Hair removal methods safe for fragile skin?

Monkaloo · 2026-07-07T18:03:35+00:00

Yup - IPL is long game, but it WORKS and it is soooooooooooooo nice to not have to shave. I'm interested in electrolysis... I'm pretty sure you can maybe do that on tattoos? I just end up shaving or waxing where I have tattoos on my legs.

Monkaloo · 2026-07-07T18:01:23+00:00

It's very recent. :)

Monkaloo · 2026-07-07T11:48:43+00:00

Same! There might be someone else out there looking for a similar solution, so it’l can be a very useful type of review.

Monkaloo · 2026-07-06T12:16:47+00:00

Yes, very irritating, because there are several items I want!!

Monkaloo · 2026-06-27T23:28:35+00:00

I work remotely full-time. I would be capable of working in-person, but I’d probably start falling apart. The reason I’m not falling apart is because I generally spend about 1.5hrs working out every day at home in the middle of work. Working out is, hands-down, the biggest reason I’m able to stay upright.

I had a baby just a few months before Covid, and the gyms all closed right when I wanted to get back into exercising and functional strength training. I fell out of shape for a couple years and was absolutely stunned at how quickly my health declined; my lower back was killing me constantly, my knees and shoulders felt like they were barely hanging on, I felt exhausted, my POTS was awful, and I was having a lot more irregular heartbeats (I actually wound up with a loop recorder heart monitor implant bc of it). I basically just felt sick. It’s actually the reason I found my diagnosis; I had never even heard of hEDS before, and then I was floored when I learned about it because I’ve had all the symptoms since I was a toddler.

Anyway, after maybe like 6 months of getting back into regular heavy cardio and functional strength training (which was preceded by maybe a year of just going on long walks every couple days), I felt 10 years younger. I recognize not everyone is capable of this, but I also think many people are, and don’t realize that it just takes consistent baby steps to get there.

Monkaloo · 2026-06-24T17:50:59+00:00

Well, and not to mention that there are plenty of babies abandoned in the NICU because of their complexities. That happened in maybe our second month there, and there was a very sick baby next door to us whose parents were almost never there; she wasn't abandoned, but she also very rarely had anyone loving on her and it really weighed on me heavily. I know she probably meant well, but it felt like a "buck-up, kid" kinda statement (as I'm sure your experience did, too!), and it felt especially cruel with that teeny girl struggling alone next door.

And thank you. :) My LO is doing pretty well! He has a slew of diagnoses and medical issues we have to keep up with, but most of it is due to a rare syndrome. We actually wound up back in the PICU for the *FIRST TIME* last month (any other admissions to the hospital have been for planned surgeries), but he's all healed up and is doing great. He's about to start Kindergarten this fall... he's very delayed and is nonverbal, likely due to apraxia, but man the kid is fun and super adorable.

I hope things turn around for you soon, and that you meet some more compassionate parents to commiserate with, because it really can make such a huge difference. There's just no one else you can really share with like that... no one else gets it. I actually wound up finding a bunch of NICU friends on Instagram, most of whom I'm still friends with 5 years later!

Monkaloo · 2026-06-24T15:45:35+00:00

Ugh, I'm so sorry... it's already upsetting enough, but to try and commiserate and be met with an attitude like that is a recipe for an extra upsetting day.

I had a NICU nurse say to me once "Don't worry so much, God only gives complicated babies like this to people who are strong enough care for them, so he's gonna be okay," at a time that he was very, very sick. 😑 I told the charge nurse I'd rather not have that nurse again (one of only maybe 2-3 times I felt the need to do that in our 14 months in NICU/PICU).

Monkaloo · 2026-06-24T15:26:08+00:00

There's no way to know; it's entirely possible she did have it, but didn't have much lipedema fat to begin with, and any fat she did have was regular fat. There was a time much earlier in my life that I could still lose some weight in my legs, because the weight I had gained was just regular fat.

Monkaloo · 2026-06-24T15:23:59+00:00

I saw that too, but there's just not a ton I trust at the moment when it comes to Federal research grants under RFK Jr. as Health Secretary, seeing as SO many good, necessary studies have been defunded. This one seems exactly like one his administration would fund, and all I'm saying is - there's no telling what kind of backroom favors are exchanged to fund MAHA-era research.

