Mrs. Jones, age 58, has a lot of facial hair, most of it very dark. She has been shaving for years and even has her razor to shave her face by her sink, next to her husband’s. She feels horrible about this, but has learned to accept that there is nothing she can do to change it. She has been to her doctor who has given her no hope. She came to me to see if I could remove some of the hair in a more permanent way than daily shaving was affording her. We completed six laser hair removal treatments and then she said with tears in her eyes, “Dr. Ressler, you have made me feel like I’m a normal woman again. I didn’t think it was possible. Thank you so much for making me feel good about myself again – I don’t know how to thank you.”

Ms. Allen, age 23. This client came to me with similar problems, a face full of hair. She has a fairly common condition known as Polycystic Ovary Disease. This condition makes girls/women grow hair in a male pattern with facial hair, thick hair on arms and sometimes even chest hair. Again, after completing her sixth treatment she was in tears: “Thank you Dr. Ressler, I have not felt normal since I was a teenager. I feel like a ‘girl’ again.”

Mr. Johnson, a 22-year-old male with terrible cystic acne scaring, came to me for skin resurfacing. He was so thankful for his new skin that he made me a carved wood nameplate for my office. He actually became a ‘poster child’ for my business due to his success with his skin. However, about a year later, he was involved in a drive-by shooting which ended with a bullet in his neck, rendering him a quadriplegic. Due to my relationship with this patient, I arranged for a local surgeon to remove the bullet from his neck–something that meant a lot to him–even though the outcome was unchanged, i.e., he was still a quadriplegic. I kept a relationship with him until his family took him back to his home in Indonesia. He was a student at UCO.