I get it – I really do. There is far more to cosmetic surgery than I ever really thought about. No, I’m not suddenly training to be a surgeon – I don’t think anyone would trust my shaky hands to work on them.

What I get is the motivation to have certain types of cosmetic procedure. OK, I understand the motivation behind all of these surgeries is ego and vanity. But sometimes these procedures are more necessary than others.

As an example, I broke my nose when I was younger. It hurt, it healed, it looked almost as good as before. It did heal slightly crooked but it’s not something that worried me back then, and I don’t really notice or very much care day to day now. Sometimes though, these things don’t heal well and you really do need the skills of an expert surgeon to put them right. Sure, you could leave them as they are but you’ll spend the rest of your life fighting that urge to be self conscious about it.

So, I get that a friend of friend does this for a living and finds it very satisfying – he’s a Wellington nose job surgeon down under in NZ (OK, he’s a cosmetic surgeon but noses make up the majority of his work apparently!). He finds it most satisfying he says when he’s doing those very cases where he improves something that really troubles someone. That means mostly injuries, but sometimes just nature being a little unkind and giving someone an especially large nose for example. He doesn’t enjoy quite so much the jobs where he’s doing what people want even though there is no real need for it, they’re just tweaking their appearance out of pure vanity as if they were buying a new item of clothing.

If you really need the work done though, I do get it a bit better now. But how do you find someone if you really do need it? Asking for a referral is apparently the best way – from other doctors or from happy customers. You can also check somewhere like the Society Of Plastic Surgeons. All respectable plastic/cosmetic surgeons will have memberships of professional bodies and/or be attached to hospitals or other private medical institutions. So it is important to check. Don’t skimp on the research says the doc.