My entire life, my eyes have been sensitive to light. When I was a kid and still wore glasses, I had an extreme version of transition lenses. When the light was too bright, my glasses would darken. This was all the time when I was outside and they would sometimes darken a little when I was inside in bright light. They darkened so much that as a kid people would ask my parents if I was blind.
Once I got contact lenses when I was 9, I wore sunglasses outside when it was bright. It could even be too bright for me when it was a cloudy day and I would be wearing sunglasses then. I always have sunglasses on me and have several spare pairs in my car. But even with sunglasses, my eyes are still sensitive to light and sometimes it bothered me.
I didn’t realize it until recently, but I started to squint a lot in bright light. And when I squinted, I furrowed my brow. That was fine for a while, but then it started to cause me some tension headaches. I thought maybe I was overusing the muscle in-between my eyebrows and the headaches were more about the muscle being sore. And the last time I saw my dermatologist, she confirmed that my idea was very likely what was going on with me.
My doctor gave me 2 options to work on fixing this. The cheaper option was a type of medical tape that I would wear on my face to train my face not to squint and furrow my brow. But I would have to wear this tape almost all the time for several weeks and it wasn’t something that I could really hide. The other option was to get Botox. Getting Botox would paralyze the muscle and after a few rounds of injections my face should be trained to not do it anymore.
For me, there was no question. I was going to get Botox. I didn’t want to have to wear tape on my face for weeks and even though I hate needles the injections still seemed like the easier option for me. I discussed with my doctor about if my insurance would cover it. But I would have to have several appointments with a neurologist to approve the injections and those appointments would be more expensive than what going to a medical spa would charge me. So I decided to ask around for recommendations from friends to get it done outside of my insurance coverage.
I have a friend (who I am not going to name because it’s not my business to share what she does) who has been getting Botox for a few sessions already and was going to go back to the medical spa that she goes to for some other injectable procedures. So she offered to call them and see if they could make an appointment at the same time for me to go in. I really liked how her Botox had been done because her face was not frozen at all. I’ve seen bad Botox and I was terrified that mine would be overdone. Even though I was doing this for something other than wrinkles, I wanted a doctor who believed less is more.
Fortunately, that’s exactly the mindset that the doctor my friend goes to has. So last week after work, we headed to Hollywood to go to Skinny Beach Med Spa (they are mainly based in San Diego, but they have a Hollywood office now too).
While I was excited about this because it was going to help with my headaches and I looked at it as an interesting adventure, I was also pretty scared on the drive there. I hate needles and I knew this was a needle. I didn’t want to faint even though it’s been a little while since I’ve fainted with a needle. I didn’t want this to hurt a lot and I didn’t want to have something go wrong and have to wait 4 months for it to wear off before I looked normal again.
When we got to the office and met Dr. Staley, I felt a bit better. He was very calm and said that it should be very simple for me. Based on my research, I read getting your “11” lines (your frown lines) done is usually between 10-20 units. I figured I would be on the higher end of things because it was for headache relief. But Dr. Staley said that I didn’t need that much and it would only be 8 units for me. Also, he told me that he recommended doing Xeomin over Botox. They are very similar but Botox has a protein in it that your body can get used to. So Xeomin is preferred so you don’t need more of it over time to have the same effect.
Originally, I wanted my friend to go first so I could watch her. But that wasn’t the way things were going to go. So I handled my phone to my friend so she could take photos and I sat in the chair. I tried to keep my breathing calm, but my friend said she could see how freaked out I was. Dr. Staley has a little buzzing device that helps to keep the pain from the injection lower and that’s the gold device you see above the needle in the photo.
The entire thing maybe took 10 seconds. I did have a moment where I blacked out a bit (what has been happening with needles but I don’t faint and am normal again quickly), but it was seriously so easy! I warned my friend that I might cry because of how much I hate needles and I think she was shocked that when it was done I was crying a bit. But I was able to calm down quickly and my friend got in the chair for her injections.
I was taking photos of her process being done, but I also couldn’t stop trying to squint and frown to see if I felt a difference. I did notice there was a bit of resistance in my forehead and it was a weird feeling. The full effects of the Xeomin can take up to a week, but even comparing how I looked before to how I looked 1 hour later shows a big difference!
I don’t really care if it gets that much better than how it is now. I didn’t do this for the wrinkle reduction and I have noticed that I’m not getting headaches the way I was getting them before. And hopefully the headaches keep getting better and soon I won’t have them anymore at all. The goal is that after a few sessions of Botox of Xeomin that my face is trained not to do this anymore and I won’t need it after that. From what I’ve read online, that can be between 4-6 sessions and you get them done every 4 months. So for right now, my plan is to go back at the beginning of December for another injection and see how things go.
I never really thought I would ever get Botox or something like it, but I’m so glad I did. There’s nothing wrong with getting it done for wrinkles if that’s what you want to do. That’s not my plan right now, but I’m glad I know what it’s like in case in the future I do want to do that. There is some stigma with getting Botox or other injections and that it makes your face look weird, and I’m glad I found a doctor to do this who believes that people should look natural and I still have so much range in my expressions.
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