So I’m a day late… I guess ping.fm didn’t wanna update my LJ account yesterday 
Anyway, I really just wanted to say that I find it really nice that some people have kept up with their journals over the past few years when I was inactive.
So I had another appointment this evening. Today’s targets are: the upper lip, center-bottom lip, jaw line, clean-up on the chin and a little on the neck. I haven’t shaved in almost two weeks.
I went in again without the aid of any pain killers or numbing agents, big mistake. I said the last appointment hurt, this one beats it in the pain department hands down.
For starters, the clean-up didn’t involve any waxing so she tweezed every hair along the jaw line, near the ears and the chin. That hurt. Second, the bottom-center lip was rather painful as was anything along the lip line and corners of my mouth. The center area got waxed, ouch.
Really, all the former was about the same pain level as last week (maybe a smudge more in some areas). Next was the upper lip. Fuck that hurt so much, really. Each zap really feels like a prick followed by a sting. I started to tear up. The most painful areas were dead center upper lip, right under the nostrils and along the lip line.
As I stressed through the electro part, then came the upper lip waxing. OMG it wasn’t pleasant but still I was able to muster enough strength to keep it together. The part that really, really got to me was the cleanup tweezing on the upper lip. It took all my strength to not actually just break and cry. Every tweeze was excruciating.
I swear, if someone were to be watching they would suspect I was either having convulsions or being tortured as I was a little vocal during this timeframe of the evening. Next appointment will not be until sometime in January as I’m going back to my parents house for Christmas and I wanna go out in public lol. For next time, I’m going to invest in either a trip to my dentist for a novacaine injection or a prescription topical lidocaine gel.
My only saving grace is that I look forward to a day that I will no longer have to shave my face. I have been taking before and after photos to utilize on my website redesign coming spring 2010.
My chin area is still sore to the touch and I have several little blister looking things; tiny white heads or something. I dunno. There is no way I could take a razor to my face today. I’m gonna still grow out my upper lip, center bottom lip and side burn areas since four days of growth was not enough for Mary to electro out.
I won’t lie, electrolysis hurt! I was apprehensive yet again walking into the office for my appointment. I was prepared for some pain but remembering “my taste” last Thursday, I thought I was ready.
Mary, the electrologist, has been using waxing in conjunction with electrolysis for some 20 years now. Basically, she goes to town on your face with the probe, zapping hairs every second. When she is done an area, she waxes it.
Now, I had my legs waxed once years ago and there is a reason why I haven’t had it done since (well two reasons but I’m focusing on pain here). I had to admit though, as much as having areas of your face waxed and as much as that hurts, it only hurts for a second or two. However, she re-waxes areas if enough hairs didn’t come out during the first round and they’re long enough.
So after the waxing, she tweezed any left over hairs. Now its at this point that I’m gonna say that I much prefer the waxing and some tweezing to no waxing and all tweezing. Most of the hairs she tweezed out hurt a good bit and that was over and over and over.
The actual electrolysis was painful but not nearly as much as the waxing and tweezing. There were areas of my chin that were really not happy to be electrocuted and at times I wanted to squeeze a tear out but there were also areas where I barely felt it. For the most part, it hurt but was manageable.
She didn’t go near my upper lip or right under the center part of my lower lip; I am grateful for this today but not looking forward to it next time
All-in-all, $60 spent, not bad, no pain, no gain, period.
Today I had my first taste of electrolysis. I had laser hair removal (reduction) a few years ago but nothing since. The laser helped a lot but as it’s not a permanent solution, many hairs grew back. Now, after a few years it’s gotten to the point that I feel rather embarrassed about my facial hair (again!).
I got a word of mouth reference by my therapist to a local lady who’s been at it for 20 years. She charges $15.00 for every 15 minutes; quite reasonable imho.
I talked to her for about 20 minutes then she was like, "why don’t you hop up here and I’ll do a couple of test hairs?" My adrenalin sky-rocketed at that point. I have to confess that besides the monetary issue, the other reason I haven’t started electrolysis was because of my fear of the pain. It took me a couple of minutes to settle in and let her start. All the while she is being rather cool about it and telling me not to worry about a thing.
I had envisioned this painful like electric shock but honestly, I was all worked up for no reason. It literally felt like tweezing a hair out of my face and a little like a pin prick. However as she went on to the second, third, fourth and fifth hairs, those five little pains started to collectively feel sore. She told me that the first couple of treatments are going to be painful but I think that the pain will be manageable without any sort of numbing cream or novacaine.
If I was to compare a laser pulse to an electro tweeze I’d say that they both are probably about the same level of pain. I was all worked up for nothing. Monday is my first treatment.
My name is Erin. I was not always named Erin and I was not always a girl. One could argue that I am not a girl, perhaps a boy or both; maybe neither.
