So, I'm 70 hours into electrolysis and had to let it grow out a bit for an appointment today.  I was just looking in the mirror and really my chin is mostly clear and a few small patches on one cheek are pretty thin but other than that I could probably grow a full beard still if I really wanted to. 

Is this fairly typical for this many hours?   I was counting on around 150-175 hours just based on what I've read before.   I just thought i would be a little further along by now......  just a little (ok a lot) discouraging. ...

Yes, I did a couple of years two time a week and I didn't have that much of a beard to start out with. Hopefully they are using the blend on you. If they only use one system, the results are slower. One of the things you need to understand is they could work faster at the risk of scaring. It's best they use just enough power to take out the hair but some will return and some that are dormant will appear as new hair. The IRS questioned me on my medical expenses for this so I had to send copies of all my checks to them but they were happy I wasn't cheating the government.

I'm about 130 hours or so in, and I still need to shave every day, so you're definitely not an outlier.

I am.

  I had recently taken two weeks off electro due to FFS.  Progress had seemed really good up to that point and I was able to handle my appearance in between my weekly three-hour sessions.  During the two weeks off I was shaving temporarily and it still seemed like very little was growing in.  Boy was I wrong!  When I let it grow for three days ahead of the first resumed session it came back really strong and mostly dark on that hair cycle.  Because it had been given the extra time to strengthen it was absolute murder for the first two sessions and it took a total of eight hours that week to get it completely clean again.

  I've reached 196 hours at this point and it's obvious I'm far from done yet.  I was hoping for 200 to a max of 300.  One stat I read suggested some people could take as long as 700 hours for the beard!  Given how much this is costing me I don't know if I could make it beyond 300 hours financially and still have a hope of any retirement savings.

  I don't mean to sound discouraging (or depressing), but you probably have a lot more hours ahead of you.

Thank you for the replies ladies, I really appreciate it and they were all very helpful.  Today was really hard for me to begin with because my appointment got put off again so I grew out the hair for no reason.  Plus I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to drop back to one hour a week rather than the two I have been doing.

I know I have a long way to go, I guess I just thought I'd have more than a few bare spots by now.  Much of my face is still untouched so maybe I'll end up being one of the ones who ends up having to go 700 hours though I really *really* hope not! 

Wow that SUUUUCKS. I can't believe it's so difficult to kill off hair follicles. Aren't women that have been waxing their eyebrows for too long having trouble growing them back out again now?

I understand HRT supposedly doesn't affect facial hair much, but I was really hoping with the lack of testosterone that with electrolysis the facial hair could be wiped out relatively easily. Guess not.

Hope it works out for you ladies, good luck.

Quote from: IdontEven on June 05, 2015, 10:53:52 PM
Wow that SUUUUCKS. I can't believe it's so difficult to kill off hair follicles. Aren't women that have been waxing their eyebrows for too long having trouble growing them back out again now?

I understand HRT supposedly doesn't affect facial hair much, but I was really hoping with the lack of testosterone that with electrolysis the facial hair could be wiped out relatively easily. Guess not.

Hope it works out for you ladies, good luck.

It is really a pain in the face but the other factor is that hair will grow for a while and then go dormant. You could kill off all the active hairs follicles, wait a while and have the dormant hairs provide a new crop. The bad ones are the people who have to deal with chest hair. On the other hand, the people with thick black corse hair are the best off because they have fewer follicles per square inch reducing the time it takes to clear the face.

Quote from: Dena on June 05, 2015, 11:07:20 PM
It is really a pain in the face but the other factor is that hair will grow for a while and then go dormant. You could kill off all the active hairs follicles, wait a while and have the dormant hairs provide a new crop. The bad ones are the people who have to deal with chest hair. On the other hand, the people with thick black corse hair are the best off because they have fewer follicles per square inch reducing the time it takes to clear the face.

  I was sort of getting at that important part of cycles and dormancy.  Your face could be completely clear in one session and then the next growth cycle happens to be thicker/darker hairs and it looks awful suddenly.  The dormancy cycle can be as long as six months, according to my electro tech, but I believe it's typically a bit shorter.  If the hair isn't killed the first time it will come back a while later.  That's part of why it can take so long.

Hi - it depends on a number of factors...

The method used - there's multi-probe galvanic and thermolysis. I have multi probe, 32 needles inserted into 32 follicles and heat applied via electricity (or something like that) the results are supposedly more permanent than thermolysis (which is the single needle).

