49 • FACIAL LASER HAIR REMOVAL – SESSION 5

Nearly time to walk to the clinic for session five of facial laser hair removal. Today is the 10th of April 2017, four weeks since the last session, which hurt like crazy! A few days after that session, I actually found out my testosterone levels had gone from 0.9 (female range) to 24 (male range) :( Mental. All because I changed to pills, so I suspect that’s why session four hurt so much, and felt so different.

I really hope the mini fist punching feeling isn’t there this time, that was horrible. I might not even have a session today though, not sure, but on Friday I went up the moors with my Sister and Nephew and caught the sun on my neck and face. Debbie, my consultant, said about staying out of the sun as it’s not good for the laser. I just didn’t realise how sunny it was at the time. Doh. So I’m not sure what she’ll make of it, hope she can still do it. I also cut myself shaving again. Wahoo lol … I hate shaving.

SINCE THE LAST SESSION

Lots of hairs fell out again, especially on my top lip, which was nice. I started trying on makeup around the end of March, and for the first time ever I could look in the mirror and almost hide my five o clock shadow. I am not very good with makeup still, so I need to practice as much I can. This means it might be harder to track my progress from now on as I’ll be shaving at least once a week.

This second photo was taken three weeks after the last session. As you can see, it’s now mostly grey hairs left. I still have some patchy black hair areas, especially along the very top of my upper lip, but for the most part I’m very happy with the progress so far. A nice little surprise, was how it appears to be easier to cover up these grey hairs with makeup than I feared. So while I will have to do electrolysis to get rid of them, at least I feel a little bit better that I could hide them with makeup.

SESSION FIVE

And relax.

So last session was really painful, this one was the least painful yet. The top lip really hurt, as it always does, especially as Debbie put the laser right in my nostrils. Those nostril zaps bleeding hurt lol The worse thing this session was that she started counting out loud … 1, 2, 3 than BAM with the laser. I didn’t like this as it made me a bit more tense, I would rather not know when the zap is coming. I wanted to ask her if she could stop counting, but I thought it might be a bit rude. Next time I will say, please don’t count Debbie :)

An hour later the top lip and chin where stinging, with the skin feeling like it was stretching too far. Apart from that, it was a pretty peaceful session. I did at the end ask Debbie if she had many transgender patients, as the Not Alone Plymouth Transgender support group I go to is just around the corner. When she said yes, I told her about the group and she said, ohhh, I was just going to tell you about that. Turns out one of the founders of the support group, Erin, is a patient with Debbie :) I don’t know why but finding that out made me feel really happy, I told Erin at the support group the next day, and it turns out she also sees the same gender therapist as me. We are both so lucky to have these people in our lives!

I always feel hyped walking home after these sessions; They’re Empowering, you feel like you can do anything after this done :)

The first photo was taken a few minutes after the session as I walked through the park. Like last time, my face swelled up again, but compared with right after the very first session five months ago, there is now so much less stubble … we’re getting there :)

Not a very pretty second photo, but this was taken the next day, about 12 hours after the session. You can see how swollen and spotty my skin was, but this went away after a few days.

The walk there and back was actually really nice too. Walking there, I heard a meow over the top of my headphones. I stopped my podcast and followed the sound. There was this cute little black cat rolling around on the floor meowing. I started tickling his belly and he appeared to be blissing out, purring away like crazy. That made me so happy, and than in the park on the way home, there was this little black bird hopping about on the path looking for food. So I just stopped and watched him, he too had this aura of complete contentment as he bounced about. A nice end, to a nice session.

I returned for my sixth session on the 16th of May 2017,  and was the thank you session!