It was my first time visiting this spa. As I walked through the door, I found myself surrounded by cozy beige colored leather interior and shelves filled with skin care products. A small water fountain provided calming ambient sound in the background. The waiting area was arranged like one’s living room. A variety of magazines awaited on the coffee table. Natural light filled the room through an enormous window behind the couch.

I arrived early for my appointment in the fear of being late. I hate being late. Patty Gamba just said goodbye to a girl about my age, and her mother who were getting ready for a wedding. She then sat down next to me onto the couch and turned her full attention to me - or I should say to my face. I could sense that as we talked about her Toluca Lake skincare business, her eyes examined my skin.

“Get a massage, a pedicure or your hair done while you are relaxing somewhere nice, but leave the facial for your home esthetician! You don’t want to jump into a chlorine filled pool or work on your suntan with open pores on your face,” suggested Patty Gamba, co-founder of Dermix Medical Spa.

I was to have the Dermix Signature Facial, an imvigorating combination of several modalities to exfoliate epidermal cells and a bit of a face and neck massage. “You can have the pampering fu-fu facial, or I can give you a Dermix Facial Treatment,” she said with a conspirator’s smile and a glow in her eyes. Of course I nodded.

I experienced something that I wouldn’t have even imagined could happen to me. As I lay on a table in an immaculate, yet serene room, she first cleaned my sun-damaged and dehydrated skin with a clarifying tonic and a scrub. Gomba and all other esthaticists at the Dermix Medical Spa use a cosmesutical product-line for treatments, Dermix, she developed with a few other professionals from the medical field.

While her professional hands worked on my face, she educated me on what she was about to do, and why she thought it was better than microdermology. Gamba talked about microdermology as a fad. It is trendy now, just like many things were for a moment, before something else became hot.

“If you look at a person’s face under microscope after a microdermology facial, you can see that the surface of the face is pretty scratched. Following the procedure I use, the face is smooth,” said Gomba as she held a highest quality surgical knife in her hand and warned me not to talk for a while from now on.

She peeled the top layer of my skin off with professional, small and even movements. It was not painful at all. Several different layers of therapeutic creams were applied to my bare face, one on top of another, filled with acids - microderm and epicuren enzyme. It was intended to smooth-out the texture of the skin while stimulating its own skin cell renewal.

As she dried the mask with a hairdryer (I can not say for sure that it was a hairdryer as my eyes were closed), the movie “Face Off” came to mind. My skin felt a few sizes too small for my face as it continuously shrank. After a while she loosened it up by applying liquid and massaging it in. The treatment was enhanced by a soothing, firming and lifting mask, showing immediate results. When I could finally open my eyes, I was given a mirror to examine the results of one hour’s work. I smiled at myself with a healthier, naturally-glowing skin.

I was curious about one thing though… I was scared the hair that she also cut with the dead skin on my face would grow back stronger, and I would have to end up shaving in the mornings, like men do. Gamba, however, calmed me with an interesting story about a Chinese medicine man. He took a hair from his head and implanted at his arm. After about six weeks, the hair took the texture of the body, proving that hormones define hair growth, not the fact that we cut it. Also, she said “if that were true, that cutting hair makes it grow back stronger, we would not have that many bald man walking on the streets, would we?”

Next, I tried the Colombian Wrap. It is exclusive for Dermix Spa. Jairo Gamba is from Colombia, so are all the ingredients they use for this body treatment. The therapist scrubbed my whole body with an exfoliating cream and a fine hair scrubber. Then she applied a topical active potent cream and wrapped my body in cellophane. I spent 20 minutes under a heated blanket dozing off, followed by another 20 minutes wrapped in ice cold bandages. I was wide away for the second part of the treatment.

The hot and cold therapy provides additional hydrating elements by detoxifying and contouring. My legs felt firmer and a bit skinnier after the session, and it was probably due to the reduction of water retention. I left the room with a revitalized feeling of wellness.

I completed my spa experience with the Hot Stone Massage. This ancient healing art of stone massage is a modality for physical and spiritual balancing. The therapeutic application involved the use of smooth, heated and cold stones. As the massage therapist worked on my tense muscles from head to toe, the stones became an extension of her hands.

Among their many services, DERMIX Medical Spa offers the very popular Botox and Restylane, Laser Hair Removal, Esclerotherapy, Ultrasonic Facial, as well as Cryogenic Therapy, Cosmelan Peel, various exfoliating treatments and a series of body massages. DERMIX also offers Mesotherapy, the newest technique in weight-loss, which is accomplished naturally with micro injections in specific areas of your body to burn fat, firm and tone.

Before I left the Dermix Medical Spa, Gamba, by then my esthetician, put together a personalized goody bag for me. She also supplied me with a home skin care regimen, including the use of sun cream anytime I’m outdoors and a Vitamin C Complex Serum twice a day to hydrate my skin.

I left my neighborhood spa with not only a healthier skin, but with a head full of information. I learned how to take better care for my body and some common-sense-tips, such as to never have a facial while on vacation.