My heart goes to everyone affected by the heavy rains and flash flooding over the last week. I sincerely hope you are safe, warm and dry, in your own homes, and for those who have been flooded and evacuated, I hope you have good support and get back to your homes soon. I know several of our team have dropped things off at the evacuation centres, and I’ve been so proud of how our team has responded. Our lovely nurse Beck lives in Puhoi and got stranded in Albany on Friday night when her bus got flooded. She was rescued by one of our other team members, Teresa, and stayed with her the night. We decided to close on Saturday to ensure everyone was safe, as we care for the safety of our team and patients first and foremost. Fortunately, our team has come off relatively OK with some flooded basements and leaky houses, but nothing devastating. Our wishes and condolences go to those who have lost family or livelihoods, as I know so many have been badly affected. As was pointed out in our ‘Hive’ of Allergan trainers – so far it’s been 3 years of calamities of biblical proportions – bushfires, erupting volcanoes, ‘plague’ and now floods… hopefully this is the last of them!
A big celebration for the last month was Chinese New Year, where we welcomed the Year of The Rabbit! Gong xi fā cái – wishing you prosperity and good fortune.
The first weekend of Chinese New Year I was flown over to Sydney for our first full face-to-face, in-person Allergan Faculty Meeting since the lockdowns in 2020. It was so wonderful to see friends and colleagues from the faculty and have a good catch-up, as well as take part in some awesome workshops learning better ultrasound, leadership and research skills! We had some really informative sessions on how to critically appraise research papers, and the meeting was held at the Allergan Medical Institute’s ‘new’ training centre. It’s been open for over a year, but with travel restrictions and everything else, the kiwi contingent missed its official opening and this was our first viewing. At lunch, we had a beautiful bunch of ‘flowers’ that was actually spectacularly iced cupcakes (I ate the icing and left the muffin behind 😹)! The surprises continued… we stayed at the Shangri- La, and had a wonderful surprise when we got back to the hotel having an Ang Pao (lucky red packet) on our pillows! It was also a wonderful opportunity to catch up with one of my besties, Mal, for dinner on Friday night, so I came away from the weekend with both my heart and brain full of goodness!
At the end of last year we welcomed Tegan to the team as our fabulous new medical skin therapist in Takapuna (OMG, she gives the BEST facial massage, even just having her clean my face is bliss!), and now we welcome Sheridyn, who will be joining Lauren and Bryony in Britomart! After struggling for months to find the perfect skin therapist to join our team, we found two, and they are both amazing! Sheridyn is currently going through our intensive onboarding and training process, but we’re super excited that she’ll soon be available to see patients 🤩 With our lovely nurse Camille coming back from maternity leave on the 22nd of February, we will finally be back to a full team! I want to thank you for your patience over the last 18 months as we have navigated various forms of maternity leave, and health leave and finding the right people to join our incredible TFP family.
We had our first full team training day for the year last Tuesday and dedicated the afternoon to practising how to deal with the very rare but serious ‘emergency scenarios’ such as anaphylaxis (severe allergic reaction), cardiac arrest and filler-related blindness so that everyone on the team knows how to recognise and manage them, and what their specific role might be if they ever did occur. We have fortunately never seen any of these emergencies in our clinic (thankfully), but that is even more reason to practice the protocols. Our senior team – Marjorie, Marilou and Sanja – ran different scenarios in each room, and each deserves an Oscar for their acting! We mixed the scenarios up with some fainting and panic attacks, which can sometimes look like anaphylaxis or cardiac arrest, just to keep the team on their toes! We had loads of fun, learnt heaps, and were able to make some subtle improvements to our processes to make things more efficient if anything ever did happen. I’m so proud of the teamwork and skills our team displayed, and I think we all came away more confident we could handle an emergency should anything ever occur in our clinic (🤞🤞 it never does).
