About six months ago, I wrote about my first Jessner peel (chemical skin peel). It was quite an ordeal, mostly because of not knowing what to expect. The actual result was that my face stung some, and then turned red. In a couple of days the top layer of skin turned a little darker, and in a couple more days it peeled off. And was I thrilled with my nice result? Oh, it was OK. A couple of tiny growths on my nose were gone, and I was delighted to see that. My sun damage areas looked slightly improved.
Slightly? I wanted more than slightly. I had read that it was a good idea to repeat the peel about once a month for six months. Great idea. Why didn't I do that? I just kept making excuses, until one day I realized I would now have to start all over with my series of six Jessner peels.
And so it was that I finally decided to try it again. The first time I had been extremely cautious. Most of this caution came from watching Youtube videos. All good advice, but for example, the object is to cause the skin to peel. They all advise not to pull the skin off but allow it to come off on its own schedule, which is hard to do, because soon one has pieces of dead skin hanging from one's face. If you try to pull it off, it tends to not let go from areas that aren't ready. Therefore the loose piece of dead skin should be cut off with scissors. OK. So the last person that mentioned this said that they had purchased medical grade scissors and sterilized them before each use. Oh? What a nuisance. Little pieces of flaking skin need to be cut a million times before its over. Medical grade scissors are not to be had locally either, and I don't have them. All that needs to happen here is that the peeling skin isn't pulled. Ordinary little scissors.
This time I didn't wash the entire bathroom with bleach first. I did used fresh washcloths and towels. I didn't even fill the sink with water. I washed my face, went over it with rubbing alcohol, poured about an eighth of a cup of Jessner peel acid into a small dish, and some baking soda in another dish, and began to apply the acid with cotton swabs. I did take the precaution of putting petroleum jelly near my eyes, and my lips.
I had firmly made up my mind that I was going to peel my eyelids, in addition to my face, neck and chest. The dark circles had to go. So I started on my upper eyelids, and went all the way to the eyelashes. That went OK, except that closing one eye made it harder to see what I was doing. I managed. Then I did the lower eyelids. That was not a problem really. Then I started on my forehead, but the cotton swabs were too slow, so I switched to a piece of gauze. Another big area of concern was the elevens, the wrinkles between my eyebrows. I was done with them! I tried to give them a big dose of strong medicine, but nothing much happened. Then I did the rest of my face, my neck and my chest.
It did sting, but not that much. I checked my time. After five minutes I applied a second coat. I checked my time again. Meanwhile, my nose and eyes were rebelling. Tears ran down my face, and my nose was running so much that all the treatment on my lips came off. OK, now what. I tried to blow my nose and wipe off the tears without touching anything. That wasn't working. I worried about my eyes, and took a cotton swab, wet it with water, and dipped it in baking soda and dabbed that on my tear duct in one eye. Then I gave up on doing anything about the problems, and tried to reapply all the acid that had washed off under my eyes and above my top lip.
Eventually I did four layers of the acid, except for the upper eyelids. The eye situation was too out of control for that. And twenty five minutes had gone by. Much longer than the first peel. This should be good.
So what was the result? About the same as before, for all the extra time and layers of acid. I suppose that this is a fairly mild acid, which is good because one is not likely to hurt themselves with it. But on the other hand, the results are nice, but not terribly impressive.
Back to the internet. I watched all the chemical peel videos over again to plan what to do in the future. Oh, oh, here's a marvelous idea!! After you start the peel with Jessner peel, then put on some 25% TCA!! That's what I need. I bet that would fix those elevens and dark circles! So I ordered 25% TCA.
TCA really is much stronger, and on top of Jessner, stronger still. Don't think I'm just going to do that without some patch tests. However, I do think I will try it. I'll probably do a 25% TCA by itself without any Jessner.
Stay tuned.
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