Last year (2016) I (again) struggled through (insurance covered) ELECTROLYSIS ...
(both) Facial&Pubic Hair ...

I repeatedly requested some kind of "numbing injection" ~
something akin to the Novocaine injections
administered when "pulling teeth" ...

Even though such a "numbing injection" was not forthcoming
earlier this year (2017) I did come across the following:
Surgeon recommends "Numbing Injection" for Electrolysis ...

Quote from: Harold Morgan Reed, M.D."Electrolysis is preferable to laser.
Subcutaneous injection of lidocaine or bupivacaine
is preferable to a topical anesthetic,
which is preferable to nothing at all,
as good analgesia permits higher settings, and portends less hair regrowth."

The San Francisco Dept. of PublicHealth "TransgenderHealthServices"
has (this month) been (both) relocated ... and renamed ...

THS is now called "SF GenderHealth" ~
which (imo) is an improvement ...
The SF DPH (also) finally gave SFGH its own (City/County owned) office space ~
which is located in the SF GeneralHospital
(which is now called Zuckerberg SF General Hospital ) ...

SFGH is having its "OpenHouse" next month ...
where I plan to inquire of the SFGH Director
if SFGH might (sometime in the future)
pursue the above recommended
"subcutaneous injection of lidocaine or bupivacaine"
as standard ELECTROLYSIS ... pain prevention ...

There are also other details of the SFGH HairRemoval "regimen"
I will (in some cases again) suggest (to the SFGH Director)
that the SFGH tweak/improve ...

Are you looking for suggestions on how to control pain or are you trying to get lidocaine injections covered by insurance. I.e. Looking for official recommendations for the use of lidocaine injections being medically necessary?


~Brooke~

Any type of anesthetic injection must be done under a physicians care in case something goes wrong. Lidocaine and other meds of this type do have side effects, most notably cardiac side effects.

There are a few offices that offer marathon electrolysis sessions. sometimes going with two techs for as long as 8 to 10 hours in one day. These places use injected lidocaine.

If your electrolysis is working out of a physicians office, this could be done with very little extra cost.

However, the lidocaine injection will last for several hours and using it for shorter electrolysis sessions seems like over kill.

Annecy, its very hard to read your posts with all the colors and fonts and all.

Hi Annecy, I had 6 genital clearings. Each one month apart and ending 6 months prior to GCS. I had lidocaine injections and the injections were very painful. Much worse then GCS. They used a spinal tap needle and ran it from top of the groin over the scrotum and throughout the area. After the 5 minutes of pain the electrolysis was pain free.

Quote from: Brooke on May 28, 2017, 11:00:50 AM
"Are you looking for suggestions on how to control pain or
are you trying to get lidocaine injections covered by insurance. I.e.
Looking for official recommendations for the use of lidocaine injections being medically necessary?
~Brooke~"

Well, the "administered" "pain management" ...
for Electrolysis ... in San Francisco ...
just ... simply ... is NOT ...

I mean ... "they" ONLY cover/provide either a 5% topical ...
or a 2½%+2½% compound topical ...

There are 25+% compound topicals ... available ... OtC ...
"They" won't even cover/provide those ...

Marathon (multi-hour) Electrolysis sessions
(even if "pain-free") can/will still severely "stress" one's skin ...

"CardiacArrest" surfaced last year (2016) in some "discussions" ...
My reply was that "Electrolysis could give me CardiacArrest "
Seriously ...
I could (even) feel facial electrolysis all the way down my to my toes ...
Electrolysis was kinda like
what (I would guess) "ElektroShockTherapy" would be like ...

I'd rather risk CardiacArrest from drugs
than from Electrocution ...

Then there's one of the differences between Facial & Pubic hair electrolysis ...
I had "surgical consults" with two surgeons ...
The first surgeon told me I could skip PubicHair electrolysis
if I couldn't stand the sessions/pain ...
if I was willing to risk some "scarring" from "follicle scraping"  ...

Then my electrolygist advised/"warned" me
that the "follicle scraping" would (for sure) mean "losing some sensation" ...
as a result ...

I wound up mentioning to the 2nd surgeon
with whom I had a "surgical consult"
(and who did my GCS/SRS)
that a good "follicle scraping" was probably/maybe a "good idea" ...

Electrolysis is (imo) the WORST
The two (2) LaserHairRemoval sessions I have done ~
the first was both Facial&Pubic / the 2nd was just Facial ~
were nowhere near as horrible (for me) as any Electrolysis session ...
atm ... my (darker) FacialHair ReGrowth is like about 5-10%
of what is was 2½ months ago ...
thanx to the LHR sessions ...

