I write this month’s column having just returned from an awards ceremony in London, where we picked up an award for our weight loss therapy. Disappointingly I did not get to do an Oscars style speech, much to the relief of Rachel my wife.
Our award was one of many given out on the night, with other awards being presented to clinics in the beauty and aesthetics industry, many specialising in administering facial muscle paralysing drugs, such as Botox. Many in the room were unable to show surprise when their awards were announced as they were incapable of moving their eyebrows.
It was clear that some of the attendees were prepared to go to considerable lengths to halt the march of time by attempting to iron out any signs of wrinkles where wrinkles should be when we reach a certain age.
My middle daughter, thirteen, recently asked me, ‘Dad, why have you got so many wrinkles around your eyes?’ I replied, ‘I have one on each side for each of my children.’ She went on to say ‘You have a lot more than four kids then Dad!’ I will have the last laugh though when I do some Dad dancing outside the car with my eighties music blaring when I collect her from school.
I’m accepting of the fact that I am approaching middle age, although I am keen to discover a suitable scientific explanation as to why the male ears and nose start to sprout hair at this point in our lives. The average age of patients across our clinics is forty-six for women and forty-eight for men. This has been consistent over the last five and a bit years.
I’ve often wondered why the age of our patients has remained so consistent. I once asked a typical female patient, why she had chosen to seek our help at this stage in her life. She explained that for the first time in her adult life she did not feel guilty about putting herself first, ahead of family and other commitments. Her children were now in their twenties and she had more disposable income and she felt she deserved to ‘treat’ herself.
The lady went on to lose over six stone and during her several weeks of treatment I watched a self-confidence appear that had not been present when we first met. In a later conversation, she told me she had been married for over twenty years, I joked that with her that with her new found confidence she might be tempted to go and find a younger husband. She replied, ‘it’s taken me twenty years to train the current one, I’m not going through that again’.
