This is version 2 of this post. I posted the first version 9 months ago when I kept seeing misinformation and wanted to get something up with the basic math. Since then I have learned a bunch more (more than a small edit) which has all been incorporated into this post.
Please everyone take this very seriously. I am someone who didn’t, and two years later have been searching for every solution under the sun to remove the hair post-op.
Electrocautery by a surgeon or gynocologist.
Silver nitrate may also work and GP should be able to do it. Personally if I had that problem I’d be tempted to do it myself if I could only reach, but you also need to be very careful with it.
I wish surgeons were more up-front/honest about how long hair removal takes. Every single one's paperwork says 6 months, but every electrologist I've talked to says a year minimum, possibly up to 2.
I've had to cram mine out in 6 months, and thankfully I was a good candidate for lazer so that cleared up a lot, but we'll see in the end I suppose.
I am lucky enough to work with the Cleveland Clinics Reassignment team. The doctors are very educated and actually leave it up to me, (I am a electrologist) to say when they can make an appointment for intial consult. There hair has to be 70% gone before they can even make the appt
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OP mentions breathing techniques; for me this was at least as effective at pain management as lidocaine cream was:
https://www.powerbreathe.com/2020/03/22/breathing-for-focus-using-the-4-4-8-breathing-technique/
I had 2 hours per week from early August 2020 to mid-May 2021. Minus three weeks in September. Hit full clear in early December, have not shaved the surgical area since then. Not as thorough as OP, but I still expect to be in good shape for PI in two weeks.
could I ask about your technique for applying lidocaine? I've been doing a saran wrap thing but it's not always very effective and will wear off within ~45 minutes
I actually just had my electrolysis tech apply it at the start of a session, and we'd work on my face for an hour first, which gave the lidocaine time to set. It was definitely still effective after being on for an hour or so.
Excellent info--thank you!
I've been doing laser for the last few months, but I don't even have a consult until August. My insurance covers electrolysis for the purpose of clearing the area, and I asked the social worker at the surgeon's office how to deal with that. She said that I could get a referral from the surgeon when I go in for the consult, and that since it usually takes about a year between consult and surgery and it takes a year to clear the area with electrolysis, that should be fine.
Now I'm wondering if I should start now. But I am already doing laser, as I said, although it's hard for me to gauge how well that's working. It's frustrating, because it seems like most places do one or the other and not both, and I'm hesitant to mix methods.
This is so complicated, between surgeons and insurance and hair removal and I already have a full-time job!
Thank you! I have a laser consult in a few weeks, but my surgery consult isn't until November. I feel much better prepared for when I speak to someone now.
Sorry if this is a naive question, but I’m just about to start doing Electrolysis in preparation for SRS - what do you do for an 8 hour long session? I can’t imagine what that could possibly be like. Are there breaks? Do you listen to music or podcasts or something?
When I did longer sessions we had a lunch break. There is always music, but it was nice listening to audiobooks together. All day sessions were to just get the process started, the majority of my sessions were shorter and often 3 hours in length, we still listened to our books during that time too.
Oh Gosh, I'm truly honoured. There's more references to work I've done in this post than I can shake a stick ( or a probeholder) at! More so, your post demonstrates really well the concept of hair cycles of growth and how that affects your strategy for hair removal. And there are different stategies. But the takeaway is that complete removal of all hair starts at around 18 months REGARDLESS OF THE BODY AREA assuming you are establishing full clearance of all hair that comes in during that time frame. Your explanation of the hair growth cycles is very much spot on. I'd like to feature your blog on my web site , at [http://electrolysisbyseana.com](http://electrolysisbyseana.com) with your permission. It's truly heartwarming to know that my preaching over the last few years has gotten trough to a few people! You've made this humble electrologist truly proud! In reference to your work regarding lidocaine injections, I'd only like to point out that here in canada we do not have an option for this. For this reason most seeking this ( expensive!) service will need to go to chicago or texas. Edit: I'd like to link to this post on hairtell as well. I think there is a lot that can be learned from your thoughts.
Question: I'm in the middle of electrolysis and i'm finding that I have a lot of very thin, short, transparent/blonde colored hairs all over the surgery area, but especially going up the shaft. I naturally have black hair but I guess I have some that are transparent; my electrologist thinks it's because I had a lot of prior laser, and the laser sessions burned the pigment away but left the hair. They are very hard to spot, nearly invisible, in normal lighting you can't even see them they only show up under intense lighting and that's only if you are really looking very hard. They basically look like fuzz, some are so small they can be mistaken for a dust particle lol. I have to help my electrologist to spot the ones that grow around the shaft area, but I can't see the ones in the perineum area. I'm sure my surgeon would certainly miss them. How absolutely critical are they to remove? I'm not sure it's even possible to completely get rid of them just because they are so incredibly easy to miss even under a spotlight, it's so easy to look at the area and be like, oh yup all done, but actually still have a number of those.
