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Man, that hi-def can really make news anchors go to the extreme to look good on camera. But here’s a cautionary tale: Houston’s KHOU-TV anchor Lucy Noland was missing in action for much of this year after an Intense Pulsed Light surgery to remove a freckle left her with second-degree burns and feeling “as if somebody had seared my face with white hot poker rods.” Noland compared her discolored, burnt skin to a “tiger’s stripes.”

Noland appeared on tape at the end of February to show off her burns and warn others about the dangers of such treatments.

“Even with the best practitioner, this is a medical procedure, and things can go wrong,” she said. “This is surgery, using light to cut into the skin. They don't tell you that in the ads, and they don't tell you that in person. So I want people to know enough to ask these questions.”

Noland is now being treated twice a month at Baylor College of Medicine. Treatments will take five months, but she and her doctors are confident her face will heal.