If you are not happy with a particular aspect of your body, and you can afford it, you can have it fixed to your liking. Not feeling good about our physical appearance can take a serious toll on our mental health and our self-esteem. When we look good, we feel good, and plastic surgery can help you achieve that end. But, this is not something to leap into without thinking it through carefully. Here are some important considerations for anyone thinking about having plastic surgery.
Why Do You Want Surgery?
This may seem like a question you don’t need to ask yourself. The sheer desire to have plastic surgery can seem like an answer in itself. But, simply deciding to have surgery because you do not like something about your physical appearance, without digging a bit deeper can leave you in a bad place after you alter your looks. Take a moment to really think about why you want the surgery. It should be something you truly want. If you are doing it to please someone else or because you think you need to change your appearance to conform to some standard set by ‘’society at large’’ in order to advance your career, find a relationship or be accepted, that is a deeper issue that surgery will not fix. You may have nipped that one problem area in the bud, but those issues will manifest in another way. You may find a new area to fixate on, or become depressed when you find that this surgery did not bring you the peace of mind for which you had hoped.
What Do You Expect from the Surgery?
Clearly defining expectations is a crucial piece of the equation when it comes to plastic surgery. What do you expect from the procedure? Define exactly what you are hoping to improve and discuss your expectations with your doctor. He will let you know whether your goals are achievable. If you are not hearing what you had hoped, you then have to decide whether you think you will still be happy with the result or if you should look into alternative means of improving your appearance. Surgery is meant to improve and enhance your current features. If you are expecting drastic changes, you will likely be disappointed. Getting nose surgery or rhinoplasty, for example, can dramatically alter your whole face, but your nose will still have the same general shape and you will still look like you. Computer imaging can help give you an idea of what you may look like after, but the image you see on the screen is by no means a guaranteed result.
How do you expect the surgery to affect your overall life? There is no doubt that you will experience a boost in self-esteem, but barring the correction of severe disfigurements, the average patient may not experience significant changes in emotional well-being. Because of our tendency to obsess over our imperfections, we may greatly overestimate how good we will feel when we get them fixed.
What are the Risks?
No procedure is 100 percent free of risks, regardless of the how skilled the doctor may be. There are just too many variables to offer any guarantees. You must educate yourself on the risks of the particular procedure in which you are interested. Are you willing to take these risks? If you are considering rhinoplasty , for example, you may end up with asymmetry, nasal airway alterations that may negatively impact air flow through the nostrils, rupture of blood vessels, numbness and irregularities in skin contour. You must accept the possibility that you could end up with a result that is deemed worse than what you started with.
Kelli Cooper is a freelance writer who blogs about a variety of health topics.
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