Deb: I am a management consultant, and I present pretty much for a living. So, my smile is extremely important. I’d see a photo of myself and there’d be a lot of gums exposed. You’re kind of like, oh you know, I wouldn’t frame that. The gums are up front and center.
One of my girlfriends said to me, “Oh Deb, you can train your mouth. You know, like how you smile, you can just use certain muscles to smile and then you’d never see gums.” And I thought, “Well, how would you ever do that? You know, that’s not living.”
So I had gone to a dentist and he said to me, “When are you going to fix your smile?” I thought, “I have seen the before and afters of lots of people and I could see how it makes a huge difference. If you could present yourself better, why not?”
I met Dr. Gottesman by referral. One of the top cosmetic dentists in New York had actually told me about him and said I should definitely look into him, that he’s topnotch. This guy has been in tons of editorials.
Male Speaker: You have to go to someone like him who’s really an expert in this. You don’t want cosmetic procedures to be done by the wrong people.
Deb: So I thought Dr. Gottesman must be pretty amazing and important, why not?
Dr. Gottesman: Hey, Deb. We’re ready.
Deb: My first meeting with Dr. Gottesman was great. He made me feel very comfortable. What I liked about Dr. Gottesman, a lot of doctors talk about enhancing the surgery with Botox and things that would require lots of upkeep. You know, that’s just not me. I want to be very natural and he was aligned with that. I’m looking forward to seeing kind of what’s next.
Dr. Gottesman: I’m performing another reverse vestibuloplasty procedure and that’s going to be to correct for a hypermobile upper lip.
Deb: This surgery for me is very low risk but with actually very high reward. So my understanding of lip repositioning is actually that you go in, my face would pretty much always look the same. They go in and they cut here and then bring this down. This pushes down a little so that when I smile, you don’t see the full amount.
Dr. Gottesman has been really good about kind of leveling my expectations.
How does it look?
Dr. Gottesman: It looks gorgeous today but it’s going to be very swollen tomorrow. By the time it all settles down, you’ll be happy.
Deb: I felt really comfortable. I felt as if he was very attentive.
“Oh my God, is that really going to be my smile?”
I love the smile. I like the results. I could tell that other people notice it. One of my colleagues said to me, “Something looks different.” She couldn’t put a finger on it which made me feel really good. It made me realize that the results are really natural.
I didn’t feel anything, no pain during the surgery or after the surgery. Within a week, all of the swelling was completely gone.
In terms of the results, I think overall the entire experience, my expectations were exceeded because I think a lot of doctors don’t give you that attention. You know, you’re a patient. It’s not really a service-oriented environment. His entire staff was like checking up on me, making sure that I was okay; calling to see how the swelling was going. You know, so I felt as if I was more than just a patient. It was a much better experience than I’ve had with any other doctor.