Also, the way I'm doing electrolysis is an hour a week, sometimes up to 2 hours depending on scheduling, using just some basic numbing cream. Each session is nowhere near a complete pass of everything. I didn't know it was even an option to have "local anesthetic" and have an 8 hour long session.
I had the same thing starting around half way through my hair removal. I am also guessing they are just damaged hairs that were not killed either from laser or electrolysis.
I stopped shaving so they would grow out longer and be easier to spot. Not shaving was okay because we always cleared at every session so every session had only active hairs. We used black dye a few times to make them pop, but that seemed more trouble than it was worth. As for how critical, I don't know. At some point, you have to say "this is good enough".
The majority of my sessions were all done with numbing cream and on average 3 hours every other week. You don't have to do 8 hour sessions all in one day. Booking a one hour or 90 minute appointment every day will very quickly get you 8 hours of time. Having a regular schedule to "put in the time" will get you a lot farther than trying to do a single long session.
If it isn't clear from my writing I am not a fan of the local anesthetic and wouldn't recommend it.
The thin vellus hairs that are just a few mm tall I don't think she bothered with. It is the thin clear hairs that end up being a cm or longer that we kill.
I did have a mix of red, blond, and dark hair at the start so at least for me I always knew I would have to kill these blond hairs.
I see, i've been asking my electrologist to focus a lot on the thin hairs that are literally 1 or 2 millimetres long. probably vellus hairs, now that I think about it? i figured that it's best to get the hard to see ones out of the way first. Now I'm thinking maybe I should just leave those and focus on the longer ones.
We’re going to have similar T levels to cis women so should have about the same possibility of terminal hairs.
I’m not sure about bottom surgery. In principal it’s not necessary, but can’t say I’ve read anything on it. My impression is that women don’t do hair removal for bottom surgery properly anyway, and vellum hair is a step beyond that.
I have a question about missing a session:
So far I’ve had 8 sessions of intensive genital electrolysis (each 6 weeks apart). However, I have missed my last session of 1 hour and am wondering what is the best way to continue now.
The place where I go is fully booked most of the time, so the first possible appointment date would be 9 weeks after the missed session. Would it be better to go with that option (the first available date) and keep having sessions every 6 weeks after that, or to keep sessions on the original 6-week interval and book the next session 12 weeks after the missed one?
Was your area waxed before electrolsis? If it wasn't then it should have been. I think Electrologists either don't know or don't recommend to wax because they want you to pay them for long. But seriously starting by waxing the area first means that they are only clearing active hairs and aren't wasting time trying to clear hairs that aren't in the growth stage.
Was speaking with my electrologist who does my face and who will be doing my groin soon and she said it makes her sad when her customers opt out of getting an area waxed because the rate that they get results is so inferior.
I got my face waxed and within 8 hours (1 hour per week) of electrolysis I'm at the point where each week she's clearing upwards of 90% of what's there. Anything thats left that grows a little long that week (so visible without a magnifying lens) gets cleared up the next session.
Waxing a few weeks prior to laser also improves the results of that as well.
unfortunately, this is bad advice. Waxing removes active and inactive hairs that could otherwise be destroyed and prevents the electrologist from treating those hairs within the growth cycle . This has the effect of extending the period over which electrolysis must be performed by many years to effect permanency. Waxing is in no way permanent. Here's what my friend Michael Bono has to say about plucking, waxing and tweezing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV3KTFJ1\_Yo
It is impossible to pull the entire root out with waxing, plucking or threading. Partial root always stays in. The root that stays in says "oh I'm injured, I need to become thicker, stronger and blacker. It can take up to 90 days for 1 hair that you pluck or wax to come back in. The hair takes up to 12 weeks to go through all 3 stages of growth. Unfortunately it just appears as if your area is cleared but wait until the 12 week mark after you waxed and see what comes back
I wasnt suggesting that the hair was removed permanently by plucking or waxing. Of course it will grow back. What I'm saying is that thermolysis is more effective on hairs that are in the growing stage. Waxing an area means that the electrologist is only ever spending time working on growing hair, rather than hair that is in the resting phase. If someone spends an hour working only on hair in the growing phase they will produce better results than if they spent half of that one hour wasting time on hairs in the resting phase because it isn't obvious until the hair has been treated if it was in stage 1 or 2.
