FADED Podcast

Billy DeCola

[00:00:00] So you’re looking to get laser tattoo removal, and you’re wondering what it’s like after your very first session. Well, let me tell you what to expect so you’re not surprised after you get it done. When people come in to get laser tattoo removal, they have no idea what to expect. Most people’s anxiety is through the roof and they think that they’re gonna be in severe pain. They think they’re gonna have blistering, they think they’re gonna bleed, which will result in scarring and permanent damage to their skin.

Well, that is not the case, so let me clear up those myths and I’m gonna tell you exactly what you can expect after your first session of laser tattoo removal. So stick around.

Let’s assume that you haven’t had a consultation, so what we’ll do is we’ll explain the whole entire process to you from beginning to end. First, we’ll tell you how the laser works, then we’ll talk about our process and how we do it here at Studio Kiku. And finally, we’ll go over pigment and what you can expect during the process.

After your consultation, we’ll take some before photos. It’s always good to take pictures and document where we started so we can look back and see what type of progress we’ve made over the course of the sessions. Once we sit you down after the photos, we’ll shave the area, then we’ll ice the area.

And we normally take some time to ice not everybody loves the feeling of ice, but the ice is better than the laser. So what we like to do is I ice the area, get it nice and cold, get the tissue cool, and numb the nerves a little bit. Once it’s nice and chill, then what we’ll do is we will start lasering.

We’ll do a little test spot just to make sure that you feel okay, and once you give us the go ahead, we’ll continue through the whole thing. We will take breaks if you need to, but if you don’t need any breaks, we will zip right through it. We’ll laser the tattoo and then we’ll apply ice again after we ice it

what we normally do is we’ll apply a little bit of ointment and then we’ll bandage the tattoo up. The tattoo will be nice and cool because we’ve iced it at that time, but by the time you walk out to the front desk to make payment and book your next appointment, you’ll start feeling the heat coming on already.

Tattoo removal is a little explosion under your skin, so when that pigment explodes, there is heat involved and the initial ice pack will alleviate that heat. But after a few minutes, you’re gonna start feeling it warm up again. We always recommend icing the tattoo on the first day and the following day after you get tattoo removal.

Now when you ice your tattoo, it’s really important not to over ice it. Sometimes people ice too much and they can actually damage their skin. We’ve seen people get ice blisters. We’ve seen people have hyperpigmentation because they’ve iced too much, and it’s usually pretty obvious because ice packs are

straight lines, you know, they’re usually square or rectangular shape. And if you have damaged skin in that exact shape, then chances are it was from the ice pack and not from the laser.

So be careful with over icing, but definitely keep your tissue cool within the first two days. ICE is not always about alleviating the pain. It’s about keeping the tissue nice and cool so your skin is not damaged during the process when you get home, you’re gonna have a bandage. You can take that bandage off after a couple hours. It’s totally fine to leave it on longer, but minimum, we recommend keeping it on for a couple hours After you take the bandage off, you can wash it with soap and water. We don’t recommend using any hot water.

Just a lukewarm to cool water and soap is perfectly fine. Pat it dry with a clean towel and leave it alone. Don’t put any ointments on it. Don’t put any creams or patches or bandages, anything like that. Leave it alone. Let it breathe. We want the heat that was caused by the pigment exploding to escape your skin.

And if you pack on a bunch of ointment, whether it’s moisturizer or Vaseline or Polysporin, whatever it is that you think is a good idea to put on the day of or the following day, we don’t think that that’s a good idea. So we recommend leaving your skin completely dry and let the heat escape through your skin without sealing it in.

The day of and the following day after your laser tattoo removal session, we recommend not doing any extreme workouts, we recommend avoiding jacuzzis, saunas, hot yoga, anything that’s gonna raise your body temperature, we recommend avoiding for the first couple days.

Definitely sun exposure is not a good idea. We actually recommend no sun exposure on the treatment area for at least two weeks after getting laser tattoo removal. In Vancouver here, it’s not very sunny, so we’re pretty lucky. But if you live in a sunny area and you’re getting laser tattoo removal, we recommend protecting your skin not only after laser, but a couple weeks before.

If you go in and you’re getting suntan skin lasered, you’re gonna feel it a lot more than you would if you didn’t have tan skin. So sun and laser do not mix. Try to avoid that combination if possible. Now, after the first couple days, you can moisturize your skin if you’d like. You can get back to working out a little bit, and you’re gonna start seeing that the skin is settling down.

The swelling should usually go down after a day or two if you do have swelling. Some people don’t swell at all. Other people swell a lot. It really is just your body’s reaction. Everybody’s completely different. It’s your body’s response to the trauma that was caused by the laser.

Now, if you see blisters and your skin is open, then something went wrong. We never treat the skin aggressively enough to cause blisters or to open your skin. And if you do see blisters or your skin open, then we recommend treating your skin like an open wound. Keep it covered. Use maybe some polysporin.

