Tracey Snider takes a straightforward approach. She is a nurse who works with plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Wallace and his patients. Before the first appointment, Snider has a frank telephone discussion with prospective patients. I want to make sure they know it is not magical. It is not like getting a new hairdo.
Surgical complications are rare, but real.
Wallace said he doesn't schedule surgery until he's met with patients and their parents at least twice. Dr. Ann Kearney-Cooke recommends an even longer wait, ideally until girls grow up. She counsels teen-agers to wait a minimum of one year before undergoing cosmetic surgery. Unlike women who seek plastic surgery later in life, Cooke noted, teenagers typically lack the perspective crucial to developing realistic expectations about probable results and the life-long consequences, including scarring and change in sensation. Surgeons are leery of patients who arrive with photographs of the celebrity whose nose or other body part they want reproduced.