Most first consultations are spent reconstructing information the patient has but cannot recall: which medication they take, what they were operated on for in 2014, what they weighed last year. That can be prepared in ten minutes at home, and the difference in what gets covered is enormous.
What to bring
- The list of your medication, with name and dose. Include contraceptives, supplements, vitamins and anything "natural": some common herbal products affect clotting, and that matters in theatre.
- Your history. Previous operations with dates, allergies, problems with earlier anaesthetics, conditions under treatment. If you have reports, better than from memory.
- Recent test results, if you have them. You do not need to have any done before coming, but if they already exist they save time.
- Your weight over the last two years, even approximately. In body surgery, weight stability changes the indication and the timing.
- Photographs of yourself from before, if what concerns you is a change. Before the pregnancy, before the weight loss, before the accident. They help more than any other image.
- Your questions, written down. This is the most forgotten and the most regretted on the way out.
And what is better left at home
The photograph of an actress or of a stranger on Instagram. The impulse is understandable, but it does not work: that nose sits on another face, with different skin, different thickness and different bone structure, and copied onto yours it does not give that result or anything like it.
What does help, a great deal, is bringing your face or your body and pointing at what bothers you. "I do not like this hump showing in profile" is a working instruction. "I want this nose" is not.
The aim is not to resemble another person. It is for what bothers you to stop bothering you.
Five questions worth asking
- Am I a good candidate for this, or is there something to sort out first?
- What happens if I do nothing? In many cases the honest answer is "nothing", and it is useful to know.
- What is the recovery really like? Not how many days of rest: when you will be able to work, carry a child, drive, train.
- What risks does it carry in my particular case? Not the generic ones from the leaflet.
- What does the price include and what does it not? Fees, surgical facility, anaesthesia, implants, garments, follow-up and what happens if a revision is needed.
Bring someone with you if you want
It is a good idea, especially for the first one. People retain roughly half of what is said in a medical consultation, and less still when the subject touches something personal. A second person hears what gets past you.
And a word about time: leave without deciding. No cosmetic operation is urgent, and thinking about it for a week costs nothing at all.