If it’s painful, we recommend going to see your doctor, but let’s assume everything went well and you didn’t blister, you’re not bleeding, you don’t have any damage to the skin whatsoever. You’re gonna see a little bit of swelling and it’s gonna go down after the first couple days, and you’re probably gonna look at your tattoo and you’re gonna be like, what happened?

I don’t even see any results. Now, if you think back to the consultation, if you had a proper consultation, you would’ve been told that the laser shatters the pigment under the skin into tiny particles, and then your body’s lymphatic system is gonna clean those particles up over time.

It’s not an instant process. It’s a long, drawn out, slow process. So after the first couple days, you’re not gonna see much of a result at all. If you had some very light shading or some very shallow scratchy work, then you will see that part of the tattoo fade. But if the tattoo was put into your skin properly, nice, bold lines, then you’re not gonna see much of a result at all.

You’re gonna probably think that you got ripped off because nothing’s happening, but. If you wait six, eight weeks, maybe three months, four months, and you look at that tattoo, you’re gonna notice that all of a sudden it’s breaking up just a little bit. But usually after the first, maybe even second session, you’re not gonna see much of a result.

It’s not magic on average for a normal, dark tattoo, that’s, let’s just say it’s black, like some script or some tribal or some type of traditional tattoo. On average, those types of tattoos take anywhere between nine and 12 sessions to completely remove. So after the first one or two sessions, you’re not gonna notice much of a difference at all.

What you will see after two, maybe three or four sessions, is the pigment starting to break up a little bit, and really what’s happening is your body’s finally getting around to picking up those pigment particles. Your lymphatic system takes a long time to get to cleaning those particles up. So what you’re gonna be seeing in the first one or two sessions is not much of anything.

Do not get discouraged. It’s a long drawn out process and we like to manage your expectations in the beginning, before you start the process. And if you’re watching this video right now, hopefully this will help you get your expectations in line with the capabilities of the laser clinic that you’re going to.

We have seen miracles happen after a single session but on average, after a session or maybe two sessions, you shouldn’t be seeing drastic results. Now, just keep in mind, after three, maybe four, or five sessions, your tattoo should be well on the road to getting faded.

And you’ll see the lighter spots lightening up some of the deeper, darker spots or deeper or more saturated areas of the tattoo may not be fading like the other spots are. So we never see tattoos fade completely evenly. And the reason why is because there are different saturation levels, there are different depths,

there might be scar tissue in some areas where there isn’t scar tissue in other areas. And also your body. So depending on where the location is on your body, some spots just might fade quicker than others. That’s how it goes. So be patient. The tattoo will fade over time. Some of the advice I give our clients when they come in is to not get too anxious right off the bat.

I do recommend the first two or three sessions to come in and get the laser treatments done every six to eight weeks. But after that, after three, maybe four sessions or so, I normally recommend spacing the sessions out a little bit farther apart. Now that we’ve broken down that pigment and we’ve shattered it into tiny particles, now it’s up to your body to break down those pigment particles.

The first few sessions, we haven’t really done much of breaking it up, but after that, the pigment particles are broken. They’re sitting in your skin waiting for your lymphatic system to just come and clean it up.

The longer you wait, the less money you’ll spend, the less trauma to your skin and the better results you’re gonna see with just allowing your body’s lymphatic system and immune system to break down that pigment.

So patience is definitely the key in the beginning don’t get antsy right at the beginning. Don’t start shop hopping around after you go to one laser clinic and you don’t see results, don’t go to another one, and then another one, wondering why you’re not seeing anything happen.

Now once you get down to the very last bit of your tattoo removal, when you’re barely seeing any pigment, but you can still kind of see it there and you can’t quite tell if it’s pigment or if it’s your skin that’s just as colored, that’s when you want to put even more time in between sessions. During this time when you’re waiting in between sessions, the more healthy you are, the better.

What we normally recommend to our clients is to stay hydrated, to eat healthy, to get rest to exercise and to just be happy because all of those things are gonna help boost your immune system. And if your immune system is boosted, you’re gonna see better results from your laser tattoo removal sessions.

That is the best advice that anybody is gonna give you at any time for your laser tattoo removal journey. Don’t do the opposite of that, okay? Just take care of your body and you’re gonna see awesome results.

Have faith in the system. Trust me when I tell you that laser tattoo removal is not a sprint. It’s a marathon, so it’s gonna take time.

I hope this episode was helpful with your journey into laser tattoo removal. If you have any questions, drop ’em in the comments down below. Please like and share and subscribe. I never really ask for that, but I’m thinking that I really want some likes here. So if you can like this video or share it with a friend or leave a comment, that’s gonna help get the traffic going a little bit and it’s gonna make me really happy.

So thanks again for watching The Faded podcast, and I’ll see you again next time.