Fraxel. It's not a new concept. It's actually been around for about a decade. So why had I never heard of it until about 3 months ago? (If you have ethnic skin, read the last paragraph first).
I've always tried to take care of my skin ever since I saw pictures of a supermodel whose hands and skin around her neck and decolletage were crepey and had a lot of sun damage. She was still unbelievably gorgeous, don't get me wrong. But it made me question the poor choices I had made in my earlier years, sans sunblock, under the hot hot rays of decades of summers on the beaches of Australia's beautiful west coast. I'm now in my mid 40s but the damage had been done.
There was a dark sun spot about 1cm in diameter on the top of my cheekbone, some freckles (which once upon a time may have been described as "a cute smattering of freckles along the tops of my cheeks and nose") which were now definitely not cute and not restricted to those areas of my face. They had now seemed to spread and looked more like I had eaten toast without using my hands leaving crumbs scattered all over my face (and that's coming from my very kind mum).
Regular facial treatments with glycolic peels and salicylic acid applied directly on The Dark Spot helped with fading these sun-errors. But it's like renovating a house one room at a time - after you've done one room and seen how gorgeous and fresh it is, it's hard to look at the rest of the house with anything but "a humph".
Over a couple of months The Dark Spot changed and the edges of it became raised so I booked myself in to see my GP to check it out. She looked at it and thought it was something called "solar keratosis" which can be pre-cancerous so she treated it with a gentle hit of liquid nitrogen. It took a lot of it away but the "humph factor" lingered. While The Dark Spot was getting a lot of love, the rest of my face wasn't.
Enter Fraxel. My beauty therapist had had it done and the skin on her face is glowy, dewy, plump, stunning.. and she's in her mid 40s but with skin like a 20 year old. Sure she also looks after her skin with a fantastic regime of Class A products. But the Fraxel just takes it another level.
Excited by the promise of Fraxel, I booked myself in for a consultation with a clinic which only employs doctors to use the machines. Normally I am the sort of person who researches things to the nth degree, particularly if it concerns the use of LASERS... on my face...near my eyes! But delirious with the idea of Fraxel I didn't really do much research and relied on the testimony of my beauty therapist's skin and a 20 minute consultation with the doctor who was going to do the procedure.
I submitted my request for annual leave for the Friday that I was going to have it done; apparently there is a term for this called "Fraxel Fridays" because you have the weekend to hide and heal.
So what is Fraxel? On the website of the clinic I went to it says "the Fraxel Repair laser removes tiny portions of the epidermis and or dermis, which results in the regeneration of fresh new healthy-looking skin."
This description makes Fraxel sound very tolerable. At the consultation, the doctor (who also had wonderful skin) explained that some numbing gel would be applied to my face (that should have been red flag #1) and that there would be some downtime anywhere from a week to a month (that should have been red flag #2). When I say red flag, I just mean that I probably should have looked into it a bit more. However, vanity steamrolled over the logical part of my brain and I was booked in for my procedure two days later.
I turned up for my appointment, washed my face and had the numbing gel applied. It takes about an hour for the face to go numb. It's like being at the dentist after you've had a filling and you can't close your lips properly when they ask you to rinse.
Then I lay on the bed and my doctor gave me some happy gas. If it's being offered by a qualified professional, who am I to say no to it? The entire process goes through "4 passes" meaning that the laser goes over your skin 4 times. At this stage, all I can say is that I will never ever think of roast chicken skin in the same way again.
Then my doctor brought me to another room for some targeted treatment on The Dark Spot and some of the more defined spots beneath my eyes and around my face. None of it really hurt that much but yes, there were a couple of spots where I flinched. Remember when you were a kid and you were dared to put your tongue on a 9V battery?
It was all done in about 40 minutes and I could drive home. I wasn't feeling too bad, bearing in mind that the numbing cream was still active. We actually had guests over for dinner that night and it was only about 3 hours later that the redness started to appear, like a mild windburn.
