The Botox Blog

A few months ago a friend of mine, whose husband is a neurologist needed an "office person" to fill in on short notice. I offered to help, not realizing how much this experience would transform my views of beauty and aging. The temporary Tuesday job became a more regular thing for me.

One day, the neurologist who I will call Dr. N was referred a new patient for evaluation of seizures. His patient arrived; I'll call her Nan. I greeted Nan a 40-year-old, pretty, I thought,( at least not as wrinkly as me) with full lips, woman. I gave her the patient paperwork and a pen. I rarely greet people with a smile and not have it reciprocated. She wasn’t rude, but she wasn’t friendly. I thought I was friendly, but maybe I bugged her, maybe she was stressed by her seizures. I tried not to interact or annoy her, as I'm perpetually worried that people don't like me. Dr. N was ready to see her and after a few minutes of evaluation he came out of the exam room perplexed, reporting that Nan is nice but that there is something strange about her.

Later I learned that Nan works at a "laser center" and has been working as an aesthetician for nearly a decade. As a benefit she has received copious and frequent amounts of Botox and various filler injections for free. Dr. N is unable to assess her neurological functions completely as her forehead fails to move; apparently the ability to lift your brows symmetrically indicates something. Her brows were entirely immobilized by years of Botox® injections.

Dr. N completed her exam and I prepared her paperwork for the various tests she needed and signed her out. I felt uncomfortable around her even weird and I had no idea why. Dr. N couldn’t figure out why he felt so strange around her either. We agreed that our interactions with Nan left us feeling "odd". In the days that followed Nan’s visit, I found myself thinking and wondering what was so strange about her.

Later that week while driving, a billboard for Rejuvederm® hits me across the face, it tells me "parenthesis don't belong on my face," and now I know exactly why Nan troubled me and left me feeling so empty. She has no parenthesis or adjectives for that matter. Though she may have smiled her eyes did not reflect that and that thwarted my interactions and responses with her.

Imagine reading a Hemingway novel without any adjectives or parenthesis, it would not be the same. We would not and could not connect with the characters. I couldn't read Nan, nor could her doctor. When we see a smile, that’s just not enough. The eyes with their lines and the wrinkles are the adjectives that tell you just what kind of smile it is. If you smile at someone and your forehead is frozen, how do they know you are sincerely happy to see them?

So today I embrace my furrowing worry lines, age spots and parenthesis, despite how they got there. These are the adjectives of my continuing story. Faces are supposed to have adjectives, parenthesis and all kinds of punctuations just like the pages of a well-written book.