About half way through my pregnancy with Evie girl I started to develop the nastiest spider veins on my right shin. This came as a complete surprise because I had never had spider veins before! This was a really really hard thing or me. My confidence was already taking a dive after accepting my postpartum body, and to make things worse, I had these awful veins on the VERY front of my leg!
Whenever I had pictures taken I always tried to hide my leg or tell the photographer to please edit the pictures so my nasty veins didn’t scare any children haha. But this picture is one of many that I found where you can see just how dark my spider veins were. It looks like a huge bruise on my leg!
Figuring out how to be a new mommy took its toll on me so I never got in to remove these veins in the months right after I had Evie then before I knew it, it was winter and my shins were covered up anyway :). Once February hit and I knew that spring and summer were just around the corner, I started looking into options on getting these veins removed. I had a good friend recently go to Form Spa for some Botox and Cool Sculpting. She couldn’t say enough amazing things about their services so I knew I wanted to go there! Form Spa uses a laser vascular reduction treatment to remove those spider veins.
What to expect from Spider Vein Removal:
Before I went in for my first appointment, I had a consultation with Form Spa where my leg and my veins were analyzed. Sometimes there is another much larger vein supplying your spider veins with blood. If that is the case, the larger vein will have to be removed before you can see any sort of improvement with your varicose veins. My veins were fine so they decided to schedule me for my first treatment!
When I got there for my appointment the technician, Marina (she was absolutely amazing), gave me a cape to wear on my lower half so I was comfortable. Then she warmed up the laser, sanitized my leg and started the treatment!
Form Spa’s laser energy penetrates deep down and is absorbed by the cells in the vessel wall and the blood, causing coagulation which seals off the blood flow. The vessel walls then collapse and eventually dissolve.
I am not going to lie and say that this was pain free. It was painful, but 100% worth it! I would do it 1000 times over again because of the amazing results that I have received. The best way I can describe the pain is like a small cut on your leg every time the laser penetrates the skin. You can see in the video that Marina kept ice on my leg and was applying it liberally. The ice helped IMMENSELY! About halfway through the treatment the pain got much more bearable because of the ice.
The whole treatment took about an hour from start to finish. However, I had a large area on my leg being treated with lots of veins. The duration of the appointment will definitely depend on your veins and the area being treated!
The short video below is a really good representation on what to expect!
As you can see not all of the spider veins are gone, it will take at least one more treatment, maybe two more to get them all! This first appointment was to get rid of the veins closest to the surface. The next appointment will target the veins further down! My next appointment is in a couple weeks. I will be making a follow up post to show you how it goes so stay tuned!
Do you have any questions? Please ask! I would love to answer whatever I can!
I like what you mentions about spider vein removal not being a painless experience. My wife has been wanting to have her spider veins removed but we don’t know what we should expect. I’ll have to refer her here and tell her that it’s not going to be painless but it would definitely be worth it in the long run, just so she’s prepared.
I so appreciate your comment! It definitely isn’t painless but like you said, SO SO SO worth it! I could not be happier with my results and she will feel the same way!
Xoxo
Whit