I finished the third of three full face clearings at E3K in Dallas (Lewisville), TX, which were 1-2 day marathon sessions each.  I had two electrologists working 8-10 hr days, with periodic lidocaine injections.  Now, I imagine I have a higher threshold than some people for the injections, but I thought it was infinitely easier than just doing the facial electrolysis bareback or with topical lidocaine.  The biggest drawbacks to that approach, for me, are the travel costs (LA to Dallas) and the cumulative swelling/trauma that takes the better part of a week to get back to a normal appearance.  Three sessions did clear me sufficiently to (hopefully) finish clearing my face in weekly 2-hour sessions.  I am also finding that as the hairs get cleared from my face, they come back weaker and fewer, such that I think I'll eventually be able to take quite a bit without even effective topical lidocaine. 

Just a couple of points regarding the topical analgesic, for it to be effective, you ought to be hydrated.  I think I was a little dehydrated this past week, and was getting hit pretty hard during my session.  Second, it takes a little while for the lidocaine cream to take effect, and as it evaporates it becomes less effective, so I put it on in two or more layers, and then cover it up with kitchen plastic wrap to keep it from just evaporating off to nothing. 

I did also get about 3 or 4 laser sessions in my genital region last year, not a total clearing, but it really knocked out a lot of hair there.  And it's got to be vastly less painful and costly than electrolysis alone.  Of course, as with other laser, one will likely eventually have to follow up with at least some electrolysis. 

Erin

I have Electrolysis with Facial Injections that I coordinate with the Electrologist and the Dr so the appointments flow into each other about once a week. It takes a fair amount of co-ordination. These injections do not have any adrenaline in them and there is limited to no risk apart from bruising. The down side is that this also makes the injections shorter acting.

There are places where even a direct injection into the spot will not numb it well enough not to hurt especially along scar lines. Some parts like the neck and jawline responded really well for me. I have had real trouble with the lips despite having 2 sessions already with injections...the longest only lasted 40 minutes until my nose lost control and I was dribbling mucous which is a physical response that I cannot control. Prior to this I had Dental injections and they worked really well around the top lip with no coverage along the edge of the nose...so it is never perfect. The Dental Blocks lasted the hour or more. My electrologist thinks I have about 30 minutes left to do on my lip so will be having my hopefully last round of injections into my lip ...considering I have already had 4-6 hrs on it

I am about to switch to numbing cream for the secondary clearance stuff. I have maybe 2-3 injecting sessions left to remove the very last of the thick original beard hairs from 3 different area's. The injections are limiting the speed at which I can have my clearance completed. I am going to try and build tolerance using the numbing cream and whatever other techniques I will find helpful.

Maybe I just have a higher pain tolerance or went in with realistic expectations, but my experience has been very different. I had the vast majority of my face cleared with no anesthetic beyond Tylenol (and usually not even that) and while it wasn't my idea of a good time, in no way was it excruciating pain or Medieval torture or what not. The upper lip sucked, especially near the lip line, and I did use numbing cream on that area and definitely had to talk myself through some of those hairs, but it wasn't the end of the world. Twice I had injections for my upper lip with a local (at the time, this was 12 years ago) dentist, but I actually regret that because my upper lip is the only place I have skin damage and I attribute that to the aggressive "stripping" we did under anesthetic. I'm now having genital electrolysis prior to SRS, and I'm just using over-the-counter LMX 5%. I honestly find genital work LESS painful than the upper lip was, though some areas to the sides of the scrotum get pretty ouchy.

If you go into something (and I think this happens a lot of the TS community) having been told horror stories of how awful it is, and are anxious and expect to be in horrible pain, that can have a lot to do with how you experience treatment. While I know everybody has a different pain tolerance, and certainly injections and such can help, most people don't have easy access to physicians that can provide shots, IV sedation, etc. I like to listen to music, play with my iPhone, chat, or other things to take my mind off it and help me relax. Mainly, though, I just focus on how grateful I am that we have a way to permanently remove hair, and on how nice it will be when everything is cleared for good.

Quote from: AutumnLeaves on May 29, 2017, 10:40:48 AM
"Maybe I just have a higher pain tolerance or went in with realistic expectations,
but my experience has been very different."

I first did some Electrolysis (& LaserHairRemoval)
back in the years 2001~2002 ... (in Amsterdam) ...
Almost nothing went well ... with those sessions ...

My next Electrolysis session was here ... in the BayArea ...
last March (2016) ... much to my surprise ...
my first 1-hour session was "uneventful" ...
My reaction was that I could easily endure "repeat performances"
of an hour-long session like the one I had just completed ...