By the next morning I was red and the redness amped up over the next 24 hours till it was like the sort of sunburn you get from watching a Test cricket session in the outer for a whole day without a hat on. The sort of sunburn where you think, "holy shit, why didn't I bring a hat?" type of sunburn. It's uncomfortable, it's hot and my skin was throbbing. Panadol, ibuprofen and wrapped ice packs helped.
[Spoiler alert: The next few paragraphs do not try to hide anything. And I wish that I had read this in someone else's blog/story/post before I had my fraxel done.] I will not lie. The next 3 days were uncomfortable while the skin started healing. At times the pain was so distracting that I could not really think very clearly. Proof of this is that when I looked at some spreadsheets I was working on for work, I had to redo them all the next day. Gah!
Sleeping was uncomfortable. There was such a thick layer of paw paw cream on my face that I didn't want to sleep on my side for fear of my skin sticking to the pillow case and ripping off the crusty skin that was forming over the tender pink skin below. The second night I could not sleep at all as the itchiness from the healing felt like tiny bugs were crawling all over my face. Gross? Yup.
My skin kept darkening. I could have won an Academy Award for Best Makeup for a Horror Film. I had my Fraxel done on a Friday but on Sunday I sheepishly texted my boss:
"I am too embarrassed to ask but could I please WFH for the rest of the week. I look like the lovechild of 😡
"
By Day 3 I was seriously dubious about my decision-making process, or lack of! I texted the doctor some photos and some concerns that I had and she was great and told me that I could come in to the clinic to have some healing light treatment or I could also use a mixture of 1 tablespoon vinegar in a glass of water and use a make up pad to dab (not wipe!) my skin. I didn't want to leave the house (it's not quite Halloween yet) so I used the vinegar solution. Soothing bliss.
Day 4 my crusty skin started shedding so now my skin looked like a snake skin. It doesn't shed in sheets. It sheds in bits and scales. When I applied paw paw cream it did a lot of the sloughing off of the old skin. I had to be so gentle because the skin was still so tender but the paw paw ointment is miraculous in how it removes the dead skin and moisturises and heals and soothes and cleanses. #miracleinatubefor$3
There is a reason that you never see pictures of people who have had fraxel done other than the Before and After pictures. I have pictures of my face every day through this process. God love my husband and son who were very kind with their lack of comments.
In this time of COVID and online meetings, I had to excuse myself for not being on camera because I'd had a procedure done to my face and I was hideous. There was no need to put people off their lunch. I was just being considerate.
Day 5 and I am still applying a thick layer of paw paw cream all over my face but most of the old skin is gone and I was brave enough to venture outside for the first time. With SPF 50 and a BIG Cancer Council hat on my head off I went to the chemist to buy more paw paw cream, antihistamine to deal with the itchy skin and QV moisturiser. Plus we had run out of coffee and that's just as crucial. There is still a lot of redness around my mouth and beneath my eyes and on my cheeks where the extra laser treatment was done. It looks like a VERY bad case eczema.
When my skin is done healing I'll post the Before and After pictures. And I'll decide then whether it was worth it all.
Now, here is a note for ethnic skin and THIS is what I really wish I knew before I did the Fraxel. Apparently it is different treating ethnic skin. I have asian skin. Ethnic skin reacts differently to Fraxel because the skin darkens a lot more post-treatment due to the extra pigmentation in our skin. If you didn't know I'd just had Fraxel, you'd think I'd had third degree burns. So make sure you find someone who knows how to treat ethnic skin. I probably would have chosen a less aggressive Fraxel treatment (yep, there are different levels of Fraxel you can have done.)
The Kit
Before you head off for Fraxel, make sure you have this kit ready and anything else the practitioner may give you.
- A big hat that is going to provide enough shade that will cover your WHOLE face
- SPF 30 with zinc oxide at a minimum
- Paw paw ointment
- Vinegar
- Cotton pads
- A few pillow cases that you won't mind getting stained from the paw paw cream and so that you can wash every day to keep any chance of infection away
- Panadol, ibuprofen, antihistamine
- Ice pack - wrap a cloth around it before applying to your face
- At least 5 days where you don't need to head out your home
