Mirror, Mirror

My thinking went like this: mid-January, time for a lift. And I didn't mean chocolate. There were those pesky frown lines etched between my eyes.


When I called the office of Plastic Surgery and Dermatology to make an appointment for an evaluation, the cheerful receptionist informed me that depending on my needs, I could receive an injection of Botox at my very first appointment.


"Does it hurt?" I asked.


"I'm terribly squeamish myself," she admitted, "but, when it's my turn, I practically jump in the chair."

I spent the days until my appointment scrutinizing my face in a magnetizing mirror - well, I also went

snow-shoeing and avoided aspirin to prevent bruising at the future injection site -  but, when I caught myself retracting the skin on my face with my fingers in different lights, I knew I had acquired a new obsession.

 "I'm going for Botox," I confided to my friend Jane.


"Big deal," she said. "You're certainly not the first."


I arrived for my appointment the day after a snowstorm; in fact, I had checked snow accumulation around my car with OCD-like regularity throughout the night. A quick glance in my car mirror revealed the same sort of dark circles produced by those trick binoculars that gave one black eyes in one's youth. And what about those laugh lines? Maybe they should go too.


As I filled out several pages of forms, an older woman - a stranger -  bent down and peered into my face.


"What are you having done?" she demanded as I drew back. I noticed that her face was crisscrossed with as many lines as a railroad yard.


"Um, I'm not sure," I said. "But, I think a little Botox right here..." I pointed between my eyes.


"You don't need Botox!" she exclaimed.


"Well, I..." I faltered. 


Just then, another patient emerged from an interior office, dark glasses obscuring her face, her hair tied up in a Hermes scarf. She was accompanied by someone I assumed to be her husband. 


"You here for a face lift?" she asked me, smiling.


"No! I'm just here for an evaluation," I said. "And possibly a little Botox."


She removed her dark glasses to reveal swollen eyes circled by shiny skin, tinged with faint blue and green bruises and slender tracks of black stitches.


"Dr. X is the best," she declared. "And I've spent the last year doing research."


"You had your eyes done?" I asked politely.


"I had horrible bags," she said.


"Pouches like pillows," her husband piped up helpfully.


"Really," I said.


"We even searched outside the U.S. in Canada, and Dr. X is the top guy."


"Well, that's reassuring," I said, returning to my forms.


Under a question reading: What Are You Looking for in a Surgeon, I wrote "skill."


Smiling men and women began to fill the smartly decorated waiting room. Had they all received Botox? I wondered.


Eventually I was ushered into an inner sanctum with terrible light. As I gazed like Snow White's evil stepmother into a hand mirror, not one thought of being the fairest in the land entered my mind. Instead, I saw sallow, blotchy skin and runnels like trenches on either side of my mouth when I grimaced.

"Hello, Amy, how can I help you?" the boisterous Dr. X demanded, bursting through the door. His eyes roamed my face like a prison guard's searchlight. I could tell that a frown wanted to emerge, but couldn't somehow. He read over my answers on the questionnaire. Under: How Soon Would You Like to Have Your Surgical Procedure? I had written NOT YET.


"I was thinking a little Botox or something," I said. Dr. X's own forehead was smooth as glass.


"We can do that," he murmured. "No problem. I think one syringe will do it. Hmm," he continued, trying, but failing to squint.

"What about the maxio labial blahdeblah here?" He had found the runnels.  "We can do that today too, if you wish, but, that might take two syringes, especially on the left side."


My stomach lurched. "I think just the Botox."


Dr. X tapped a pen on his clipboard. "Are you considering plastic surgery?" he asked.


"Um, what would you suggest?" 


"We could pull the skin beneath your chin up and under, leaving just a tiny line here," he explained. 

"And then tighten the skin here," he added, as he smoothed skin back on my cheeks with both hands. 

"Leaving a hairline scar there that would be hidden beneath your sideburns and run behind your ears..."


"Thanks," I said hastily, feeling an anxious heat spread upwards from my belly, "But, I think I'm good with just the Botox."


"Great," Dr. X said. "Make yourself comfortable, this should take about 30 seconds."

"Oh," he said, pausing, syringe in hand, "Do you have any milk product allergies?"

"What do you mean?" I asked. I pictured myself seizing and dropping to the floor when the Botox hit my bloodstream.


"Do you eat cheese?"


"Yes," I answered.

"Then you should be okay."


I closed my eyes as Dr. X drew six little target dots. I felt a tiny pinch and heard a minute crunch as the needle pierced muscle. Six times. Then it was over.

"If you want to consider the face lift procedure," Dr. X remarked casually, "I need to let you know I'll be retiring in August, so be sure to schedule it before then."

"Right," I said.

I wrote out a check for roughly $10 a second and grinned at the roomful of beaming patients awaiting their turns. 

The camaraderie, at least, felt real.