Your First Consultation: What Actually Happens
Your consultation is the foundation of safe, successful treatment.
This isn’t a sales pitch. It’s a complete assessment ensuring you’re a good candidate and creating a personalized treatment plan.
Medical History Review
Your provider reviews your medications, allergies, and health conditions, identifying any contraindications including:
- Pregnancy or breastfeeding
- Neuromuscular disorders like myasthenia gravis or ALS
- Allergies to product components
This thorough screening ensures your safety and sets realistic expectations.
Goal Setting
Your provider asks: What bothers you? What would “success” look like?
You’ll learn what neurotoxins can and cannot do.
They work beautifully on dynamic wrinkles but won’t address volume loss or deep static wrinkles that are present even when your face is at rest.
Dynamic Anatomical Assessment
This is the most critical part of your consultation, and what separates cookie-cutter treatment from customized care.
Your provider studies your face in motion, asking you to frown, raise your eyebrows, smile, and squint.
This “muscle mapping” identifies your unique facial anatomy: where your muscles are strongest, how they move, and where strategic injections will produce the most natural results.
Everyone’s face is different.
Generic dosing protocols cause the very problems first-timers fear: asymmetry, frozen expressions, unnatural results.
Customized treatment plans based on your individual muscle patterns are what produce the “refreshed, not frozen” outcomes we prioritize.
At our RN-founded practice, this personalized approach is standard, not an upsell.
Pre-Treatment Instructions
You’ll receive guidelines to minimize bruising:
- Avoid blood thinners like aspirin, ibuprofen, fish oil, and Vitamin E for 7-14 days before treatment
- Avoid alcohol for 24 hours prior
Ready to start? Schedule your consultation with our RN-led team in Folsom, and we’ll walk you through every detail. No pressure, just expertise and honest guidance.
Treatment Day & Aftercare
The Treatment Process
Your face will be cleansed with antiseptic. Your provider uses a very fine needle (typically 31-gauge, one of the smallest available) to deliver small, precise injections into targeted facial muscles. Each injection takes just seconds. For a typical treatment area, you might receive 3-8 individual injections.
Does it hurt? Most patients describe the sensation as a “slight pinch” that’s over quickly.
The anticipation is usually worse than the actual feeling.
The entire treatment takes 10-20 minutes from start to finish.
There’s no downtime. You can return to normal activities immediately.
What We Tell Our Patients: The most common question right before the first injection? “Will this be the most painful thing ever?” Honestly, most people say the anticipation is worse than the actual sensation. It’s a quick pinch that’s over in seconds. We’ve had patients text us afterwards saying, “That’s it?!”
Post-Treatment Care
Post-treatment instructions protect your results and minimize side effects:
The 4-Hour Rule: Stay upright. No lying down or bending over. Gravity can cause the product to migrate to unintended areas, potentially causing eyelid droop (ptosis).
The 24-Hour Rule: Avoid strenuous exercise, rubbing the treated area, heat exposure (hot yoga, saunas), and alcohol. These increase blood flow, which can push the neurotoxin out of the target muscle before it binds.
Normal Side Effects: Mild redness, slight swelling, or small bumps at injection sites are normal and fade within hours. Bruising is common and resolves within a few days.
Your 2-Week Follow-Up
Your provider schedules a follow-up when results have fully developed to assess whether fine-tuning adjustments are needed.
This is especially important for first-timers, as we start with conservative dosing and can add more if you want additional smoothing.
You can always add more at your two-week follow-up, but we can’t easily take it away.
That’s why we start low and go slow.
Results Timeline
Onset: You won’t see immediate results.
This isn’t like filler where you see volume right away.
For Botox, results begin appearing within 3-7 days. Dysport may show results in 2-5 days. The American Academy of Dermatology confirms this timeline in their patient guidance.
Peak Results: Both products reach full effect around 2 weeks after treatment.
This is why we schedule your follow-up at the two-week mark.
Duration: Most patients see results lasting 3-4 months before muscle function gradually returns. Mayo Clinic notes that results can last up to one year in some cases. Factors influencing duration include:
- Dosage used
- Individual muscle strength
- Your metabolism
- Activity level
Worth Knowing: Don’t judge your results at day 3.
We’ve had anxious patients call saying “Nothing’s happening!” when they’re only halfway through the onset window.
Neurotoxins need time to bind to the nerve endings and relax the muscle. Give it the full two weeks before deciding if adjustments are needed.
What “Good Results” Look Like
Our goal is subtle enhancement that makes you look refreshed and rested, not “done.”
Good results mean:
- You still have natural facial expressions
- You can smile, frown, and show emotion (just without the deep creases that bothered you)
- Friends comment that you look great or well-rested without being able to pinpoint why
That’s the hallmark of expert, conservative neurotoxin treatment.
Enhancement that looks like you, just refreshed. Results that don’t announce themselves.
Safety & Side Effects
Common Side Effects
These are mild and resolve within hours to days:
- Bruising at injection sites
- Mild swelling or redness
- Small bumps where injections occurred
- Mild headache (occasionally)
Ptosis (Eyelid Droop)
In FDA clinical trials, ptosis occurred in 2-3% of patients.
