Street Spirit

12 Days After My Fourth Picosure

My last Picosure session was undoubtedly the most painful. The healing time was about a week, 7 days. I have had worse with q-switch but this was the most painful Picosure session I have had. I'm still hoping the higher intensity will lead to better clearing. The technician told me this would be a bad one and it's still better than q-switched. If I felt / was told that higher intensity was better results, I would be happy for him to go higher.

I've been extremely busy with real life lately so am cramming two posts into one.

20 May 2017

I took this last week, one week after the session. You can still see a little bit of redness, though it is mostly gone, and the ink is still a bit swollen. I'm going by memory but I think it was still hot at this stage. Not very, but warmer than the rest of my skin.

25 May 2017

That was take this morning. There actually looks to be some progression already but I think that's more to do with healing and my skin returning to normal. I think typically it's around 2 weeks before anything is noticeable.

The evenness / unevenness of the fading is still my pet peeve. If the darker bits would fade more quickly the whole tattoo would look so much more faded. I still don't think I could wear short sleeves if meeting customers / trying to sign a new customer. I think the darker ink on the hat is beginning to break down. If the darker ink on the body would do the same the impact would be significant.

For a reminder, when I started this process, I thought it would be about 4 months before the tattoo was nearly completely gone. How wrong I was. I'm now 17 months into it and it's still very noticeable. If you're reading this and contemplating removal, start now. My advice would be to try to find Picosure and start there but see what's available. If you're hoping your tattoo will be gone by a certain date, you'd want that date to be at least 18 months away. This is a slow process.

A Day

After My Fourth Picosure

It's now 2 days since my fourth Picosure session. My arm is still pretty swollen and quite sensitive. I know I said this was more painful than previous session but I'm surprised it's still so swollen. What I genuinely don't know is if higher intensity equals better results. I would have thought so but my previous session did not hurt at all and I was really happy with the results. Two days is too early to tell but I thought I noticed some pretty quick results after the previous session.

14 May 2017

Above was taken about 23 hours after the session. The swelling had reduced but you can still see it is swollen and red. The "frosting" on my skin that looks like pealing is aloe. Due to pain I've been putting a lot on.

15 May 2017

That was taken about 10 minutes ago, ~54 hours after being shot with a laser. It's still a little swollen and red. There's still some spot bleeding visible but it's healing. I didn't apply any aloe while in work today and I think today will be my last day of it from this session. The tattoo is still a bit hotter than the rest of my arm but nothing much. I expect tomorrow the swelling will have receded completely.

I'm pessimistic about this session, I don't know why. I think the higher intensity threw me. I didn't expect much from the previous session yet it had a significant impact but it targeted the darker deeper ink. he said it was the wider spot size. This one was a smaller, more intense spot. Hopefully I'm just being pessimistic and the additional pain will yield a better result.

Session 8, PIcosure 4: The Quest for Pieces

Fourth Picosure Session

I had my fourth Picosure session about 6 hours ago. This one hurt. He told me he was going to up the intensity and he did. I'm not sure if this was the most painful (Picosure) or if the second one was worse. Either way, I'm in quite a bit of pain right now. He said that it was worth increasing the intensity this time as it would accelerate the removal process. The only reason I'm concerned is the last one he said lower intensity wider spot would be more effective. I'm assuming he knows what he's doing. I have always found the Picosure healing time to be faster than q-switched, I'm curious to see how long this takes to return to normal.

13 May, 2017

The above was taken about 3 hours before the session with a shaven arm. The tattoo was fading quite nicely, most importantly, my arm didn't hurt back then. These were good times.

13 May, 2017

That was around 40 minutes after the session. The weird white stuff is just aloe vera gel. It's still quite swollen there and you can see some spot bleeding beginning, particularly around the base of the hat. I've been applying aloe a lot but a weird thing happened today. The aloe made my skin dry and any skin which touched it go horribly red. It made it more painful than normal. My theory on this was too much aloe. The technician applied quite a lot, then I applied some after I took that photo. I then applied more about an hour later and that's when the pain started. I washed it off an let it dry for a while.

13 May, 2016

 I took this one 2 hours ago, about 4 hours after the session. The weird aloe redness was gone at that stage so the red you can see is just from being shot with a laser. There's more spot bleeding visible, particularly the cross. I have applied more aloe since and it's beginning to recede. I'll update tomorrow with the progress after 24 hours.

What a Difference a Year Makes

1 Year After My Fourth Q-switched Session

Yay, Spaceballs day is here again. The Internet, full of hilarity because the date (in American) sounds a bit like a line from a movie. What's worse is people's belief that it's still funny. Ah well. So, because the date is memorable, I remembered earlier that my forth q-switched session was also on 4th May. I thought it would be interesting to see how it had progressed, one year on from my fourth session. Honestly, I am quite impressed, there has been a substantial change since that picture was taken. I knew it had faded a lot over the year but I didn't realise it had been that much.

4th May 2017

That photo was taken in my usual spot with natural light. I learned something today, HDR on my phone. I rarely use it but did accidentally today. It turns out that hdr gets a much better representation of how the the tattoo actually looks. I did a comparison with normal and it looks like all my other pictures, the black parts are too dark and it's hard to see the fading. All my future pictures will be with hdr. I'm sad I can't go back in time and redo the others. This is probably the first time ever that time travel could have been beneficial to anyone.

I looked back and found that the image from last year was taken on 3rd May, one day before the session. I also have this image which shows how it looked about 7 weeks after the fourth q-switched session. Today's picture shows the difference three Picosure (after four q-swtiched) and sessions  and one year will make.

4 May 2016 / 2017

The collage shows three dates, 3 May 2016 (3 q-switched sessions), 26 June 2016 (4 q-switched sessions) and 4 May 2017 (4 q-switched and 3 Picosure sessions). The difference over the year is quite significant. I have had a total of 7 laser sessions, that's quite a lot. By the time I'm finished my current plan, I will have had 10.

I have booked my next appointment for 13th May, that's just one week away. I'm again quite excited about this session. The progress has been going well and I'm positive about it. This will be my fourth (of six paid in advance) Picosure session. Seeing the difference a year made, I now feel very confident that six (3 more) Picosure will be enough to remove the tattoo. After this session, I'm going to wait until September / October. This time I've gone four months between sessions and I think it faded the most in the last month. I feel it's a good idea to start spacing the sessions out more. I'm hopeful it will be fully gone by January (2 years of lasers) but that could be optimistic. I think more time will yield better results.