Botox® is My Weapon of Choice!

Photo by: J Heiliger Photography

I went in for Botox and I got to chatting with Cassie, my nurse for that appointment. They have gotten to know me head-to-toe. Their job is my treat, I figure that is how it came to be know as a "Treat-ment" for me. It feels pretty familiar now, they all know me by name and a bit about my family and what’s going on in my life etc.

So, I like the sense of belonging there, not just a curious outsider. I always look forward to these treatments because, well - I’m a girl. I would take this over shoe shopping, so why was I sitting there crying? I certainly have more fun with this they do, but when Cassie started talking to me about my brain aneurysm it turned my perspective into something almost painful. Cassie had read my history and was especially interested because her last position before coming to Sona MedSpa was with Hermann Hospital working in, you guessed it, the Neuro Trauma ICU.

It’s not that I don’t know they are nurses, I do, it’s just that I don’t think of them in such serious circumstance. It gave me a better appreciation for the level of education and training coming in with the injection. As we talked it took on a weighted tone of reality that generally ends far differently. I lived. She looked through my hair to see the line of scarring that stretches from the top of my ear to the back of my head. About an 8” incision that was stapled instead of stitched, for which I was dubbed “Zipper Head"; lovely.

I told Cassie how the aneurysm occurred, blew actually and the days of waiting for the right surgeon to be found and the hope that I would survive the days it took. After 11 days at St. Lukes I was Life-Flighted to Dallas where the day after Christmas they packed my body in ice and started in with a 4 hour window to actually lift the brain and clamp the burst blood vessel called a Basilar Tip.

The odds of anyone living through that were ridiculously small. Dr. Hunt Bacher and Duke Sampson had hands guided by prayer to work a miracle. Beyond that was a second aneurysm that was bulging but had not burst, there was no time to fix it. They wrapped cotton around it to build up scar tissue that would strengthen the vessel wall and hope for the best- The best has stretched into 16 years now.

So that is why I was crying, because I can. I should not be alive and I am. I have a wonderful life I am not always viewing life through the chance I was given to raise my kids. I never lose sight of how blessed I am but I tend to forget just how close I came to missing all of this. So Cassie quietly and knowingly looks at me kind of shaking her head and proceeds. Now, a few little pricks of the needle and I think Cassie has the hand of surgeon herself. I have stopped the muscles from moving the way they have for over 50 years resulting in deep furrows between my eyebrows and on my forehead. Even around my eyes- you know the laugh lines that lose their humor when we face them in the rear-view mirror in harsh sunlight while we are behind the wheel of an automobile....

Fight back! Botox is my most effective weapon against nature and time. For the next 3 or 4 months, I will be making the the same expressions I always have, but it will not produce as many lines- hence the truism, “Less is More!’ and sometimes tears are tied to deep feelings of gratitude.

Kathie Turner

On Grandchildren, Children, Aging, and Health

Picture of me and Sasha here, pool side.

“We have the same tummy rolls, I have the discretion not to share them.”

This is my newest purpose, what else could possess me to board a plane aimed at El Paso? I am the Grandma Papparratzi and getting the picture is my joy. I have been video taping my grandbabies for almost 3 years and funny, I have never shared them with anyone… yet!

I am going to edit them to see the family evolve through the “Highlight Reel.” That is what we are doing with this year at Sona MedSpa. You will see – I hope, just the opposite though. We hope to see the appearance of time in reverse.

I look back at my own home movies and imagine knowing my parents when they were young to have a perspective kids never get with their own parents. Those pictures and movies are the only THINGS worth grabbing in a fire!

Picture of the kids with their eyes closed to say prayers.






Sasha is now included in prayer time at meals and you can see how important it makes her feel!

My Aliesha has little interest in material stuff and her faith and family put everything distantly behind that. The discussion of aging and maintaining youthful appearance is important, but not without perspective. She is 31 and I think back on how many times I told her not to furrow her brow or she would end up with those wrinkles. She thought I was crazy and obsessed looking young because of my job in front of a camera. But… now she brings a thoughtful discussion to the table.

She is obsessed with nutrition, exercise and naturally healthy products. She reads everything, listens to every expert and researches every claim. I don’t know where she came from! She is up and on the treadmill at about 5am and – well this will give you perspective. They don’t even own a micro-wave because it MAY—alter the foods value. So what is her take on this topic? As you might guess it starts with:

Proverbs 11:22 (from the Old Testament) –

“Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout, is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion.”

What a way to end a blog post. I have asked Aliesha to provide her thoughts and that will be on the next post.

PART 1: A Mother-daughter Conversation at Estes Park, CO

The week has been a blur. I was sitting in a Mountain Micro Brewery in Estes Park, Colorado talking to my daughter Kristen (pictured above) about how the sun, cigarettes, (yes there were those days!) and time have saddled me with a price tag registered on every square inch of my exposed skin - aging on the installment plan. No it doesn’t hit you all at once, and when you are young, you think you will handle the signs of aging with dignity and grace. Wrong!

Laugh lines and the furrowed brows, over time, permanently mark our expressions. BOTOX® arrests muscle movements that created the lines. If maintained, it’s like throwing away the key.

Kristen is 26 and packing for the UK to spend the next few years doing things I would have loved to do. She is still so young I don’t know if she can picture herself at twice the age, but if she could, she would be hearing me clearly- while the days are long, time is running by. You just don’t see it until it shows up on a picture or in the harsh sunlight in your rear-view mirror, or worse- the triple threat of a 3-way mirror. So I was telling her, this week Sona MedSpa will start the laser treatments on my face and neck.

Bring it on!

BOTOX is a registered trade mark of Allergen, inc.

PART 3: A Mother-daughter Conversation at Estes Park, CO

After Care (Please see Part 2: A Mother-daughter Converstation at Estes Park, CO)

Kathie Turner with her daughter Kristin

She said to use a mild soap that night and not to be surprised that the water will sting… and it did, but not bad at all. It also stings when you spray perfume on the neck area (so don’t do that)!

The real redness was gone by that evening and the next day you couldn’t tell much of anything but I kept the ointment on. If you looked at my face with a magnifying glass you might have thought it looked like I fell asleep on a paper towel because of a perfect pattern of little dimple prints. You had to look really closely but it was pretty cool to see how uniform it was. It lasted four days.

Four days later and the skin looks good. It went through a stage I could feel a little toughness to it. Then it loosened up and I saw the first signs of the skin getting ready to peel. Keep in mind I have been wearing makeup from day 2 and NO ONE noticed I had done a thing!

I go back in 2 weeks for the same procedure and again 2 after that. Each time I am told it will be the same experience- I’m ready for it and I will show you both the before and after pictures and the video of the procedure (won’t that be cool).

She told me afterwards that I had a laser energy setting of 900. She added that 800 is the low end and if I had a lot of scarring from acne I may have had a setting of, say, 1400 and instead of passing over the face twice they would have also stopped and concentrated over the surface of the scarred skin.

By the way- this weekend I am in El Paso with my 31 year old daughter Alycia and she couldn’t stop asking about every thing under the topic of how to hold the line. If only I had known at 31 what I am learning just now.

HOLD THE LINE