I have had too many patients who simply have very artificial-looking results from fillers. Lips that look like a duck, and cheeks that look like chipmunks. I do not create these results but I see them come to my office every day from other injectors. Just last week I had a patient who has been my patient for many years who tried to avoid the one-hour drive to see me for fillers and she got injected by a local provider 6 weeks before her wedding. I had to see her 3 times to get her lips under control and I am so happy that she did not go through the injection of her cheeks by the same provider. Even though my patient had enough taste to realize she looked fake and wanted to look natural before her upcoming nuptials, I have too many patients who either do not acknowledge that they look fake or just want to live with it because they paid for it. They are also under the false assumption that the result will go away very quickly. This may not be the case.

To me looking unnatural simply makes no sense at all. Why would you live with this result even another day of your life even if you paid for it? It is so easy to dissolve hyaluronic-acid based products with results typically seen in a few hours that it makes no sense in my opinion to live with a fake result, no matter how slight, even for another day. If we agree that naturalness is the most important objective, let’s also please agree to dissolve anything that looks fake. I have a lot of patients who simply hang on to the fake result because they somehow don’t want to lose it.

I had a patient who had very fake lips and I asked her repeatedly to dissolve them. After she had them dissolved, she said she was depressed for about a month because she was used to having unnaturally big lips. After that month, her aesthetic mindset changed and she saw how fake all of her friends looked. She has been my patient for years and is grateful that she does not look like her friends, who don’t even know they look bad. The thing that I always tell my patients is that it is so easy to refill the lips if you feel that they are not enough after I dissolve them. I can design them far better than what you have now. Usually the problem is the lips are not proportional, they lack shape (look like a sausage), and have too much border, which looks horrible. I will be writing a dedicated blog on this subject next year. Look out for it.

Some cases of dissolving make absolute sense but people don’t know they can do it. I had a gentleman who had Juvederm under his eyes in Chicago years ago and came to me with bumps and lumps. I asked him what he had done and he said well he had Juvederm 5 years ago but everyone told him it couldn’t be Juvederm since it was five years ago. I said that it most likely was. He started to cry because no one said they could fix it. The next day he was normal, and the lumps and bumps were gone. I had a lady who had Perlane (now called Restylane Lyft) injected into her lips 3 years prior and said she had a bump that bothered her but said no way could it be the product since it was only supposed to last 6 to 12 months. I said that it was most likely the Perlane. I dissolved it and 3 hours later she called my office in joy. Accordingly, if bad fillers can last years if not a lifetime, how long are you going to wait before you let me fix your face in a few minutes? How many days or months do you want to look abnormal and unnatural? Another day to me is not worth it, and it makes no sense.