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Biggest news from last week: had laser hair removal on genitals for the first time. I have been told I have a high pain threshold, but I was a nervous wreck leading up to my appointment because my experience with laser on my face was excruciating (comparable maybe to a hot clothes iron being pressed on your face fifty times). My only hope was that I was trying out a new lidocaine this time, but I had little faith in it.
Previously I had used the typical 5% lidocaine cream you can commonly get over the counter, and the pain on my face was not discernibly different.
Then I found a 10% lidocaine cream from South Korea called Anesten, which likewise wasn’t that helpful. The pain on the face was still pretty bad, especially around the upper lip and chin areas. Each time I applied the cream thickly and “occluded” the area with plastic wrap (basically kept the plastic wrap over the cream) until the appointment (more on this in a minute). I think the first time I applied the 5% cream around 1 hour before the appointment, the next time I applied 10% 2 hours before.
There was one time I used the 10% cream and it seemed to help my face, but I think I just didn’t have that much hair growth since the last session, so I suspect it was the lack of hair rather than the cream that made the experience less painful.
Anyway, I was so nervous before my Brazilian appointment that I talked to my primary care physician about it, and was hoping I could get a stronger lidocaine or maybe a one-time pill to help me not care about the pain (maybe an anti-anxiety, or a dissociative, I wouldn’t care what).
My doctor was able to get me a prescription for a lidocaine made at a compounding pharmacy with 23% lidocaine and 7% tetracaine (it’s technically a “BLT” preparation, but there is 0% benzocaine, so just the “LT” part).
Well, it worked perfectly - I applied the 23% lidocaine to the genitals 90 minutes before my appointment, and I loosely occluded the area with plastic wrap mostly to protect my clothes (because you aren’t supposed to occlude 23% lidocaine).
I felt no pain at all on my genitals, anus, perineum, etc.
You are explicitly not supposed to occlude such a strong lidocaine cream because it can be toxic and cause death (in fact there have been lidocaine deaths due to using too much and occluding before laser hair removal). However, I suspect your mileage may vary - I am a large person and maybe I could withstand a larger dose than other people. I also was only getting the Brazilian area done, so I wasn’t covering even larger parts of my body with the cream (I think the legs for example are a place where people can get into trouble). But genitals are more likely to absorb the lidocaine, so it is an area where you would want to exercise more caution and overdose is more likely. I say this because I don’t want anyone else to go and try this without talking to their doctor first to ensure they don’t hurt themselves.
The risks aside, the relief for me was massive and hard to overstate. I was really struggling with obsessive rumination and anxiety about the pain, and during the session I felt that weight lift from me as I realized I could definitely get through this.
It’s a good week. :-)
Any chance you have red hair? Higher than average pain tolerance and low effectiveness for anesthetic is pretty common for people with red hair.
My hair is mostly dark brown. (There are some reddish and blonde hairs on my face, but from the context I don’t think that’s relevant.)
I suspect the trouble with the lidocaine has to do with how superficial the application is - the numbing works on the epidermal layer, but the follicles in the deeper dermis layer aren’t getting numbed. I think applying higher concentrations for longer before the appt. seemed to help, and maybe that’s because it is absorbing deeper into the dermis?
I also felt the lidocaine worked better on the genitals than my face, and I keep wondering if it had to do with how many nicks there were down there. When I shave my face, I don’t usually cut myself or bleed at all. The skin of my mons pubis has a tendency to be like gooseflesh and the razor cuts little bits of the skin to get at the hair, so I was bleeding a lot. This might have resulted in more of the lidocaine getting absorbed. However, this feels rather speculative and it could just be that there is less density of hair and fewer nerves than on the face. (There is also something about the psychology of having the light, the feeling of the blast of the laser, and the noise all on your face - it is much more intense and maybe that changes the perception of the pain.)
I’ll have to continue to experiment and see if I can shave in a way that doesn’t cause cuts, and see if the same lidocaine is as effective.
Trying the 23% on my face will also give some important feedback.
My therapist gave me some gummy fruit snacks
I have had an absolutely bonkers week that ended up with me getting an emergency next day appointment with an eye specialist to make sure I didn’t have a detached retina. The doctor getting his office staff to call for me and make the new appointment for 9 am the next day is what really spooked me, because anyone who has had to deal with medical appointments knows you don’t get appointments that quick unless you’re a genuine emergency!
Fortunately my retina is still attached and shows no signs of changing. It was just very scary between my initial (non-specialist) appointment and seeing the specialist. One of my eyes is kind of crap at working right now because the floaters make text look blurry, but the other eye is compensating decently, and the doctor said it will hopefully reduce over time.
If you ever see a large number of new floaters or flashes of light in your eyes, get seen ASAP!
Glad you were able to get in and see the eye specialist, and even more glad your retina is still attached!!
Good to know a large number of floaters and flashes of light are symptoms to get checked out, thank you.
Kind of amazing. I ordered my first feminine basic t-shirts and long sleeves to try out and yesterday while being out in a restaurant with family the woman taking our orders gendered me correctly and I could have cried right then and there but I managed to pull myself together so I wasn’t a sobbing mess for the rest of the evening. (E is one hell of a drug 😅)
Shaved everything ('cept the denial beard, cleaned it up tho), slept on fresh clean sheets. Happy noises 🥰
It’s been a long week.
Just about collected enough of a wardrobe that doesn’t look awful on me (ie the right size and not hyper-feminine) so that I can dress in women’s clothes all the time. Plus a growing pile of “don’t wear outside the house” and “possibly when I’m a different shape” reserves :) Wearing my old men’s stuff feels uncomfortable, so I threw most of it out except for a few items in case I need to emergency-stealth.
Makeup turns out to be not as obvious to other people than I thought! Went out the other day with eyebrow pencil, mascara and some light eye shadow, and even my wife (who in theory knows what I look like) couldn’t tell what I had used.
Otherwise it’s hurry up and wait. Consultation for laser this week, and maybe I can get on the list at the gender clinic for counseling in October (a GID diagnosis is required where I live).
Been a bit fucked.
My wife and I have had to drop about $2k in unexpected car maintenance bringing us to one car for a week and a half, we had a miscarriage Tuesday night, and then our toddler had a meltdown at a diner when we tried to take a night off from cooking.
Her obgyn told us to take a month off from trying for a kid and we have enough squirrelled away in savings, so we are going to get through this. Just a tough week, and I’m hoping next week goes smoother for us.
