Turn Back Time: What To Do If You’ve Had An Aesthetic Procedure And Don’t Like The Results

The adage: It’s better to regret something you did than something you didn’t do is often true—but not always. Case in point: beauty procedures. From eyebrow microblading to a nose job, the message is that you should find a practitioner you trust, have an open conversation about what you really want and really understand the results that are possible before you go under the needle or knife.

“You want to ask if people are certified and how long a place has been in business or performing treatments,” says Lisa Blair, who owns The SkinGirls in Vancouver. “Word of mouth is great—and bearing in mind that just because someone has a shiny beautiful [clinic or studio] doesn’t mean they are equipped or certified.” She says that there are some procedures that, in her opinion, are simply not worth it—for example, dermaplaning, which she says often results in a stubbly face that needs to be constantly maintained.

Once you’ve found a practitioner, what should you discuss with them before you commit?  Absolutely everything. “It’s about reassurance and trust,” says Brianna Errelat, owner of BE Brow Studio in Vancouver. “We will talk about the shape, what happens, the after care, the hygiene standards in the clinic. I will talk with them and Zoom with them—it’s about being willing to go the extra mile.”

Dr. Farshid Shahbazi of Theory + Essence in North Vancouver says predictability and being on the same page is also key; he uses AI to model how teeth will look after Invisalign or veneers and patients will receive temporary veneers to wear for a few days or a week before they commit to the finished look.

A lack of consultation and predictability can be a big problem when folks decide to go overseas for treatments, though all experts will say you can get a botched procedure—or a good one—wherever you go. The main issue with going to a foreign country to get your breast augmentation or veneers is a lack of transparency, after care and accountability.

“We see a lot of regret with travel surgery when people go to places like Mexico or Turkey for surgery,” says plastic surgeon Dr. Ron Somogyi of FORM Face + Body in Toronto. “The biggest thing we see is poor education on the part of the physician or practitioner where the person doesn’t understand what they were going for.”

This can be a situation where a patient thought results would be more dramatic or longer lasting than they turn out to be—for example thread lifts or liquid rhinoplasty that simply cannot achieve the same longevity as face lifts or surgical nose jobs. And it’s compounded by the fact that, if Dr. Somogyi is attempting to correct someone else’s work, he needs to know exactly what they’ve done, and that might not be the case with travel surgery. He says: “In cut-price places, I literally have no idea what a surgeon might have done and it’s terrifying.”

If you have had a result that you don’t like or that is downright disastrous, it depends very much on what you’ve had done. In some cases, like Botox, the effect will wear off over the course of a few months—though if you end up looking wonky, some practitioners will inject more of the toxin in order to balance you out, which can leave you appearing frozen. Hyaluronic acid fillers such as Restylane and Juvederm can be dissolved with an enzyme injection, which can send you back to normal in two weeks or so, though it can be sore.

If you want to change your microbladed eyebrows, it’s possible to have laser; Errelat says it can work, but can also be painful and damaging to skin. She’s an expert in a procedure called UNDO, in which she uses a tattoo needle and serum called deracination serum to pull the pigment out of skin. It’s about as painful as the original microblading, and leads to scabbing for a week or so after. Most people need at least two sessions, with a minimum of four weeks between, and can have fresh new brows via microblading or nanobrows four weeks after that. The UNDO procedure also works on permanent makeup such as brows, eyeliner and lips, as well as body tattoos.

Some practitioners will convince a client to try IPL in order to treat melasma, but Blair says that’s always a bad idea, since it can actually trigger the condition to worsen or, in the wrong hands, burn and scar the skin. Scarring cannot be fixed, and if you have melasma, it’s a question of keeping the condition at bay, rather than getting rid of it.

“Avoid triggers like heat, which is why you need to avoid IPL, which creates heat in the skin,” she says. “Even cooking over a hot stove can be a problem. Wear sunscreen all the time, even in winter or on rainy days, and reapply it. Ingredients like kojic acid, hydroquinone and retinoids can be helpful along with sunscreen and they’re not necessarily prescription only. You can do some lasers such as Clear + Brilliant and fractional as well.” Basically, though, the goal is to minimize it and prevent it from getting worse. “Even if we do completely make it disappear, with hormonal changes, sun exposure on vacation and so on, it might come back and we have to treat it again,” she says.

Badly done veneers can cause terrible problems, particularly for the gums, Dr. Shahbazi says. Sometimes dentists will mix materials, not prep the teeth appropriately, or position the veneers imprecisely.  “Patients will come to me because their gums look red and the teeth aren’t right,” he says. “Yes, the veneers can be taken off and replaced, but there may be permanent damage to the gums and underlying bone.” Correctly done, veneers should feel comfortable, and you should be able to floss and brush them like natural teeth.

Dr. Somogyi says there’s a big range in what can and can’t be reversed or revised when it comes to plastic surgery. There’s usually something that can be done, but it’s not always straightforward. “If you have a B cup and you want a D, I will tell patients, ‘You have to be happy with this for a long time.’ They need to know that when we take them out, the skin is stretched, there may be scars. There are things we can do—we can do a lift, we can add fat.” For rhinoplasty, if you’ve gone too small with the nose, you can have grafts or augment with fillers, and, he says, there’s always new technology developing. “Plastic surgery is such a fast-moving field. Gall bladder surgery hasn’t changed in the past 30 years. We don’t do anything the same as we did six months ago.”

Blair has a personal example of a surgery that went wrong, despite her doing everything possible to ensure it would not. “I had a lower blepharoplasty [eye-bag-removal] done. I went to a surgeon who was well-renowned: I did my research, I didn’t go to Colombia or Mexico or try to cut corners. And it went badly. I went to four different doctors to try and get it corrected, and they told me that because too much skin had been removed, it could not be undone,” she says. “Sometimes things go wrong. I happened to be that person. It is a risk with surgery. He offered to fix it but I had lost faith and trust.”

Finally, a surgeon recommended she go and see a reconstructive ocular surgeon, and she found Dr. Guy Massry. “I had to fly to L.A., he had to use skin from my palate, but it was worth every penny,” she says. Her message? “Be persistent. Don’t take no for an answer. Sharing your story isn’t always fun and you can feel insecure, but you have to talk to a lot of people.”

And finding a true specialist is key, too. “Maybe that’s the lesson: see someone who is the best at the specific thing that you want to have done,” she says. “I lived with botched surgery for two years. I didn’t want to go out. But you shouldn’t have to live with something that makes you feel so insecure and depressed. When I had a consultation with him, he was honest—he said he could make it better, but not perfect. He made me feel comfortable, and I could see some of the cases he’d fixed and the lives he’d changed.” —Aileen Lalor