Spider vein removal (sclerotherapy) ...
Many women suffer from varicose veins - those blue lines that snake their way down the sides of the legs, or around the ankles and down to the heels. Sclerotherapy is a great choice for spider vein removal.
Here, I want to share my own experience getting sclerotherapy to treat my spider veins.
My spider veins History
A few years ago I bought an apartment with an entire wall of mirrors. The mirrors are on glass cabinet doors and above them are canned lights that show off each of the faults of my body.
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It was in those mirrors that I first saw the pale blue lines that wormed their way up the sides of both my legs as interstate on a highway map.
My God, I thought, as the saying goes, I'm going back to my mother.
What I had was a case of varicose veins. not the varicose veins of my mother running down the inside of her left leg like an Adirondack mountain range. Still, I feared that the spider veins was a precursor to my own mini-mountain camp and so I continued the ugly veins covered under the knee-length skirts in the summer.
It was so good that I was never a beach person, I thought. No one had to see the veins since I've never been in a bathing suit.
And then, two winters ago, a friend convinced me to go to Tulum in Mexico. for a week's beach vacation and my spider veins were taken from the closet. So it was I. It turns out I am a beach closet freak (these are my legs pictured here on vacation). Since bathing suits were now in my future, the ugly veins had to go. Stat. I went to the Web and started searching.
My search took me to the Vein Treatment Center in Manhattan Upper East Side and to its founder, Dr. Luis Navarro.
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Navarro receives compliments from New York's highest echelon medicine. renowned physicians Jahangir Rahman. Patricia Allen and Lisa Airan all recommend The Venue Treatment Center for long-time editor Vogue Sally Singer. who then wrote one of the best beauty magazine pieces I've ever read. She was pleased with the results.
If Navarro and The Vein Treatment Center were good enough for Vogue then they were good enough for me. I marked an appointment for an appointment and secretly wondered if it was actually possible to erase 12 inches of blue veins from each leg.A meeting with Dr. Luis Navarro
One of the reasons I chose the Vein Treatment Center is because I wanted a specialist who knows veins very, very well. I had read many reports of disgruntled patients who had their veins treated in a dermatologist's office and saw no results despite spending 100s - sometimes thousands - of dollars (each treatment is about $ 300- $ 500 per session, depending on from wherever you go). This, in fact, happened to Cantor, according to his article.
This is the only thing I do in life so I'd better do it well, "said Dr. Navarro with a good grin when I met him in his office.
In fact, Navarro has been treating veins in the legs, hands and face for over 30 years and is the co-creator of intravenous laser treatment. a method that allows doctors to use lasers to remove bulging varicose veins without cutting the body. In the past, doctors stripped offensive veins, first put patients under general anesthesia, then make cuts in the groin and ankle and pulling out offensive veins. It was a surgery my mother never wanted, so she put up with the pain and discomfort.
One concern I had with sclerotherapy was the result, which is not guaranteed. I asked Navarro what he does that a dermatologist would not do. According to Navarro, dermatologists not well trained in vein treatment may be unable to find the true cause of spider veins. The problem is probably a foot away, he says. Poor sclerotherapy work can actually cause more veins to appear. I did not want to.
That sounded right to me. But I had one last question: Cross-leg. At our meeting, I noticed both of us had crossed legs and I had read it whenever it could cause venous problems.
Navarro laughed and shook his head, as if he were letting me into a dirty little secret. That was a relief. I could go on with what I always thought was a bad habit. Ladies: Go ahead and cross your legs. Navarro said everything was fine.
The consultation at the Treatment Center Vein
Before you sign up for treatments, you have a free consultation to determine how to proceed. Navarro's assistant took my complete medical history and asked me detailed questions about my venous problems. It turns out that the mother and I are in good company: One in three women have spider veins and 25% of women suffer from varicose veins, according to veindirectory.org. We would find out during the diagnostic tests, which are part of the consultation, if my deep veins are in good working order.
