A New You!!!!

ABOVE is the AFTER picture! Now I'm wondering if perhaps there was some "over" correction . . . not sure.





My first cosmetic procedure. It wasn't easy. Dr. Simon injected my face with lidocaine while his nurse wiped away the blood. Then, quickly and efficiently, he filled in my smile lines with Radiesse. My face was numb, my hands were sweaty, I was in full-on panic attack mode, but I still asked him if he could fix the scar tissue on my knuckles from years of scratching them raw. "Of course," he said, "but first you have to work on your stress. Meditate. Then I can make your hands like new, like baby skin." Work on my stress??? What a thing to say. Come to think of it, this procedure was my reward for receiving tenure, an odd reward, really. It hurt like hell, it swelled up and bruised, and since instead of resting that day I cleaned the entire house, I was quite ill by Saturday night. I felt hot and tired and dizzy and slightly naseous. All in all, the first couple of days sucked.

Of course, everyone downplays that part. The truth is, Radiesse is painful for awhile, and you won't feel like yourself until you heal, and THAT might take a week or more. So, how do I feel now? It's been three days, and I have to admit that the absence of those folds around my mouth has made me giddy at times. I don't know why I hated my smile lines as much as I did; everyone told me that they were a positive thing, a way of showing the world that I was a happy person. However, every time I looked in the mirror at a certain angle, those lines were all I could see. They were sunken reminders of my weight loss, which happened around the time of my divorce, so perhaps those lines were somehow connected to the pain and loss of that bleak period. I don't know for sure, but I do know that I looked much older because of them, and I wasn't ready.

That's what it came down to. Whatever anyone else thought, the furrows were a sure sign of age, and I wasn't quite prepared to age gracefully. Without those lines, whether or not it's an illusion, I feel that I have taken back the damage of the divorce and the marks it indented me with. Stupid? Maybe. But know I have the face of the woman who had not yet known how painful life could become. It feels like I conquered the past, even if only in a small way. If I could do that for under a $1,000 bucks and the effects last nearly 2 years, then I think perhaps it was a wise investment for me.

But . . . says the evil, critical voice that lives in my head . . . you can't conquer time. At some point, we age, and no amount of filler will change that. Yes, I know. I realize that Radiesse is not the cure for aging and mortality. I don't think that was my real reason. I have accepted the fact that my face will never look 25 again, and actually, I am not really interested in that anymore. Dr. Simon, with a few zaps of the Coolaser and some more filler could actually give me that 25 year old face for a few more years, but I am done now. Yeah, right, says my mother, "it's a slippery slope, you'll be back."

I don't think I'll do much else for the forseeable future. I don't feel the need. I'm also not wealthy--I've maxed out my vanity budget. I guess what this all came down to was this: I accept the reality of aging, but there was something I needed to erase from my past. I was tired of the reminder--the sunken cheeks, the lines--that at one point I lost 30 pounds because I was sad. I wanted to eat, but my life had dissolved into the ether. I was gaunt, frail, underweight and utterly devastated. My cheeks disappeared into hollows and furrows. I was hungry, but I couldn't eat. Now, I look like the woman who was healthy and happy. Maybe no one else will see it--but I do--every day. My face matches my heart: full.