Charles Runels, MD
A three-year-old girl, while playing in the floor of her home, becoming curious, bit into an electrical cord. You may ask why? Before you answer, consider that if I asked you right now to try to imagine what an electrical cord tastes like, you could do it. The shocking fact is that you can imagine what almost anything tastes like because at some time in your life you have had almost everything in your mouth.
So, I'm not going to judge her; I'm just going to be grateful that whenever it was as a child that I put an electrical cord in my mouth, I didn't bite hard enough to sustain a burn. What is even more interesting is that you can remember the taste of things without really remembering when you tasted it. To test that theory, can you remember the taste of grass? Dirt? Burlap? Tree bark? A shoe? Plastic? Carpet? And we won't think too much about the taste of your lover (though if you are like me you still sometimes want the taste of that special person--their mouth, their skin--when that person is not around--even years later).
Sorry, got off track a little, back to the story. This unfortunate
girl sustained a severe burn to the bottom lip leaving scar tissue and no lip
where there was once a beautiful mouth. Reconstructive surgery built her a
lip but the cosmetic result was not what she wanted. As a woman, she would
sometimes look at photos of herself as a young child and wonder what it would be
like to have that cute bow mouth back again.
Don't, misunderstand me. This woman walked into my office with a heart as sweet as her bow mouth would imply. This was not a young mother spending grocery money for vanity. This was a sweet mother who wanted to reward her labors by gifting herself with a correction of her childhood scars.
I talked with her for a while and felt her love for her own children and her family and the goodness of her heart. This is not a woman who wanted "stripper lips." She just needed back the sweetness of the smile that a lifetime of making up for her scar with kindness had built into her soul. I needed to make the mouth match the woman.
I used local anesthesia (the same sort that the dentist uses) to put her lips to sleep. Then using one syringe of Juvederm, I brought back the volume to the lower lip.
She came back two weeks later and though the lips were symmetric, I still thought that she needed more volume. So, I added another syringe of Juvederm. Did not need to augment the vermillion border or adjust her cupid's bow (these were already perfect).
Here is the result:
(for
a closer view, you can click on the photos to enlarge them)
Total cost: $970 ($480 per syringe of Juvederm x 2 syringes)
She will probably need another syringe about every 4 months (so cost to her for this mouth will be about $100 per month...less than what many spend on cosmetics). And with time, this cost should go down as her own collagen matrix starts to fill in a permanent way).
For your free consult, call 251-342-6466.
Peace & Health,
Charles Runels, MD