Active FX is not the name of a summer blockbuster movie targeted to the teenage boy demographic.
I know. Last month, I was part of an experimental group of women who underwent a new-ish procedure. (And no, that is not why I slowed the frequency of posts here at MM.)
In a sentence: I had the skin on my face burned off.
The easiest way to understand this is to recall an episode (Season 5, Episode 71) from Sex and the City, when Samantha had a chemical or laser facial peel, she looked into the mirror, and shrieked when she saw her red, oozing face.
The procedure is intended to slough off micro-layers of dead skin to reveal the younger-looking skin below. The argument goes that afterward, the appearance of fine lines is greatly reduced, and that the results last for at least a couple of years - if not more.
The Active FX laser renders almost identical results to the more intense and longer-recovery chemical and full-laser peels, except that it is supposed to take not more than five days to recover, allowing folks to return to their busy lifestyles faster.
In truth, the office that arranged the procedure is familiar to me. I figured that offering myself as a guinea pig was the least I could do.
Here's how it was explained to me:
It will take three to five days to recover.
The procedure itself will take less than an hour.
The office will take photographs before the treatment.
A follow-up visit will be needed to take the after-pictures.
Okay, that sounded simple enough. I signed up for a Friday afternoon appointment. I took the subway and arrived on time. The office was running behind, and I took a seat in the waiting room. A woman, wearing a light aqua-colored, gel face-mask was chatting away on her telephone. I tried not too look, thinking that people in a plastic surgeon's office prefer privacy.
I was told that she had just had the Active FX procedure. Well, I thought, she seemed animated, not in obvious pain.
They called me in to the pre-treatment room. The attending nurse asked if I preferred Vicodin or Valium. In addition to Tylenol or Motrin.
Boing. Huh? Warning signal. Vicodin or Valium? I needed a sedative? In addition to...?
My mind raced. Don't people get instantly addicted to Vicodin? I asked for Valium. And aspirin. I can count on one hand the number of times I have taken prescription painkillers.
The nurse reclined the chair and my feet came up from the floor. She gave me the pill and a paper cup of water. Then she smeared a cold gel or cream all over my face. Sure enough, in about twenty minutes, I felt stoned. Whee. Someone came into the room and wiped the gel off my face. My lips felt numb, as if I had applied Novocaine lip balm. Turned out my whole face was Novocained or something like it. Whee.
I was high and giggling. The nurse walked me into another room and sat me in another recliner. People were talking and I either did not understand what they were saying or I didn't care. I remember "We'll take two passes under the eyes."
The eyes. Right. I am so queasy about my eyes. I cannot watch people insert contact lenses. My knees go all squidgy. It's probably because I've worn glasses since I was two years old, essentially a protective shield between my eyes and the world.
The doctor was there, suddenly, very close to my face. "Look up," he said. And I did. Then he did two things to me that when I reflect on them now, I just shudder.
He lifted my top lid and sprayed a stinging solution into one eye, and before I could yell "No! Are you nuts?" he lifted the other and sprayed the same.
Blink, blink, blink. What??? Sting. Blink.
The next part is still too unreal to me.
While high, semi-oblivious, blinking, and stinging, the doctor then popped in a little suction cup device right onto my eyeball. Oh shit. Oh, holy shit. The stinging spray had numbed my eyeballs and now they were covered by suction cups. Oh, holy shit.
An image went fleeting across my mind's eye (since my actual eyeballs were in shock). I must've looked like an alien or a hell-demon from a science-fiction-horror-slasher film.
A small voice in the back of my fuzzed mind broke through the haze, "Your eyes have to be covered because they are going to laser your face. Otherwise, you may go blind."
And laser they did - although by then I had given up control and let it rip. It felt like a million little stinging pin pricks. The only weirdness was along may hairline, ouch. I wiggled my feet and made small squealing noises. The nurse told me to hold her hand tight - and I did.
The whole thing lasted not more than fifteen minutes, after which the doctor popped those nasty little eye cups out of my head, someone wrapped me in a blanket, and walked me back to that first room. There, they put one of those cold gel face masks on me. Frozen, actually. Oww. At first, and then my body warmed it up. And then they replaced it with a new, fresh, frozen one. Again, oww.
At some point, I was returned to the waiting room, whereupon I started shivering. I felt cold down to my core. I could not get warm. They gave me a cup of tea and saltine crackers. It took an hour or so, but I managed to regain the feeling in my fingers and toes.
I was given a bag of various creams to apply continuously. I figured I was recovered enough to return home. And so I left. I walked back to the subway, and standing on the platform, it appeared that no one looked at me in a strange way. I supposed I looked a bit sunburned, nothing more. The tail-end of summer, not too out of the realm of possibilities.
At the Grand Central transfer, however, I tripped going up the stairs, and broke the tips of both my big toenails. Damn. Must've been a residual effect from the Valium. So how do people take that crap on a regular basis?
I was more concerned about my feet than my face, and after switching two more trains during rush hour (everyone must have been staring at my shredded feet, never mind my face), I hightailed it to the local mani-pedi salon, and got the toenails fixed and repainted.
Some time later, when I went to sleep, I laid my head gingerly on my pillow. It hurt a little.
The next morning, when I woke up and looked into the mirror, I had another oh-shit moment. My face was angry-red and swollen. Thank god it was Saturday. I could not leave my loft. I would scare small children.
After I applied the cream, I read the label. It was a copper-based ointment, And I thought, wait, burns are often treated with something called Silvadine. Copper, silver, there had to be a connection. I had to use Silvadine once after I fell off a bicycle, which resulted in wicked road rash on one forearm - a kind of burn. Ergo.
Full facial burn. I tried to quell the little fear ticking in my mind: Would I ever get my nice, normal skin back? Would I be scarred forever? I signed a waiver, didn't I? Breathe, be calm, I told myself.
The next day, I saw tiny, perfectly patterned dots all over my face. Angry, crimson dots. Over the next two days, the dots turned brownish, dried, and hardened. At a slight distance, it looked like snakeskin. Now I was lizard face. The tiny scales did peel away, first around my nose and mouth - the moving parts - and then more gradually outward. Funky. Fascinating.
The area under my eyes felt tight. In fact, it felt as though my skin was pulled back from the center of my face. Maybe this thing was working.
Four days later, I returned to the plastic surgeon's office for after-pictures, and a luscious facial, where the last of the brown scales were planed away. Planed = razored off. I cannot make this stuff up.
Then, wow: I had new, pink baby skin - and a lot of sun protection factor lotion since. We'll see how this turns out. They say the full effects don't really kick until six or so weeks later.
Good thing fall is here. The radiator started to hiss yesterday. My nose is stuffy. but I need to get back on the wheel, back to the gym, regular.
My face looks normal again, maybe improved and updated. Time will tell. Whew.