For the consultation, I transformed into a dress and the assistant did a venous Doppler test on my legs in the front and back for the two junctions in which the blood flows to the main veins and arteries of the legs. Defective valves really sound different, said Navarro. My veins, it seems, are in good working order.
After Doppler, some digital photos of my legs were taken. We discussed the best procedure for treating my veins, sclerotherapy, which consists of injections of saline solution (about 25-50 per leg) along the veins. Then I was told a list of side effects that occur very rarely for people, but had to be mentioned to me (none involving death). I was already sold, so I said: Let's do it.
The Sclerotherapy Procedure
The entire procedure lasted approximately 15 minutes. While I put it on my side and then on my back, Navarro injected saline along the offensive veins and into their sources.
I took a couple of Tylenol at least one hour prior to the procedure to help reduce the prick of the needle, but I was surprised to find that 50 or more injections were actually less painful than laser hair removal. Many injections did not hurt at all, while some actually stung. After the injections, I experienced a bit of itching that was the saline solution working its way through the veins. But the itching lasted only a few minutes.
CI changed a lot from side to side and in my stomach so Navarro could work on every stain. When he finished, a nurse applied ointment to the areas that looked like mosquito bites and covered each injection site with a cotton ball, then wrapped my legs tightly with a bandage. I was instructed to buy hose support at a local pharmacy and to sleep that night and use them for two full days after the appointment. The support hose reduces swelling and keeps the solution in the veins.
I left my appointment satisfied with the level of convenience and pain of the actual procedure.THE
Post-Treatment What to Expect
Navarro warned me that I would develop what he calls blues and bruises - which can last up to 2 weeks. And I did. I was grateful I got the treatment in March when it was too cold to show off my legs.
The only thing I did not like about the after-treatment was wearing hose support for the bed the first night. I had to take a sleeping pill to sleep and it was still an intermittent night. And then there was the problem of washing a pair of support hose and having them completely dry before using. I've never been a person hose, but I was happy it dries quickly.
After the injections my legs looked just like Navarro's assistant warned, like a construction site. I was told I had to endure the confusion knowing that the end result would be beautiful. Having this expectation helped me survive the painful period of black and blues, although more than once in the gym I forgot about the bruises and stripped in front of a room full of women. Oops.
Follow-up Treatments & What to Expect
I ended up having 5 treatments, but some women only need double sessions, others need more than I had. It all depends on how well your veins take for the treatment and how much you want to pay.
The veindirectory.org suggests that people wait a couple of weeks between treatments to allow swelling and bruising to go down but I have 5 treatments within 2 weeks because Navarro said the closer I have them in set the less time I would have to spend bruised.
Women from all over the world flock to your office to get your legs done in a matter of a week or even a few days. People come to New York to shop and at the same time get their veins done. Sometimes it does 3-4 treatments in a day. One expert, Navarro can easily see how treatments are working. You go out with black and blues, but there are no live veins.
Each follow-up treatment was the same: Dr. Navarro studied my legs, greeted me in my healing capacity (I have an A-plus) and began to work inject any veins that still clung to life. I was covered in ointment and cotton balls, wrapped in bandages and sent home for my hose support. As the days went by I saw amazing results. Almost immediately the blue veins in my left leg had disappeared. The veins in my right leg took some treatments, but also disappeared.
It is now a full two weeks since my last treatment and the black and the blues are gone and so are the blue veins. There is a good chance that I will go back once every few years for maintenance as the veins develop naturally in my legs. But I'm so excited about the results that I asked Navarro if he could please find such a miracle solution for cellulite. So my legs would be in perfect shape.
He laughed, so I turned my attention to the ropey blue veins in my hands and wondered if maybe, just maybe, I should have erased them as well. After all, Navarro said he saw beautiful results at hand. Nah. There is no such thing as too much of a good thing.
Editor's Note: The treatments at the Vein Treatment Center were courtesy to the writer.
For more information on the Vein Treatment Center, visit their website or contact them below. And please tell me you've heard about them on the beauty site of About.com.
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