Knowing When to Stop

Seeing many patients in the consultation room, I often meet people who have been from one clinic to another before finally coming to me.

What they have in common is that I can see the traces of far too many procedures.

Someone was needed to stop it

A lifting laser here, a thread lift there, filler somewhere else. When procedures are stacked up like this across several clinics, the real problem is that no one takes responsibility for the whole.

A clinic can say, "I only did this one thing, so the rest is not my responsibility." But to my mind, what was needed was someone to stop those indiscriminately accumulating procedures at some point.

"They'll take this and go elsewhere anyway"

When people go from clinic to clinic for treatment, there is a strong tendency to recommend unnecessary procedures, thinking, "They'll take this and go elsewhere anyway, won't they?"

If you settle on one clinic and keep following up only there, I believe the likelihood of that drops considerably.

Not doing the treatment that need not be done

There are cases where many procedures have quietly accumulated without the person realising it, the face has changed so much from what it was, and it is hard to hope that doing something more will make it better.

Simply doing nothing and resting for a while may be the answer.

Going when it is time to go, and stopping when it is time to stop. That, I believe, is medicine.

Not putting off a treatment that should be done matters too — but not doing a treatment that need not be done is far harder.

Building up time together at one clinic, and travelling back against that time. That is the practice I aim for.

Whether a treatment is needed, and how it progresses, varies between individuals. Whether you should do more now or pause for a while is best decided together in the consultation room, looking at your face directly.