines and…well you know. My eye lids look heavy and sag. One of the many wonderful things that the Fractional treatment does…is soften texture, smoothen out the crepey wrinkles and build collagen so the sagging eye lids improve. (I was wearing eye shields, so my vision was totally safe.)
About 5 minutes into the procedure, I had gotten the hang of using the ‘chiller’ and it did a tremendous job of keeping any warm areas from becoming uncomfortable.
About 35 minutes after he started, Dr. Grimsley said “I think you are done.” I couldn’t believe it. It was nothing…and all my confidence came back. Yay!
Then Dr. Grimsley applied a Priori cooling mask. It reduced the heat…I was still using the chiller…and I just laid there enjoying the ’spa music’. He reviewed post procedures and said that the next 24 hours were going to be the most uncomfortable, but that everything had gone well.
One of the estheticians carefully removed the mask, applied a post procedure moisturizer, a layer of Aquaphor and that was it. My face looked red and ‘goopy’ from the Aquaphor, so I went home and took an anti-viral and Ibuprofen.