For whatever/unknown reasons ...
the pain increased with each subsequent session ...
and quickly became unbearable ...

imo ... I probably should have started last year (2016) with LHR;
however, given that my LHR experience/s in Amsterdam
were WAY worse than my Electrolysis experience/s there ...
I was quite prejudiced against LRH ... at the time ...

btw: I ended up doing DiY HairRemoval ... for years ...
First I waxed my own facial hair ... about once a month for most of a year ...
That thinned out my regrowth so much that
I could no longer wax the subsequent regrowth ...
Then for years I tweezed my face of every hair I could see ...

I can't imagine what life will be like when FacialHairRemoval
is no longer like a preoccupation/obsession ...

I think my pain tolerance is average, and I had an above-average amount of body and facial hair (my half-Welsh ancestry overriding half Japanese).  I found the strongest available Lidocaine cream wasn't enough for some areas.  Initial beard removal involved 3 visits per week, 2 hours per visit.  The first time my facial hair was completely clear involved a 3 hour session.  I've never used injections for any hair removal and I am almost done everywhere - including the infamous South Pole.

For pain management I do four things.

1) No coffee that day.  Sometimes when I wonder if I can tolerate another half hour of electrolysis (often at the 90 minute mark), I think how good the coffee will taste after I leave - a reward for getting closer to my goal. 

2) I drink a lot of water every day (helps in other ways), but even more on electrology days. 

3) 1 or 2 ibuprofen or equivalent, right before I arrive.

4) Five percent EMLA cream, only where absolutely necessary.  I don't use much - it's expensive and isn't super healthy if you get carried away with it.  5% EMLA requires a prescription in the US but is OTC in most countries.  I purchased mine from Amazon Canada, shipped without any issues.

After enduring 200+ hours of electrolysis and a bunch of laser I am convinced the first two items are most important for pain management.  Skip the coffee, and make sure your are hydrated with enough water. 

I discovered yesterday that crying seems to help the pain!   

There's a prescription product I'm excited about, but it has not been available for some time, as the licensing rights get shuffled around.  It's called Pliaglis.  It's 7%/7%  Lido/Tetra  and is self-occluding -- turns into a peelable film after it dries.  I have a prescription from my Kaiser doc but waiting for the new licensee, Taro pharmaceuticals, to get it out to pharmacies.

Very interesting and makes sense - a self-occluding cream.  So instead of a clumsy plastic-wrap goopy Emla mess, Pliaglis is designed to dry on and peels away to leave an area numb.   

I'd never heard of it.  Wish I had something like that before enduring 200 hours of electric joy on my face. 

http://www.crescitatherapeutics.com/products/pliaglis/

Quote from: Wendy Lynn on July 03, 2017, 08:37:06 PM
There's a prescription product I'm excited about, but it has not been available for some time, as the licensing rights get shuffled around.  It's called Pliaglis.  It's 7%/7%  Lido/Tetra  and is self-occluding -- turns into a peelable film after it dries.  I have a prescription from my Kaiser doc but waiting for the new licensee, Taro pharmaceuticals, to get it out to pharmacies.

Thanks for pointing this out Wendy Lynn. Reading the descriptions here have me terrified of getting started, though I will get it done. My electrolygist suggested BLT cream, though I'm not sure how a sandwich will help. Actually, it's Benzo/Lido/Tetra 5% each, and I couldn't figure out where to find it. I just learned about compounding pharmacies, but I told my doctor about Pliaglis and he says he was able to order the prescription. He'd never heard of it, and asked me to report back on how well it works. It hasn't shown up as being ordered on my mail-order pharmacy's website so far, so we'll see if it's really available yet.

It sure sounds better than driving 1.5 hours to my appointment with Saran Wrap on my face, unless it's bright purple or something.

I'll report back here as I learn more.

Stephanie

Quote from: Steph2.0 on August 20, 2017, 04:35:42 PM

It sure sounds better than driving 1.5 hours to my appointment with Saran Wrap on my face, unless it's bright purple or something.

I'll report back here as I learn more.

Stephanie

But Steph, that's just about the right amount of soak time. And plastic wrap is the new fashion statement. Didn't you know that?

Laurie

Quote from: Laurie on August 20, 2017, 05:33:29 PM
But Steph, that's just about the right amount of soak time. And plastic wrap is the new fashion statement. Didn't you know that?

Laurie

Well I do now! I simply can't keep up with all the new trends.

It's no stretch, and I won't shrink from saying, "that's a wrap." Is that clear?

Stephanie (I'm on a roll!)

Wow Stephanie - a Costco sized roll of puns. 

Quote from: Kendra on August 21, 2017, 09:29:54 AM
Wow Stephanie - a Costco sized roll of puns.

Kirkland brand, eh?  We were just in Seattle a couple of weeks ago, scouting out some neighborhoods.  Maybe see you in a few months 

Erin

Sounds great!