God damn so many steps are there to just getting srs. Like, I gotta get multiple referrals, fly to Thailand, pay around 30k upfront, and now you're telling me I have to get laser on my privates. Every place I go won't even do it. So what am I just screwed if I go and haven't had it done
Maybe this will help
I am covered by Cigna Open Access Plus (GA). My plan pays for Electrolysis
"Hair removal by electrolysis of donor site tissue to be
used to line the vaginal canal for vaginoplasty, limited
to eight 30-minute timed units per day (CPT Code 17380)
I have called Cigna to ask for a list of in network providers of this service, but they unfortunately cant conduct a search that is that specific. Their advice to me was to reach out to the surgeon that will be doing the vaginoplasty and have them give you a referral to someone in your area that does electrolysis for their patients. once you get that info then call you insurance to check if that provider is in network.
If they are not in network and there is legit no one around you that offers that service other than that provider your insurance can make a case for you and they might come to an agreement with that provider and cover the coast or some of it.
Unfortunately we have to do a lot of foot work and be our own advocates Reddit is an invaluable resource in the process.
Also just try your best to find a company that offers insurance that covers these surgeries and put effort into getting a job there to gain coverage. 30,000 could be a down payment on a home etc. I work for H&M and my insurance out of pocket maximum for a year is $1,500. That is the most I will pay a year for medically necessary in network procedures. Loads of companies have inclusive benefit packages now.
This is version 2 of this post. I posted the first version 9 months ago when I kept seeing misinformation and wanted to get something up with the basic math. Since then I have learned a bunch more (more than a small edit) which has all been incorporated into this post.
Please everyone take this very seriously. I am someone who didn’t, and two years later have been searching for every solution under the sun to remove the hair post-op.
Did u find something?
Unfortunately no. :/ I just pluck as much as I can locate whenever I dilate, with small tweezers.
Electrocautery by a surgeon or gynocologist. Silver nitrate may also work and GP should be able to do it. Personally if I had that problem I’d be tempted to do it myself if I could only reach, but you also need to be very careful with it.
I wish surgeons were more up-front/honest about how long hair removal takes. Every single one's paperwork says 6 months, but every electrologist I've talked to says a year minimum, possibly up to 2. I've had to cram mine out in 6 months, and thankfully I was a good candidate for lazer so that cleared up a lot, but we'll see in the end I suppose.
I am lucky enough to work with the Cleveland Clinics Reassignment team. The doctors are very educated and actually leave it up to me, (I am a electrologist) to say when they can make an appointment for intial consult. There hair has to be 70% gone before they can even make the appt
I'm a moderator on this sub. You can comment here, but please follow rule 6. > 6. Posts by people with a commercial interest in members decisions. Please follow [these rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Transgender_Surgeries/comments/exrxnh/rule_6_posts_from_those_with_a_commercial/). You will be assigned a light yellow flair next to your user name. https://www.reddit.com/r/Transgender_Surgeries/comments/exrxnh/rule_6_posts_from_those_with_a_commercial/ I have given you a flair saying "Works for Cleveland Clinics reassignment team". If you prefer something else please let me know.
I do not work for them, They refer to me, I am a independent Medical Spa. They do not pay me
I changed it to say electrologist.
Thanks, I am new to posting on this platform and don't know all the rules yet. I have read alot here but never posted
OP mentions breathing techniques; for me this was at least as effective at pain management as lidocaine cream was: https://www.powerbreathe.com/2020/03/22/breathing-for-focus-using-the-4-4-8-breathing-technique/ I had 2 hours per week from early August 2020 to mid-May 2021. Minus three weeks in September. Hit full clear in early December, have not shaved the surgical area since then. Not as thorough as OP, but I still expect to be in good shape for PI in two weeks.
could I ask about your technique for applying lidocaine? I've been doing a saran wrap thing but it's not always very effective and will wear off within ~45 minutes
I actually just had my electrolysis tech apply it at the start of a session, and we'd work on my face for an hour first, which gave the lidocaine time to set. It was definitely still effective after being on for an hour or so.
