Preparing for Fraxel Laser Treatment for Acne Scarring

Categorized: acne scar removal, acne skin care, fraxel laser | No comments

Hello, and welcome to my blog.  If you are here then obviously you have heard about Fraxel laser treatment for acne scarring and you’re contemplating having it done on yourself.  I am too.

I have suffered from acne for almost half my life and I’m still suffering from it now.  I’m a woman in my early thirties and I just want it to stop.  It was embarrassing to go through it in my teens and it’s embarrassing now.  At least when you were a kid, everyone knows it is because of hormonal changes.  As an adult suffering from acne, you’d think the acne flare ups would have stopped by now.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t and women are more susceptible to adult acne than men.  It’s due to our periods, pregnancy, and all sorts of stresses that can put our hormones out of whack.

I’ve always had mild to moderate acne and my family doctor never thought much of it and always gave me topical acne treatment.  I always told her that I wanted a referral to a dermatologist but she just said they would just prescribe me the same thing.  Now years later, and acne scarring to go with it, I wish I’d been more forceful as this could have saved my face from scarring.

I have a new family doctor now and a cosmetic dermatologist and we’re going to see what we can do.  Like I said, I still suffer from acne so Fraxel laser treatment won’t be right for me right now.  I need to keep it under control first.  For the first time in my life, there is some sort of hope.  I’m on a new cleansing treatment and the relief alone of my face from not having to endure harsh washings helped it immensely.  I have oily skin and I’d wash it three times a day.  I don’t think it is excessive – once in the morning, once when I come home from work and once before I go to bed.  Before, my acne skin care regiment would be that I’d use Cetaphil which is pretty much recommended by everybody and natural acne remedies such as a natural gel with astringent and cooling herbs containing green tea extract.  Well, this just aggravated my face and my dermatologist told me to stop.  I’m on Spectrogel and the first time I used it on my face I felt instant relief.  It wasn’t harsh on my face at all.  My topical acne treatments now include Metrogel gel at night and Clindasol cream in the morning with SPF.    If you’re familiar with rosacea treatments you might be familiar with Metrogel as it is used to treat it.  Now, why would my dermatologist recommend it for my acne?  It seems that I have something called red acne that comes with flushing/stressed/easily embarrassed which is also common with rosacea.   Unfortunately, this hasn’t cleared up my acne totally to begin Fraxel laser treatment but it has helped.  I still have these tiny bumps on my right jaw line and it’s driving me insane.  It’s the only place I always flair up.  I might get some on my chin as well but I think this has to do maybe with clothes,  pillows, or blankets coming in contact with these areas so I always watch where I put my hands or how I sleep.  I’ve also changed from Pantene shampoo to Head and Shoulders because the zinc might help with the acne as well.  Although I don’t want to take any oral medication, I am at a point where I am going to try anything so my dermatologist has me on a six week course of minocycline as well.  I’m pretty small in size so for the first week, I took 100 mg of minocycline and now I’m on 50 mg a day which I take with supper.   I go back to see my dermatologist in six weeks to see if there is any progress in order to even contemplate having Fraxel done to improve my acne scarring.  If I don’t get my acne under control, there would really be no point in getting it done.  By the way, after what I read on the internet and also speaking to the dermatologist, she said that the Fraxel might even aggravate acne at first so you really want to get your acne under control with medication before any acne scar removal procedure can take place.

In any case, we’ll see if the minocycline helps me.  I don’t want to be on it forever because one of the side effects are teeth staining.  I mean, what next?  I don’t want to have acne and bad teeth.  It would just compound the problem.  Minocycline also makes you sensitive to the sun so make sure you wear sunscreen.  Again, you don’t want to compound your acne problem with sun damage either.

There are so many issues when trying to deal with acne that I just want it to go away.  Hopefully, one of these days it will be all over and I will wake up with a face clear of acne scars.  I’m hopeful that my journey in getting ready for my Fraxel laser treatment will be worth it.


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