Restylane Silk for Smokers Lips / Prune Lips / Upper Lip - Coral Gables, FL

Day 2
Vertical upper-lip lines are a family curse: I don't smoke, but I grew up in a smoking household with prune-lipped mother and grandmother. I'm probably hyper-sensitive to those vertical lip-lines, having been paranoid about them since I was twelve.

Over the years I've been getting botox to minimize their deepening and spreading. This year, restylane silk became available (long used in Canada and Europe) for the thin skin above the lip.

Procedure: topical lidocaine/numbing cream is spread on the upper lip, it sits for ten minutes, then the doc begins. 1cc of Rest. Silk comes in a long thin needle syringe, and despite the topical numbing, it hurts a bit. Quite a few pricks with the needle. Takes about 10 minutes total.

Swelling: significant. This is not a lunchtime procedure. You can see the immediate results of a smooth upper lip for about the first 20 minutes, and then the swelling begins. It's really bad: the lip and upper-lip inflate to beyond Kim Kardashin ridiculous.

I had my procedure on a Friday afternoon. Friday night I was googling Resty Silk and swelling: Because it was DUCK LIP CITY and looked RIDICULOUS/FRIGHTENING. I didn't have *any*injected in my actual top lip, only above the lip, but the whole thing swelled up.

I put arnica gel, took an anti-histamine, and iced it on and off for a few hours. Slept slightly elevated.

I'll continue to post as the days go by. I expect to return to work 48 hours after this procedure, and I'm praying the swelling goes down by then.

*Resty Silk is the sort of product that draws water to itself, hydrophilic, and thus the tissue swells--I would say, engorges. I am concerned that some have written that they don't think that, for them, the swelling and fullness ever went down. yikes. I hold out hope, and if it's a problem, I'll head back to the Dr. for possible dissolution of some of the product.

The shape and thickness of my upper lip has definitely changed: it's protruding, it's bigger, thicker, something I was not at all interested in, as it's now much fuller than my bottom lip. I hope that this is residual swelling. the smoker's lines are flat and smooth, which was the aim, now to see if the upper lip regains it's previous shape and proportion to my bottom lip. I can go out in public today, and not look like a Kardashian, but, I don't love the change to the shape and thickness of my top lip. I'll wait a few weeks to see if I need some of this dissolved.

Day 4-ish: Monday, the first day back to work after Friday's upper lip resty silk injection: All looks normal, not obvious that my upper lip has fillers in it. The area above my upper lip, where the smokers lines were, is smooth, definitely fuller, definitely thicker: and my final verdict is, it looks good. No need to go chasing the resty with a dissolver. The fullness in this area has softened the look of the naso labial folds, which is definitely a plus.