By Cathi DeThomas, CME Medical Esthetician

As senior medical esthetician at Laser Skin Solutions, my job is to help patients find solutions for turning back time and setting a plan into motion that works within their budget. This one of the reasons I enjoy my job so much!

It helps when our patients can tell me precisely WHAT concerns them about their skin, but often I am faced with, “My face is getting old, and I don’t like it – what can I do?”

I can certainly look at a patient and make recommendations based on what I see, but sometimes we are not seeing the same things.  This is the best time to grab a mirror, hold it up to the patient, and say “Show me what bothers YOU about your skin”. Then I can get specific, and make suggestions:  When they say, “I hate the frown lines between the brows” – BOTOX® would be the way to go, or “what can I do about the creases by my mouth- that would be a filler, like Juvederm™, or “I spent my early years baking in the sun- look at all of these freckles”- Our Limelight IPLcan take care of the sun damage!

If the patient points out sun damage, wrinkles and allover aging skin, then I would recommend a laser resurfacing treatment like Pearl, or Pearl Fractional to illuminate brown spots AND plump collagen.  I don’t like to overwhelm patients with a lot of information they don’t need – I prefer to zero in on what can really help to achieve their goals, but in order to do that, I need to know: “What bothers YOU about your skin?”