pigmentation removal and eyelid tightning (no surgery!)

For the longest time I've had this huge patch of pigmentation on my forehead, that's very stubborn, and I have hard time fading with vitamin c, and when I finally get it to fade, it takes just a few days of sunny weather and boom! it's back in full force. I wear SPF 50 every day, and it still comes back. So I did some research and a clinique in my town had this new technology, that uses plasma pen fibroblast to burn the pigmentation away - at least that's how I understood it. I also noticed the place did the same kinda technique on the eyelids to tighten them, and since I have hooded eyes I decided to get that too, and rip a week out of my calendar for healing.WARNING - I will post pictures of the healing process, so if scabs and swelling isn't your thing, don't read any further.

DAY 0: before treatment

here you see my pigmentation on my forehead, and my hooded eyes. my eyelids are uneven and one is more hooded than the other. The pigmentation on my forehead is very dark in real life, and I've been told a few time that I have dirt on my face, even though it's just the darkness of the pigmentation showing.

DAY 1:

this is taken about 15-20 minutes after the treatment, i got home around 10 in the morning, the lady used a plasma pen to make small dots all over my forehead, and a bit bigger dots on my eyelids. I did get numbing cream on, but honestly it still hurt a lot, and since the plasma pen is essentially burning your skin, it does smell horribly, and the smell will stay for the first day, at least it did for both me and my sister who had her eyes done also. At this point my skin felt tight and raw, but there was no swelling.

Just about four hours later I looked like this. My eyelids were so tight i couldn't open them fully, and swelling had started at my lash line, making i even harder to open my eyes. My forehead was still sore but it didn't bother me too much.
They lady at the clinique had given me a cream to put on 3 times a day, and told me to put something cold over the areas for 20 minutes every one and a half hours, to keep the swelling down as much as possible.

7-ish hours later (around 10 at night) and I was looking pretty much like I did before getting the treatment done, the areas were still sore but the swelling went down and the cream (that does contain some color) moisturized my skin pretty well. I went to bed, with my bed tilted as much as possible and extra pillows to have my head up at much as I could.

DAY 2:

And I woke up like this. My whole eye area was very swollen, much worse than my sister, because the swelling from my forehead affected my eye area as well. I tried putting on something cold to get the swelling down, but I stayed like this all day, nothing really helped. The scabs were thicker than the day before, might also be some leftover cream since I was told I can not wash the cream away, so it kinda cakes up a lot. 

DAY 3:

24 hours later the swelling was down a bit, but my under eyes are still very puffy, which is very visible (to me at least) between my eyes, which is almost so swollen that my nose bridge looked flat.
At this point you can tell the scabs are getting even thicker, and they felt more itchy. My eyes started to be very sore in the crease, and it hurt to blink and more my eyes around.

DAY 4:

At this point my forehead felt super itchy and i put on a lot of cream to make the area more moist. However the cream stings the eyes horribly! It doesn't sting right away, but one wrong move and you're crying. This was also the day where my scabs started to crack, and I could tell the peeling was not far away.

Day 5:

The picture was taken right after I got out of bed, and i tried to remove at much as the cream from my eyes as possible. The cream can stay wet on my forehead for hours, but for some reason it dries quickly on my eyes and cakes up, making it hard to fully open my eyes, and it hurt a lot cause the scabs were rubbing on the red sore skin underneath. As I hope you can tell this was the day it all fell off. I had a few bits peel off in the morning and a little during the day. At the end of the day after putting on cream I felt an itch on my forehead and gently glided my finger over my forehead, and pretty much all the scabs fell off.

Day 6:

After a shower I had no scabs left on my forehead, i did help along the scabs on my eyes, cause they were so caked up I couldn't handle it anymore. There's still scabs in my eyelid crease, but now because the cream can touch the skin underneath, it doesn't cake up and it feels more comfortable. My skin is still very red and sore, but I'm now starting the serums the lady at the clinique gave me, plus I'm adding my own cocktail of Rosehip oil, which is good for healing and hydrating the skin, and Matricium, which helps speed up regeneration in the skin - this is not something I was told to do, but the products are good and they've helped me a lot in the past with very good results, so I figured they'd come to the rescue again!

DAY 7:

For the first time in a week i gently washed my forehead to try and get the cream off of it, because the cream was starting to break me out, and because I didn't like the pigment in the cream, which would get all over my clothes and pillow. I also had very stinging eyes, that would hurt a lot, so that's why I chose to use another cream I had at home. This would also make it easier to see if the redness was going down or not.

Day 8:

I don't know if you can tell from the picture or not, but pretty much all my scabs came off after my shower. This was pretty nice for my left eye, which has healed up pretty well, however for my right eye is was very painful, because it was not at all healed.

The skin was red and raw, and it was bleeding a little, and he skin was wet, meaning the scab was not supposed to have come off yet. The reason the scabs came off was because I dabbed them dry after a shower with toilet paper, which the lady from the clinique had instructed me to do.

Day 9:

 My forehead is healing very nicely, and I'm starting to think it's okay to use my normal products on my skin, since my forehead isn't raw anymore. My skin is in serious need of moisture at the moment, and my forehead is especially drinking up all the serum I've been putting on. Plus I'm dealing with some small whiteheads all along my brows from the cream I got from the clinique.
At this point I'm staring to get a good idea of how it'll look when everything is healed up, but I'm honestly a bit worried. I got my eyelids done because they were hooded and uneven, now they aren't that hooded, but still uneven, which I'm still sad about. I hope when my left eye heals (which is the more saggy one) that it'll lift up a bit more and make my eyes look more even.

Day 10:

Still dealing with the breakout from the cream, but I've started to use my own skincare again, and using vitamin c serum to brighten the redness so hopefully it'll heal evenly and not be darker than my normal skin color.
I also wore makeup for the first time after the treatment, and my skin did look a bit dry and felt slightly sensitive when I washed the makeup off, but otherwise it was fine. I don't expect much more to happen to my eyes, so they're still uneven.

Day 11:

No new since yesterday, I think at this point I'll give an update if something happens or if the redness goes down completely, like said before I think my eyes have settled and they won't change.
On a good note I have managed to calm down the breakout - woop!

Day 20:

 So after another week the redness has gone down a lot, and so have my eyes, they are now both hooded and look pretty even. At this point I don't think the treatment on the eyes have helped at all honestly. The skin on both my eyes and forehead is extremely thin, and I have scratched the areas gently and still made it bleed. I hope my skin will go back to normal soon.

If any changes happen I will update this post, but for now I think it's settled like this. I would not recommend the eye treatment, it was painful and expensive and didn't help me or my sister the way we had hoped, and the way it was advertised. The pigmentation on my forehead I'm still unsure about. I feel like it could still fade more, so it's a maybe on the recommendation.

~Kira