If you’ve been watching my social media, you might have noticed some stories come up about a new non-surgical face-lifting device I’ve been trialling. I’ve been watching colleagues I respect talk about EmFace overseas, so when I was offered the chance to be one of the first in NZ to trial the technology, I jumped at it! The results I’ve seen in the company’s photos after a course of just 4 treatments have been impressive, and it works well alongside injectables, as the EmFace technology electrically stimulates the ‘lifting’ muscles of the face: the forehead muscle, frontalis; and the smile muscles, zygomaticus major and minor, and risorius; as well as stimulating collagen and elastin to thicken the skin and soften lines and wrinkles, using radiofrequency to gently heat the skin to 42 degrees. Three pads are applied to the face – one on the forehead and one on each cheek – and I found the sensation quite pleasant… it feels warm and a bit ‘prickly’, like lots of caterpillars walking on your skin where the pads are. When the muscles are stimulated the forehead lifts and the smile muscles contract, which feels funny but quite OK. The stimulation of the lifting muscles is meant to tone them so they are more active, and patients who have had the treatment report a more defined jawline, fuller cheeks, lifted brows and softened wrinkles in the cheeks and forehead. It’s good for those who are nervous about injectables, and it’s also great alongside the injectable treatments as it enhances the results we can achieve. I’m super excited about it!
The only other technology that comes close to EmFace is another new technology called Trilift, which uses RF, RF needling and Electrical Muscle Stimulation, but does it in a slightly different way, so I’m going to trial that technology as well, to compare. The Trilift is a 6-treatment course, while EmFace is 4 treatments each spaced a week apart. Both would potentially be around $5-6k for a course of treatments, and results tend to last about a year before needing some maintenance. If I decide to go with one of the machines, we will be the first clinic in NZ to have it, so watch this space in the next newsletter!
I’m heading back to Sydney on the 9th and 10th of February for the EmFace official launch but will have to watch the recordings from the masterclass on the 11th, as I’m coming back that day to take my step mum to Ed Sheeran for her birthday. She has been looking forward to the concert for months, and after the last few years, my focus is family first.
I’ve been really missing my dad over the last few days, and have had some big sobbing sessions today. I’m not sure if it’s the weather, or that my phone keeps flashing up photos of him, or that I went and watched the new Avatar movie in 3D and felt completely overwhelmed by the rollercoaster of intense emotions that it evoked! I understand it’s a natural part of the grief process, and so I just go with it and allow the emotion to come up and move through me.
It’s been a pretty emotional last few years for a lot of people, but it’s times like this that people really come together and community plays an even more important role. If you are struggling in any way, please reach out for help – talk to family, friends, your GP or a helpline. Having been through tough times myself I know it can feel pretty overwhelming at times, but tough times pass, and it’s amazing how much easier they are when you have other people supporting you. As my psychologist Geraldine said at our last session, sometimes even just telling someone immediately helps to lighten the load.
I’ve found that as my stress increases, self-care becomes even more important, and I love that our clinic helps to nurture and support so many people just by virtue of the fact that we care, and we offer so many incredible treatments that help people feel better. A favourite stress buster is the Healite LED light, with a gorgeous relaxing head and neck massage.
For me, another way to manage stress is learning new things, as it builds new neural networks and new skills that can help us manage our lives more successfully. Part of what brings me joy is training people in the things that I’m passionate about. We had another very successful Profhilo Workshop last month, and have our Vampire Academy and Hyalase Workshop planned for this month. We’re also very excited to have the amazing plastic surgeon Rita Yang giving a talk on ‘How to respectfully consult with the gender-diverse patient’ on the 14th of Feb. If you are a cosmetic injector, you can join us in these training sessions and can register here. Part of a successful community is understanding and respecting diversity, so I’m thrilled that we will be learning some more tools around this very important topic.
We’ve seen some incredible community spirit both at work and in my street the last few days (houses on the lower side of our street all got flooded in the rains), and I hope that continues. Thank you for being part of our community, and for all your love and support over the rollercoaster of the last few years. Without people like you supporting us, we wouldn’t have such an incredible business and a wonderful team of amazing people.
We look forward to seeing you in clinic soon!
Love and hugs,
Dr Cat 😻
