…

So here I am looking into a compact mirror and inspecting my wrinkles very closely. $2500 dollars later, I don’t see any improvements that I can point to as a result of the laser procedure. The skin around my eyes is not tighter, my face still has blotches from the sun and I actually have a bump under one of my eyes that I never had before (just lovely). My advice: stay away from the laserlyte gimmick, I mean peel. It’s a supreme waste of money and you might also get a poke in the eye as well.

To read the entire Diary of a Laser Patient saga, click here.

Three hours later the DOCTOR’s partner calls me. He asks me what happens and several times peppers the conversation with I’m trying to make you happy…. Ms. X, I really want to make you happy…. Your happiness is my goal…. And he said all this to me while I was relatively calm and not even argumentative or hostile. I think he must have picked this technique up in malpractice avoidance class. I ask him to explain to me why my eye is sooo swollen. The other DOCTOR then asks me what my background is — what I do for a living — because these things are rarely “black and white”. Ok…. this pissed me off… I said to him and I quote, “I understand everything you have said. However, my “background” has nothing to do with me understanding something that you said that doesn’t make sense. Your DOCTOR partner friend pierced my eye admittedly and that’s why I have this problem. Are you implying that I’m not educated?? If I told you that I went to Harvard grad school would you treat me better –????? Would you ?

He then quickly back pedaled and said, “oh this is not taking a good turn — I didn’t mean that — ohhh” Yes, you did — you flippin’ egomaniacal prick. The conversation then proceeded along and after a while he again tried to explain away why he’d ask me that question. I’m starting to NOT like plastic surgeons — not one bit.

…

Have suddenly discovered a newfound appreciation for religion, muttering around the house in my bathrobe, fuzzy slippers and a head that’s the size of a giant inflated balloon. One of my eyes is sealed shut because it is too painful to open. So I hobble into a taxi and head downtown to the DOCTOR’S office on Newbury Street.

After being ushered from the waiting room to an examining room, (it’s not great to show hopeful new patients what awaits them on the other side before the results) I am informed that the DOCTOR is running late. After 30 minutes of sitting uncomfortably in the chair and feeling more than a wee bit self-conscious — in walks the DOCTOR — who I swear thinks he is a movie star. And by the way the nurses tip toe around him, I can see why. So, after squeezing the fleshy part of my upper arm in a way to show his moral support for what I’m going through, he says that he needs to look at my eye. So out come the eye drops and — after expressing my slight concern about having eye drops in my searing wound/infection of an eye — he gets annoyed piping in “honey, we’ve got to do this or we won’t know the extent of the damage.” He proceeds to put numbing drops in my eye and then something that will highlight the extent of the damage by making the cuts in the eye colored. Flippin’ wonderful. I breathe deeply as he informs me that I do indeed have a scratched cornea courtesy of DOCTOR douche bag. Now during this whole procedure he seems really sympathetic — until I seeing him look at his watch. Oh — I’m off to India now, nurse X will take care of you. Byeeee!

Great. I’m a sucker for this shmoozer’s semi-charms. He tells me that my eye should be better within a day and not to worry and he’s very sorry that this happened. Well, apologies do go a long way so at least he admits that he f’d up. But still my eye feels like it’s on fire and it’s because of his impatience to put that metal disk in my eye properly.

…

I’m waiting in the doctor’s office with my friend Michael who is playing tetris on my cell phone and commenting on the lackluster decor of the doctor’s office (he’s gay). After an hour wait I’m finally ushered into the office where the not-so friendly nurse smothers anesthetic cream all over my face and puts me on a trolley and I wait another 45 minutes while the nerve endings on my face begin to tingle and feel like someone smothered it with novocaine. Soon after the DOCTOR walks in with much pomp and circumstance — me thinks this dude has an ego. After asking what I was hoping for again in this procedure — he ushered me into the “back room” — apparently the room that houses the lasers. Dah dah dummmm.

Now I hop onto another little trolley and lay down. The DOCTOR tells me that I’ll need to cover my eyes to shield the laser and then proceeds to stick two medal disks on the surface of my eye. Now, imagine this –someone sticking not only contacts in your eyes but metal ones. One thing I should have mentioned — I was his last patient of the day before he was headed on a 10 day trip to India to teach his magical ways with the laser beam to eager students. When he tells me how he will be teaching pupils in India — I can’t help but imagine him with a giant laser beam a la Luke Skywalker in Star Wars… I start to giggle, which I don’t think was endearing me to the DOCTOR. I had a hunch scheduling this surgery wasn’t the wisest thing to do thinking the DOCTOR might preoccupied– but hell, this was the only time that fit my schedule and this girl’s busy. So, there I was with this man sticking these metal disks in my eyes. I yelped and he seemed increasingly/abnormally frustrated and annoyed — and continued to shove the disks into my eyes in a not-so gentle way.

With that tid-bit of torture out of the way, he proceeds to sizzle my face off with the laser. And it hurt — a lot. Nobody told me about that part when I was booking the surgery — or warned that there might be the slightest bit of discomfort, for that matter. Twenty-five minutes later the maestro of the laser beam is finito. His nurse (whose first day on the job is today — woo hoo, lucky me!) roughly smear some sort of thick copper (CU has healing properties) cream on my face. After asking her several times not to press my freshly scalded face so hard — I’m on my way. My friend Michael is waiting patiently in the waiting room and sympathetically drives me home as he belts out tunes along with the radio. He is nervous that this longer than expected surgery appointment will keep him from going to the gym — which would be a cardinal sin. Michael really does have a very excellent bod but he suffers from OCD.

Recently, she had a LaserLyte Peel, and tracked her progress in a diary for us. The Beauty Bug will be posting the installments of her diary over the next few days. Without further ado, here is the Diary of Laser Patient straight from the Plastic Surgeon’s Daughter’s Mouth…

About six months ago, I was cruising along the Massachusetts Pike heading to work when I noticed something horrible that nearly made me pull over into the brake lane and cause several accidents… whatever. Looking back at me in the harsh daylight of my rear view mirror was something awful/heinous… something my mother told me would happen (she is a ray of sunshine)…. and something that would most definitely keep me from my dreams of wedded bliss (or finding a normal man without facial ticks) — I had developed wrinkles around my eyes. Not just the type of wrinkles that when you squint at your girlfriends and say “I’m getting so old — woe is me — tee hee hee” — knowing all the time your skin is still looking firm and lovely. I’m talking wrinkles like: “Hi — my name is (blank) — I’m a single spinster, living with six felines and my ass is the size of a mack truck. Get out of my way ass wipe while I shove two twinkies into my face at once.”

So I decided to take charge, be “proactive” and do something about my aging face and booked an appointment at supposedly one of the best plastic surgeons in Boston as voted by Boston Magazine for what they billed as the LaserLyte peel. Now the LaserLyte peel is supposed to be a lighter version of the more harsh, difficult to recover from facial laser peel using the erbium yag laser. Recovery from the tradition treatment with the laser can take upwards of a month. Now, since I’m not independently wealthy — this chick can’t afford to take that much time off from her day job. The LaserLyte peel is supposed to only leave you with three/four days of down time — and it is still supposed to be effective. The difference is the depth to which the laser penetrates the layers of the skin. More traditional lasers — like the erbium yag laser penetrate 300 microns — this Laserlyte peel goes down to 90 microns. So after plunking down 2500 dollars on this treatment — I am expecting something to give me hard core results. The initial consultation is 250 dollars and none of this cost can cover the actual surgery (unlike most doctor’s offices). The following is a diary of my experience and I’ll provide updates in my progress as needed.

…stay tuned for Day 1.