Soliciting Botox

When Kara came home from her first semester in college, she was ill with a fever and a sore throat.

And so I brought her to the pediatrician’s office.

And the female physician in the practice examined her and did a rapid strep test. But in the interim of waiting for the results, that same female pediatrician came into the examining room and handed me flyer. She said I just wanted you to know that I am now doing botox parties—and I thought maybe you and your friends might be interested.

I was speechless.

My first thought was Do I look like I need botox? Because that was insulting. Which was then followed by Or is it that my sense of style and general upkeep suggests that I already do botox? Which still was insulting, but to a lesser extent.

But my third thought was Wow this is really awkward and inappropriate in a pediatrician’s office—and if I really did want botox why would I go to her—a pediatrician?

As I did some food preparation yesterday I put The Katie Couric Show on. The topic was Dying to be Beautiful. The program chronicled plastic surgery procedures gone awry. And while I am normally not disturbed by blood and gore, I was sickened by the disfigurement and death of people at the hands of poorly qualified physicians.

The take home message was: Never allow any cosmetic procedure to be done without access to emergency care and never agree to have any physician who is not board certified in plastic surgery perform any medical procedure or injection of any kind.

And then I thought of that female pediatrician injecting botox at parties up on the North Shore. I wondered if the money was worth the risk—for everyone involved.

And Kara’s strep test was positive and we went home with prescription for an antibiotic. And the next time she was ill I requested that one of the male doctors examined her. I prefer that my child’s physician focus on the specialty in which they were trained—pediatrics-- not vanity and avarice.

 Because the first line of the Hippocratic oath is Do no Harm and the second line is I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work—2 key things in the memo that that female pediatrician apparently did not receive.