Excellent info--thank you! I've been doing laser for the last few months, but I don't even have a consult until August. My insurance covers electrolysis for the purpose of clearing the area, and I asked the social worker at the surgeon's office how to deal with that. She said that I could get a referral from the surgeon when I go in for the consult, and that since it usually takes about a year between consult and surgery and it takes a year to clear the area with electrolysis, that should be fine. Now I'm wondering if I should start now. But I am already doing laser, as I said, although it's hard for me to gauge how well that's working. It's frustrating, because it seems like most places do one or the other and not both, and I'm hesitant to mix methods. This is so complicated, between surgeons and insurance and hair removal and I already have a full-time job!
I do both at my office in Ohio, but definitely there are very few of us that does both.
Well probably not worth the commute from New York.
Thank you! I have a laser consult in a few weeks, but my surgery consult isn't until November. I feel much better prepared for when I speak to someone now.
Sorry if this is a naive question, but I’m just about to start doing Electrolysis in preparation for SRS - what do you do for an 8 hour long session? I can’t imagine what that could possibly be like. Are there breaks? Do you listen to music or podcasts or something?
When I did longer sessions we had a lunch break. There is always music, but it was nice listening to audiobooks together. All day sessions were to just get the process started, the majority of my sessions were shorter and often 3 hours in length, we still listened to our books during that time too.
Oh Gosh, I'm truly honoured. There's more references to work I've done in this post than I can shake a stick ( or a probeholder) at! More so, your post demonstrates really well the concept of hair cycles of growth and how that affects your strategy for hair removal. And there are different stategies. But the takeaway is that complete removal of all hair starts at around 18 months REGARDLESS OF THE BODY AREA assuming you are establishing full clearance of all hair that comes in during that time frame. Your explanation of the hair growth cycles is very much spot on. I'd like to feature your blog on my web site , at [http://electrolysisbyseana.com](http://electrolysisbyseana.com) with your permission. It's truly heartwarming to know that my preaching over the last few years has gotten trough to a few people! You've made this humble electrologist truly proud! In reference to your work regarding lidocaine injections, I'd only like to point out that here in canada we do not have an option for this. For this reason most seeking this ( expensive!) service will need to go to chicago or texas. Edit: I'd like to link to this post on hairtell as well. I think there is a lot that can be learned from your thoughts.
Anybody have information for zero-depth SRS?
Probably doesn’t matter so much as electrolysis post-op can reach the first an inch or two.
I’m wondering the same thing, I can’t seem to find a straight answer anywhere.
Gold
Very informative post!
Question: I'm in the middle of electrolysis and i'm finding that I have a lot of very thin, short, transparent/blonde colored hairs all over the surgery area, but especially going up the shaft. I naturally have black hair but I guess I have some that are transparent; my electrologist thinks it's because I had a lot of prior laser, and the laser sessions burned the pigment away but left the hair. They are very hard to spot, nearly invisible, in normal lighting you can't even see them they only show up under intense lighting and that's only if you are really looking very hard. They basically look like fuzz, some are so small they can be mistaken for a dust particle lol. I have to help my electrologist to spot the ones that grow around the shaft area, but I can't see the ones in the perineum area. I'm sure my surgeon would certainly miss them. How absolutely critical are they to remove? I'm not sure it's even possible to completely get rid of them just because they are so incredibly easy to miss even under a spotlight, it's so easy to look at the area and be like, oh yup all done, but actually still have a number of those. Also, the way I'm doing electrolysis is an hour a week, sometimes up to 2 hours depending on scheduling, using just some basic numbing cream. Each session is nowhere near a complete pass of everything. I didn't know it was even an option to have "local anesthetic" and have an 8 hour long session.
[удалено]
that is an ingenious suggestion, ty!
I had the same thing starting around half way through my hair removal. I am also guessing they are just damaged hairs that were not killed either from laser or electrolysis. I stopped shaving so they would grow out longer and be easier to spot. Not shaving was okay because we always cleared at every session so every session had only active hairs. We used black dye a few times to make them pop, but that seemed more trouble than it was worth. As for how critical, I don't know. At some point, you have to say "this is good enough". The majority of my sessions were all done with numbing cream and on average 3 hours every other week. You don't have to do 8 hour sessions all in one day. Booking a one hour or 90 minute appointment every day will very quickly get you 8 hours of time. Having a regular schedule to "put in the time" will get you a lot farther than trying to do a single long session. If it isn't clear from my writing I am not a fan of the local anesthetic and wouldn't recommend it.
Did you clear away all your vellus hairs? Some of the thin transparent hairs that I have are probably just that
The thin vellus hairs that are just a few mm tall I don't think she bothered with. It is the thin clear hairs that end up being a cm or longer that we kill. I did have a mix of red, blond, and dark hair at the start so at least for me I always knew I would have to kill these blond hairs.
