Cosmetic Surgeon (Beverly Hills) Career
Cosmetic Surgeon (Beverly Hills) Career
The Real Poop
You walk into the party full of glitterati hotshots and celebrity housewives, and immediately realize half the boobs, noses, chins, eyes, butts and bellies in the room...are all your work. And what works of art they are. You would have signed them if you could.
You are Doctor 90210, cosmetic surgeon to the stars and anyone who is anyone in this town. You are booked 6 months out, unless it's an emergency, like an A-lister who sprouts a wrinkle.
You have primo office space in the Golden Triangle, you get the best tables at Spago, and top celebs have you on speed dial.
You live in a beautiful Bel Air mansion, have a beautiful spouse with perfect features that you designed yourself, and have beautiful children who you see mostly via their photos on your office wall because you are never home.
You are on-call 24/7 with 16-hour days being the norm, and when you're not working, you’re working out at the Equinox, where you have a lifetime membership and where the trainers get a kick back for every referral they bring to you. You are fit, healthy, well-dressed, perfectly coiffed, and get daily mani-pedis because nobody wants to go to a doctor who doesn't exude beauty by example.
You are a perfectionist and you subscribe to the fact that beauty really is skin deep. Your office staff is comprised of your former patients who work off their bills by keeping your schedule and the Perrier water flowing (you drink 12 bottles of it a day to keep the skin supple and hydrated). Your staff of beauties carefully fields your myriad phone calls from patients clamoring for your magic touch, weeding out the riff-raff who would only waste your precious time. While some patients from out of town will occasionally fly in, you will mostly be dealing with women and men from Beverly Hills and the OC, who come in for boob jobs more often than oil changes.
Id? Ego? You'd better have plenty of both. People who come to you are putting their lives into your hands in more ways than one. These are not happy folks. They have high expectations that by fixing their nose, boobs, butt, lips, eyelids, philtrum, ear flaps, that you will not only make them beautiful, you will up their happiness quotation exponentially. It will be your job to bring them joy, peace, and self-esteem and see that life is once again worth living. A more noble occupation couldn't possibly exist. Ask anyone in Beverly Hills, they'll tell you. You are a God with a scalpel.
Speaking of noble, much of your job will be fixing other's mistakes. The number of botched surgeries that you will see and have to correct will only be surpassed by the number of entertainment lawyers trying to find a parking spot on Wilshire on a week day. More than 40 percent of a cosmetic surgeon's work is to fix other people's lumpy boobs and fallen faces.
Women and men will come into your office expecting you to perform all sorts of miracles. Some will want to find the fountain of youth, while others may want to look like the family cat. It will be your job to know if surgery can help someone, or if they are addicted to the stuff.
You will need to be discreet. Chatty plastic surgeons don't last longer than a parking meter in Beverly Hills. You can hob nob with the big boys, but you can't go on TMZ dishing about all of your handiwork. In fact, you won’t be able to divulge your client list or point out your fabulous facelifts to anyone without their permission. Not to worry, you'll have plenty of press. This is Hollywood, and many celebs wear their surgery like a badge of honor, bragging about the work they've had done, singing your praises to all who will hear. But it has to come from them, not you. After all, there is such a thing as Doctor/Patient confidentiality.
And let's not forget, most importantly, you are a surgeon. The upside is, while others in your class follow different specialties and have to embrace Obama-care and the latest changes to our wacky healthcare system, you won't have to, as most of the work you do will not be covered by any shape or form of health insurance. Anyone who needs their health insurance to cover a tummy tuck or butt lift, can't afford you anyway.
Plastic surgery ain't for sissies. You'll be on your feet hacking away at bone crushing surgery and manipulating body parts more often than Dr. Frankenstein. Make sure you invest in a good pair of orthotics for those Gucci loafers. In addition, you'll need to be super smart (remember, there's med school and board exams to pass), extremely charming, and a terrific salesman, as this town has more cosmetic surgeons per square inch than there are people in the state of Rhode Island. So get your game face on and keep it on all the time.