BEFORE
AFTER
Steady - In this stage, your ideal crease can last all day even when you are doing only minimal eyelid crease exercise support. You can take a two to three hour nap and still wake up with the ideal crease holding. If the ideal crease temporarily fails because of crying, inadequate sleep, or puffiness from alcohol consumption, it becomes easier and easier to restore it back to full strength, and you need less immediate effort with eyelid crease exercises than you did earlier in the journey.
Duration of stage: March 5, 2019 – August 16, 2019 (5 months, 12 days)
Summary
After fine tuning the shape of the F-tape, Megan’s ideal crease rarely failed in the morning anymore. When her crease did get challenged, it usually did not fully collapse, but instead became weaker. As time went on, she noticed that when the crease became weak, it could often recover back to full strength on its own. At this stage, the main eyelid crease exercise she still practiced consistently was Looking-Up, and she kept her morning phone use to a bare minimum to protect her results during the most fragile part of the day.
Insight
Throughout Megan’s journey, she did her best to keep the ideal crease folded as consistently as possible, because repetition is what builds stability. A study by Goesel Anson, MD, FACS, describes the idea that temporary wrinkles created by repetitive folding can predict where permanent wrinkles form, which helps explain why consistent folding matters over time. Megan’s steady results did not happen by accident, because she kept experimenting with small modifications to her F-tape, including adjusting the shape and the angle to match her individual eyelid profile more closely. We also think her mindset mattered, because when she had poor results, she did not give up or guess randomly. Instead, she proactively tested different application approaches and checked in with her Eyelid Advisor, which helped her correct issues quickly and stay on track.
Mar 5 - Apr 12 (39 days)
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Prototype Opti-fold fTape shape is too big. (Current tape shape adapted from prototypes)
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Prototype Opti-fold improvements needed.
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Wears regular day tape for the last few days.
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Has a busy week, so for extra support, wants to wear day tapes.
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Cannot end up wearing day tapes, but the crease still survives.
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Prototype fTape is too floppy, but making it smaller was still effective.
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Explains why it is necessary to apply the fTape in her own way to work best.
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New Opti-fold tapes pre-modified based on Laura's feedback. (Current standard)
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Ideal crease about to fail but recovers on it's own.
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Wears day tapes for half a day, after removal, the ideal crease becomes stronger.
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Further experiments with modifying the fTape to better fit her eyelid profile.
Apr 13 - May 23 (41 days)
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With Opti-fold at night, the ideal crease can last all day starting Apr 17-26.
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Apr 27, the ideal crease fails to last all day.
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Difficult to understand why after so long the ideal crease was strong and then fail suddenly.
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With an active level of self-diagnostics, Laura determines she had been applying the fTape wrongly.
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Ideal crease lasts most of the day then fails at hot yoga.
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Ideal crease lasts most of the day then fails in the last hour or two.
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May 4, 'difficult' eye showed a profile change that matched more her 'good' eye.
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Laura posits the matching profile change should correlate with positive behavioural change.
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Non-ideal crease rising up (bad) but it goes back down after 1 firm trace.
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The crease has been good all week.
May 29 - Jun 27 (30 days)
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For the 'difficult' eye, secondary lines start to form.
These lines are already present on her 'good' eye. -
Ideal crease looks weak after having 4 hours of sleep.
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Discuss if progress can reverse completely.
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Starts to not use tapes on June 14. Ideal crease forms.
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Begins to use tapes again on June 27 due to crease failing.
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Ideal crease lasts for 14 days without using any tapes.
Jun 28 - Jul 24 (27 days)
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Ideal crease lasts all day.
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July 1, stops using tapes. The crease starts off weak but as the skin settles, it becomes stronger.
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To help the crease while the skin settles, Laura does the 'looking up' eyelid exercise.
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The crease have not failed ever since she avoided looking down in the morning.
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July 6, ideal crease fails in the morning, and so she wears day tape.
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July 13-18, stops using tapes due to a camping trip. The crease survives squinting and sweating.
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July 19, ideal crease fails but possibly due to eyelid rubbing.
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Wears tapes for 3 days in a row, then on July 22 Laura stops wearing tapes again.
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July 24, ideal crease lasts all day without tapes being worn.
Jul 25 - Sep 28 (2 months, 4 days)
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Megan & the Opti-fold team understands why in her case it works when a smaller fTape is used and angled to leave a gap between it and the eyelashes.
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Accidentally used the phone for 10 minutes, crease fails but flips into place after blinking.
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Intentionally uses the phone for less than 1 minute in the morning. Crease always survives all day.
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Aug 3, Ideal crease survives for 13 days no tapes.
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Sept 4, ideal crease can survive through crying.
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By Sept 26, she had not used any tapes for 42 days. She has not worn Optifold since Aug 15.
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Eyelid Advisor asks Megan to trust her crease to recover after a night of good sleep.
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On Sept 28, wore regular day tape for 10 minutes to fully restore the ideal crease.
Sep 30 - Feb 7 (4 months, 9 days)
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Megan is relieved she can trust her skin to recover instead of wearing tapes.
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By Oct 6, she has gone without wearing tapes for 52 nights in a row.
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She describes how her ideal crease is the new default crease her skin selects.
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She is delighted with the results and wasn't sure it would ever happen to her.
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Oct 24, ideal crease doesn't get weak anymore with stressors (squinting, crying, looking down, etc.)
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Nov 10, mostly everything that used to make the crease fail, now has minimum effect on the crease.
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To remove the residual glue, Laura used coconut oil then switched to Clinique's make up remover.
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Megan's instruction on how to use the make up remover.
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Feb 6 (New Year), ideal crease still going strong. She has not worn Optifold since Aug 15.
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Laura helps out with another Occidental client's case. The other Occidental client believes in Megan'a story that it motivates her to be very diligent. Second month results showed her hard work.
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Megan continues her journey as a student actress and expresses gratitude for the Opti-fold team.