The skill and experience of the electrolysis, especially when it comes to "male strength and quantity beard hairs". Mine does electro as her core business and treats a lot of trans women. Some beauticians say they've been doing electro for years when in reality they only pull it out for some little old lady's five beard hairs once a month.

The cycle of the hairs - as you might know, follicles can go to sleep and can't be treated during their down time. SOme follicles actually contain two follicles (one active one not!)! Goodness knows they try to make removal as hard as possible!

Strength of beard hair - if it's particularly strong/tough then it could need a couple of passes to kill it completely. Makes sense, since using too high a setting to zap the hairs might cause skin damage which you want to avoid at all costs.

I just hit 100 hours after close to two years. My electro reckons I only have another 25 hours to go.

  Definitely make sure the tech doesn't use too high or to long a power setting.  One time my regular tech was unavailable and someone else with a lot less experience did the session.  My face was red and swollen for most of a week afterward and someone commented they thought I'd put on a lot of weight because that's what it looked like.  It was rather embarrassing having to go to work like that.  I'm willing to accept more hours of treatment to reach completion if it means I never have to go through the swollen face thing ever again!

Hair grows in cycles, with different hairs on different cycles. Be patient.

Anecdotally, it seems that many trans women end up taking 150 or so hours to clear their face when using electrology as the chosen method of hair removal. Of course, some are more, some are less, and the range is wide, not narrow.

My electrologist told me the fastest clearing she ever did was about 30 hours total. That's at E3000 where they clear the entire face, even using 2 technicians at a time if you need it. The person in question came in twice, for about 15 hours each time, and when the time for the third appointment came, they canceled, came by anyway, and showed them their face was completely clear.

The longest case I know of took 4 years and over 400 hours to fully clear (about 2 hours a week at a more typical electrologist).

*
I want to add my own experience - my change and transition dates more than 30 years ago.

My circumstance was not 'typical'.  I began as an inter-sex female (mal-formed external female genitalia mis-assigned as male) who grew up as a hairy boy.  Exploratory surgery confirmed female (1982).  Hormones got rid of my body hair (thank you, estrogen cellular receptor sites) but I needed electrolysis for the face.

Electrolysis went well.  I began with that '5 o'clock shadow by noon' look.  I attended once or twice per month for a few years - one hour per session.  Rosita, my electrologist, was excellent.  I experienced no pain, but it might have been my mental euphoria at each appointment getting closer to completion; I also have no scarring.  I recently posted a site (SlimandMe.WordPress.com).  You can see my 'before' picture showing how I scraped my skin raw from shaving.
*

Hi Sharon, welcome to Susan's. I look forward to seeing you around the forums. Good luck and Hugs
Mariah

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Thanks for this posting. I have also been kinda depressed about my electrolysis progression. I have been going 2 times a week for 2.5 years with some vacation breaks. It's during these breaks that I get depressed with the growth. So I'm on a trip now and find that after 2 weeks I need to shave as the growth is still there. Especially under the lower lip and chin areas. I'm hoping by the end of this year but I'm no longer optimistic.

  I still had this thread open in a tab so I thought I'd make a brief update.  Since my original post at 196 hours completed I'm now at 241 hours because I've been doing six hours every week.  The hairs don't seem to be substantially less numerous but they have continued to get much finer.  The tech noted that the roots of the hairs are so small now they're almost non-existent.  This has reduced the hold time per hair and is progressively increasing the number of hairs removed per session while also reducing the discomfort.  Very slow but noticeable progress.

Scary thread. I finished laser a little bit more than a year ago. I think my results were really good, but I still have a significant amount left. I'm having trouble finding a wheelchair accessible electrologist where I live. Maybe I should do another few rounds of laser and pluck whatever is left? 

My sympathies.  Anything related to my face is a hard thing to handle.  I recently was getting really bad skin reactions to blend and it was damaging my skin.  I switched electrologists (Thanks to a couple of helpful members here!) who does thermolysis on very modern equipment.  Way less reaction, and it seems to kill more hairs for me.  Not sure why as usually thermolysis is not as affective, but I hear the modern equipment makes a big difference.  And pain level for me was way less on thermolysis, compared to blend.

I am one year into it and it will likely be another year.  I am going to try combining it with laser, just to speed things up.