There is a version of this appointment where you arrive, sign four pages you don't read, and leave forty minutes later with a receipt and a vague sense of having been agreeable. It is more common than it should be, and it is almost entirely preventable. The prevention is asking out loud.
None of what follows is confrontational. We answer all of it unprompted, in the consultation, and we would rather you asked it of every practice in Denver. This one included. A good injector is not irritated by these questions. A good injector has already put the answers on the table.
Who, exactly, is holding the syringe?
Ask for the license, not the title. "Aesthetic specialist" and "skin expert" are marketing words. RN, NP, PA and MD are credentials, and they are verifiable. In Colorado these treatments are prescribed and delegated under a supervising physician, so it is also fair to ask who that physician is and what their involvement looks like in practice.
Then ask the question sitting underneath it: will the person I meet at the consultation be the person who treats me? At a good many practices the honest answer is no, and you should hear that before treatment day rather than on it.
What product, and may I see the box?
Neuromodulators and dermal fillers are different categories of medicine that get discussed as though they were one shelf. Botox, Dysport, Xeomin and Jeuveau are neuromodulators; they quiet a muscle. Juvéderm, Restylane and RHA are hyaluronic acid fillers; they occupy space. Sculptra is neither. It is a collagen stimulator that works gradually over months. If someone offers you "a syringe of Botox," that is not shorthand. That is a person who is not being careful with language, in a job where language is the safety rail.
Asking to see the packaging is normal and nobody should bristle at it. The box gets opened in front of you, and the product should be something you can look up afterwards.
How many units, and why that number?
Neuromodulator is measured and priced per unit. Filler is measured per syringe. Get the number before treatment rather than after, and get the reasoning alongside it, because dosing is a judgment about your anatomy and not a package size. Be a little careful with a flat per-area price quoted with no unit count attached; it is possible to pay for twenty units and receive twelve, and you would have no way of knowing.
What is the whole thing going to cost?
Ask for the total including everything already scheduled: the two-week review, a possible adjustment, the second and third sessions if this is a series rather than an appointment. Our own answer is that consultations are complimentary, the plan review is $50 and credited toward treatment, and nothing is purchased until you have a written protocol in your hand. Whatever the answer is elsewhere, you are entitled to hear it while you are still standing up.
What happens if I don't like it?
This is the question people skip and then need. Ask what the practice does at two weeks: whether there is a review appointment, what an adjustment costs, what is included and what is billed. For hyaluronic acid filler specifically, ask whether hyaluronidase is kept on site and whether the person treating you is experienced in using it. Neuromodulator cannot be reversed; it wears off. Those are two genuinely different conversations, and the honest version is that some outcomes are corrected with an enzyme and some are corrected with a calendar.
Who do I call on a Sunday night?
Serious complications from injectables are uncommon, and most of what people experience is bruising, swelling and asymmetry that resolves. The one that genuinely matters is a vascular event, and the useful thing to know about it is that it is time-sensitive, which makes the after-hours plan the real answer to the question. You want a number that reaches a clinician, not a mailbox that reopens Tuesday, and you want to have heard the plan before you have any reason to use it.
And one to ask yourself.
Why now? If the answer is a photograph, an offhand comment from someone, or a wedding in three weeks, that is worth saying out loud in the room. It changes what we would recommend, it changes the sequence, and occasionally it changes whether we recommend anything at all this month.