“Enough, is enough !”



With the general public beginning to accept aesthetic treatment as a way to enhance a person’s appearance, just as cosmetics do, more and more patients come for treatment to improve the facial aging sign.

Belle, a mother of two teenage children first came to my clinic feeling uncertain about aesthetic procedures. She is a stay-home mum for her kids. Now that her kids are grown up, she wanted a new lease of life.

A consultation was carried out. We focused our discussion on the problem areas that she is concerned the most, and as usual, I asked her to go home to think about it and come back when she is mentally prepared for the treatment.
She appeared two weeks later. A procedure was carried out. She went home happily.

As she came for her follow up, I noticed that she was wearing brighter coloured clothes and she was happy. I was happy for her too. I felt that I have helped her improved her quality of life.

A month later, she came back for more enhancement treatment. She was wanted to add volume to plush up her lips. Two months later, she wanted more fillers on the lips.  “Doctor Hoo, I want to have even fuller lips,” she said. “But you look absolutely fabulous right now!”, I replied.  I assessed her face again, with the current ratio of the thickness of the upper and lower lips, it’s considered fulfilling the golden ratio of the face, and instituting more hyaluronic acid treatment would over do her face. I politely declined.

As one sees results in the treatment, it encourages the person to seek more treatment to perfect the treatment area. Just as all other good things in life, it is never enough because when a patient looks at the problem area, he/she will magnify the problem. Instead, we should look not only at the problematic part, but how to optimize it so that the treated area matches well with the rest of the face, and in the same time, reserves one’s signature feature. This is the challenging part of aesthetics. And it’s never easy. The patient and doctor will need to have the same aim.

Though it is tempting for more, we constantly need to remind ourselves the purpose of the treatment - to improve our image and quality of life. Over treatment may jeopardise one’s beauty; I have seen people’s lives turned dysfunctional or their beauty being jeopardised during his/her overly enthusiast quest to beautify themselves. Then, the whole purpose of aesthetic treatment has already swayed. It should help to improve lives rather than ruining them.

The wisdom now lies in finding the balance; finding the grey between the black and white, and the centre between the extremes. Once balance is struck, take a deep breath, and say to ourselves, enough is enough.