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How's your week been?
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this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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just scheduled the hotel for my upcoming vaginoplasty, I think it's two months away now
Electrolysis is painful! I use a 20% lidocaine BLT cream from a compounding pharmacy and apply it hours before the appointment, usually around 40 - 45 minutes into the session it starts to get what I would consider "too painful". At first I thought it was because the lidocaine was wearing off, and the pharmacist switched from 20% lidocaine to 20% benzocaine thinking it would help it last longer, but it made absolutely no difference, I get around the same pain around the same time. So now I wonder if it's due to the accumulation of damage and pain over the session, esp. as she begins to cluster the places the hairs are removed.
Either way, it makes me wish lidocaine injections were more common - this pain is unnecessary, more a consequence of falling through the cracks of the local government and medical establishment which just hasn't prioritized the legal pathways and training programs that would enable lidocaine injections for these areas and in these contexts. You can get your mouth numbed for dental work, for example (and you can get trained and certified to numb patients for dental procedures), but for electrolysis it's just not an option here.
I remember reading somewhere about somebody having good results from applying the cream, than putting a layer of plastic wrap overtop it, and slowly peeling away the layer as they went.
No idea if it works or not; I'm of that lucky genetic disposition that gets fuck all out of pain medications; it took 4-5 separate injections in several spots to numb a big toe enough for then to pull out an ingrown toenail. When i got my wisdom teeth removed, I didn't even bother with the percocet i got after the first day, since it didn't do much for me and i needed to operate machinery.
Yes, apparently they call covering with plastic wrap "occlusion" - it helps prevent the cream from dehydrating and gives more opportunity for it to absorb into the skin. I occlude even when I'm not supposed to (e.g. the compounding pharmacy explicitly says not to occlude their cream), and it is one of the ways people end up with enough lidocaine in their blood stream that they die from it.
There were two women in the U.S. who put lidocaine on their legs for a laser session and used plastic wrap, and they died. I, however, have survived putting plastic wrap on my legs - I just break up my sessions into two parts, upper and lower legs, so I can reduce the surface area exposed to lidocaine. I'm also larger, so maybe my body can handle larger doses, and I intentionally eat a meal which may or may not help for various reasons (just speculation on my part).
I'm sorry you don't benefit from anaesthetic and pain meds - I'm surprised it's both since opioids work differently than lidocaine as I understand it, but either way that is awful - are you able to get general anaesthetic, do you know? I can't imagine needing surgery in those circumstances ...
I was fully under for my wisdom teeth being removed, dunno why percocet didn't effect me much that I'm aware of. Ive also got a fairly high pain tolerance.
Good to know about occlusion!