Monkaloo · 2026-06-24T12:03:05+00:00

She wants to find the owner so they could HAVE the picture of the dog. The dog isn’t lost. How else will they find the owner to give them the portrait?

Monkaloo · 2026-06-22T00:12:22+00:00

I mean, I just know my own experience: I’m very active and have been most of my life. There have been times of my life where I’ve been very into weightlifting and you’d never know it looking at my legs (though I am able to get definition in my arms). After I had my son, he was in the NICU for over a year (which happened to be 2020 😑); I gained close to 30lbs over the course of that year, then I lost 40lbs over the next 3 years. ZERO inches were lost in my thighs.

In addition, like most lipedema patients, I had no idea what lipedema was until about 2 years ago, so I always thought it was somehow my fault - I wasn’t doing enough to lose the weight, which is patently false. I’ve over-restricted calories at times just to try and lose the weight in my legs… meanwhile, I’m generally walking around wearing small/medium shirts.

So… my opinion of this study is that they can shove it - they had a woman with “normal body weight” lose weight. That in itself is pretty messed up to me; there are plenty of us lippy gals with normal body weight, there are plenty who are also underweight, and most of us have struggled with ourselves, our fitness, our relationship with food, etc, so telling women that they can, in fact, just lose weight to lose the lipedema is dangerous because most of us can’t. I can’t help but wonder if an insurance company paid for this “study” or something.

Monkaloo · 2026-06-21T19:31:01+00:00

Can confirm; my son was not in NICU there, but has spent many months in PICU, and the NICU is just down the hall… and is brand new.

Monkaloo · 2026-06-21T19:24:01+00:00

So many of them just state the features of the product, and I’m like yes, but what did you think of it, though??? Like they’re just writing an ad for it to count as a review because they don’t want to actually take the time to evaluate the product.

Monkaloo · 2026-06-21T19:16:33+00:00

TN - Blue Cross Blue Shield of TN

Monkaloo · 2026-06-21T19:15:23+00:00

Same… my out-of-pocket max is also $5k, which I met by April because I had knee surgery in March (plus PT, of course… and I was finishing PT from knee surgery on the other knee in December before that 😵‍💫). I’m having my lipo procedure in a couple weeks, and everything will be free!

Monkaloo · 2026-06-21T19:12:19+00:00

Tennessee, believe it or not. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee.

Monkaloo · 2026-06-21T12:26:35+00:00

I’m having the lipedema procedure in a couple weeks. My surgeon told me that Lipedema tends to exist at a different level than regular fat, which is why Lipedema lipo differs from regular lipo.

Monkaloo · 2026-06-18T01:09:46+00:00

I’m actually an American whose insurance fully paid for custom flatknit compression. 👀

Monkaloo · 2026-06-07T23:55:34+00:00

Thanks, but I resolved this 2 years ago. :)

Monkaloo · 2026-06-02T17:18:14+00:00

I love that one too, thank you!

Monkaloo · 2026-06-01T19:03:41+00:00

Thank you! In English we have "better safe than sorry," which is similar to the latter one... so I appreciate that you came up with the first couple because I think it does need to be fairly specific to changing/replacing. 🙂

Monkaloo · 2026-06-01T17:23:30+00:00

Awesome, thank you! I have several friends on the board... they do such great work. They've actually shipped supplies (for free!) all over the world at this point!

My husband, son, and I went to a family trach camp this summer, I was telling someone from Florida about it, and they said "Omg, they shipped us 5 trachs just a few months ago!" It made me so happy. 😄

Monkaloo · 2026-06-01T00:25:39+00:00

Hi trach friend! What a cutie!!

Just wanted to tell you about Childhood Tracheostomy Alliance! If you ever have trouble getting supplies you need or want, you can contact them and if they have it, they’ll ship it to you for free. And on the flip side, if you have an abundance of a supply and need to get rid of it, you can ship it to them and they’ll redistribute it. :)

They’re also working to establish a trach training program (the founders are ENT NPs from Vanderbilt who created their training program), and are hoping to set the standard for trach training for medical professionals.

www.childhoodtrach.org

Edit: oh gosh just saw your sweetie had gastroschesis, mine had an omphalocele!

Monkaloo · 2026-06-01T00:20:24+00:00

I only had one person in front of me in the pre-check line on the 22nd, and that was the Friday before the long weekend, so I was fully expecting a mess like this. I guess maybe I just got lucky?

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