A Visit With Doc

One of Doc's nurses stuck me in a surgery room (I think….It had one of those giant lights that fade to dark as someone slowly loses consciousness on a gurney on television) while I waited the half-hour until he could see me for my 3-month appointment. More accurately, it has been 12 weeks since my surgery.

I’m usually in a consultation room where I typically find a copy of New Beauty magazine. Haven’t seen that one at the grocery store checkout? It’s fascinating. The first time I picked it up, I figured it was an ersatz Glamour or Elle—Heidi Klum on the cover, beauty secrets, blah, blah, blah, but this was…something else entirely: a whole magazine dedicated to cosmetic surgery procedures and cosmeceuticals. Botox is written about like other magazines might write about Frederick Fekkai’s latest hair product or summer’s sizzling shades for nails. It’s mesmerizing and horrifying at the same time.

Anyhow, in the surgery room, I had to make do with the June issue of Vogue, which has a stunning spread on fashions inspired by Alfred Hitchcock movies—gloves, people! The model was wearing gloves! I think it’s the only fashion spread I’ve found where I’d wear the outfits. All of them. Joy! My style icon is Tippi Hedren in The Birds. Why wouldn’t she be? I often feel like I’m being pecked to death by crazed birds, and she manages to look elegant throughout.

Doc finally came in, squeezed my nose, and told me to come back in after three months. OK, that’s a gross oversimplification, but my nose is on-schedule. It’s still swollen in the bridge and tip, no surprise there, and the tip will definitely look different when it's all over. I think these visits are scheduled more to placate antsy patients than for any medical reason. If there were anything REALLY wrong, I’d think most people would call. Oh, and I was chided to remember to use sunscreen.

As an aside, do the anti-sun people bug you (No, Jen, we wear sunscreen, eat 5-9 servings of vegetables, and recycle, always)? Well, they bug me, and seems I'm not the only one who thinks they need to lay off. It's one thing if you're out in the baking sun for hours and hours, but I'm thinking of those people who, if you don't have SPF 400 with UVA and UVB blockers in your makeup and moisturizer, slathered on under your clothes while you sit in an office all day, think you're setting yourself up for very localized nuclear annihilation. You know those poor people who were locked up in the basement in Austria for 24 years? They looked older than their ages. And yet, no sun.

As I left Doc's office after my completely routine check up, there was a girl in the waiting room, probably in her late teens, with a splint on her nose. I wanted to go up to her and say, hey, that was me, too, and it’s going to be okay, I promise! You’re through the worst of it! But decided that would be kind of weird and possibly creepy. Who’s this crazy old lady? (Because, face it, when you’re 19, 29 is as old as Methuselah, no matter how much you say 30 is the new 20—and why would you want it to be?) Anyway, I embarrass myself enough with my word vomit even without premeditation, so I decided to keep my rhino-patient empathy to myself.

Oh, I asked Doc about some things about healing that are somewhat interesting--why your eyes get bruised and why your nose is oily after a nose job. Those blogs are on deck.