It’s temporary and resolves completely as the product wears off, usually within a few weeks.
The risk is significantly reduced with skilled injector technique and patient compliance with post-treatment instructions (especially the 4-hour no-lying-down rule).
FDA Black Box Warning
All neurotoxin products carry an FDA Black Box Warning about distant spread of toxin, which can cause serious symptoms like muscle weakness, vision problems, or difficulty breathing.
Here’s what matters: These serious effects occur almost exclusively with very high medical doses, not the small cosmetic doses used for forehead lines and crow’s feet.
In over 20 years of cosmetic use and millions of treatments performed, serious systemic effects from properly dosed cosmetic treatments are extremely rare.
Contraindications
Neurotoxin treatments should be avoided if you:
- Are pregnant or breastfeeding
- Have neuromuscular disorders (ALS, myasthenia gravis, Lambert-Eaton syndrome)
- Have known allergies to product components
- Have a cow’s milk protein allergy (Dysport-specific)
- Have an active infection at the injection site
Cost & Candidacy
Pricing
Most reputable practices, including ours, price neurotoxins “per unit,” the most transparent model in the industry. Some practices advertise “per area” pricing, which sounds simple but can lead to surprise costs when your anatomy requires more product than their standard dose includes.
We cannot provide exact cost quotes without a consultation because dosing is individualized to your unique anatomy and goals.
Factors Affecting Cost:
- Treatment areas (forehead, frown lines, crow’s feet, etc.)
- Individual muscle strength (stronger muscles require more units)
- Gender (men generally require higher doses due to larger, stronger facial muscles)
Important note: Botox and Dysport aren’t interchangeable (1 unit Botox ≈ 2.5-3 units Dysport), so total unit numbers differ between products.
However, total treatment cost is comparable when properly dosed.
Typical Dosing Ranges
These are FDA-approved dosing ranges and common clinical ranges:
- Glabellar lines (the “11s”): 12-40 units of Botox (FDA-approved: 20 units)
- Forehead lines: 8-25 units (FDA-approved: 20 units)
- Crow’s feet: 12-30 total units (FDA-approved: 24 units)
These are ranges—your exact needs are determined during consultation based on your muscle strength and treatment goals.
Who Makes a Good Candidate?
Ideal candidates are:
- Healthy adults with dynamic wrinkles (lines that appear with facial expressions)
- Those with realistic expectations about what neurotoxins can achieve
- Seeking subtle enhancement and natural results, not perfection or dramatic transformation
If you’re bothered by frown lines, forehead lines, or crow’s feet and want a conservative approach that prioritizes natural-looking results, you’re likely an excellent candidate.
Why Seven Medical Aesthetics in Folsom?
What sets our practice apart in the Folsom, El Dorado Hills, and Granite Bay communities?
Our Philosophy
We believe in subtle enhancement over obvious intervention.
Our approach centers on strategic, conservative dosing because we can always add more at your 2-week follow-up, but we can’t take away if we’ve over-treated.
First-time patients especially benefit from this gradual approach.
It builds trust, prevents the “frozen” look you’re trying to avoid, and allows for fine-tuning based on how your unique anatomy responds to treatment.
Our Expertise
Seven Medical Aesthetics was founded by registered nurses Anna Gardner RN and Michaela Fox RN, who bring years of clinical training and patient care experience to every treatment. Operating under the supervision of our Medical Director, Dr. Kayla Milano, our RN-led team combines medical expertise with an artist’s eye for natural enhancement.
Our Location
We’re located at 605 Sutter Street in Historic Folsom, offering an intimate, boutique environment where you’ll see the same expert providers every visit. That consistency and personal connection make all the difference in achieving natural, customized results.
The Bottom Line
Your first neurotoxin treatment should answer three core questions: Will this hurt? Will I look frozen? How long will it last?
Here’s the honest truth: There’s a brief pinch that’s over in seconds.
You won’t look frozen if your provider uses conservative dosing and proper technique.
Results last 3-4 months on average.
The real question is whether you trust your provider to prioritize your goals over aggressive selling, to start conservatively rather than over-treat, and to take the time to understand your unique facial anatomy.
That’s what we do.
We’re RNs first, which means we approach every treatment with medical training, patient care experience, and a genuine commitment to your safety and satisfaction.
We can teach you about facial anatomy, walk you through realistic expectations, and create a treatment plan that’s customized to your face, not a cookie-cutter protocol.
Refreshed, not frozen.
When you’re ready to explore what conservative neurotoxin treatment can do for you, we’re here.
Your Next Step
Book your consultation with our RN-led team in Folsom. We’ll walk you through every detail: your concerns, your goals, and a personalized treatment plan designed for natural results. No pressure, no surprises, no frozen faces. Just honest expertise and a conservative approach that puts your comfort first.
Contact us:
We look forward to meeting you and showing you what “refreshed, not frozen” really means.