I see, i've been asking my electrologist to focus a lot on the thin hairs that are literally 1 or 2 millimetres long. probably vellus hairs, now that I think about it? i figured that it's best to get the hard to see ones out of the way first. Now I'm thinking maybe I should just leave those and focus on the longer ones.
[удалено]
Cis women have vellus hair and it only converts to terminal with testosterone.
[удалено]
We’re going to have similar T levels to cis women so should have about the same possibility of terminal hairs. I’m not sure about bottom surgery. In principal it’s not necessary, but can’t say I’ve read anything on it. My impression is that women don’t do hair removal for bottom surgery properly anyway, and vellum hair is a step beyond that.
I have a question about missing a session: So far I’ve had 8 sessions of intensive genital electrolysis (each 6 weeks apart). However, I have missed my last session of 1 hour and am wondering what is the best way to continue now. The place where I go is fully booked most of the time, so the first possible appointment date would be 9 weeks after the missed session. Would it be better to go with that option (the first available date) and keep having sessions every 6 weeks after that, or to keep sessions on the original 6-week interval and book the next session 12 weeks after the missed one?
Was your area waxed before electrolsis? If it wasn't then it should have been. I think Electrologists either don't know or don't recommend to wax because they want you to pay them for long. But seriously starting by waxing the area first means that they are only clearing active hairs and aren't wasting time trying to clear hairs that aren't in the growth stage. Was speaking with my electrologist who does my face and who will be doing my groin soon and she said it makes her sad when her customers opt out of getting an area waxed because the rate that they get results is so inferior. I got my face waxed and within 8 hours (1 hour per week) of electrolysis I'm at the point where each week she's clearing upwards of 90% of what's there. Anything thats left that grows a little long that week (so visible without a magnifying lens) gets cleared up the next session. Waxing a few weeks prior to laser also improves the results of that as well.
unfortunately, this is bad advice. Waxing removes active and inactive hairs that could otherwise be destroyed and prevents the electrologist from treating those hairs within the growth cycle . This has the effect of extending the period over which electrolysis must be performed by many years to effect permanency. Waxing is in no way permanent. Here's what my friend Michael Bono has to say about plucking, waxing and tweezing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV3KTFJ1\_Yo
It is impossible to pull the entire root out with waxing, plucking or threading. Partial root always stays in. The root that stays in says "oh I'm injured, I need to become thicker, stronger and blacker. It can take up to 90 days for 1 hair that you pluck or wax to come back in. The hair takes up to 12 weeks to go through all 3 stages of growth. Unfortunately it just appears as if your area is cleared but wait until the 12 week mark after you waxed and see what comes back
I wasnt suggesting that the hair was removed permanently by plucking or waxing. Of course it will grow back. What I'm saying is that thermolysis is more effective on hairs that are in the growing stage. Waxing an area means that the electrologist is only ever spending time working on growing hair, rather than hair that is in the resting phase. If someone spends an hour working only on hair in the growing phase they will produce better results than if they spent half of that one hour wasting time on hairs in the resting phase because it isn't obvious until the hair has been treated if it was in stage 1 or 2.
pls respond to my dm 💜
God damn so many steps are there to just getting srs. Like, I gotta get multiple referrals, fly to Thailand, pay around 30k upfront, and now you're telling me I have to get laser on my privates. Every place I go won't even do it. So what am I just screwed if I go and haven't had it done
Maybe this will help I am covered by Cigna Open Access Plus (GA). My plan pays for Electrolysis "Hair removal by electrolysis of donor site tissue to be used to line the vaginal canal for vaginoplasty, limited to eight 30-minute timed units per day (CPT Code 17380) I have called Cigna to ask for a list of in network providers of this service, but they unfortunately cant conduct a search that is that specific. Their advice to me was to reach out to the surgeon that will be doing the vaginoplasty and have them give you a referral to someone in your area that does electrolysis for their patients. once you get that info then call you insurance to check if that provider is in network. If they are not in network and there is legit no one around you that offers that service other than that provider your insurance can make a case for you and they might come to an agreement with that provider and cover the coast or some of it. Unfortunately we have to do a lot of foot work and be our own advocates Reddit is an invaluable resource in the process. Also just try your best to find a company that offers insurance that covers these surgeries and put effort into getting a job there to gain coverage. 30,000 could be a down payment on a home etc. I work for H&M and my insurance out of pocket maximum for a year is $1,500. That is the most I will pay a year for medically necessary in network procedures. Loads of companies have inclusive benefit packages now.