May 04, 2026 | Injectables
A patient texted me the practice flyer last week with one of those messages I get a few times a year. “Tell me which of these you would actually pick. Don’t sell me. Just tell me what you’d book if you were me.”
It is a fair question, and one I think more patients should be asking before they swipe a card at any med spa. So I am going to answer it the way I answered her, in writing, because there are three specials on the May board and each one is for a different person.
The flyer says Renew, Restore, Revive. The three specials are laser tattoo removal at twenty percent off per session, a $125 Mother’s Day Radiance Facial, and a $3,650 Mother’s Day Refresh that pairs dermal filler with upper-face neuromodulator and lets the injecting nurse choose the products at the appointment. All three are running at both of our El Paso locations, the Eastside office on George Dieter and the Westside office on Silver Springs. None of them require a surgical consult. All of them sit on top of the same medical infrastructure my surgical practice runs on.
Below is the read I would have given my texting patient if I had time to write it out properly.
Renew. Laser tattoo removal at 20 percent off per session.
The discount on this one is twenty percent off per session, and that math is more meaningful than it sounds, because tattoo removal is never a single appointment. A medical-grade laser tattoo removal course is six to ten sessions on most tattoos, spaced six to eight weeks apart so the immune system has time to clear the broken pigment between treatments.
That spacing is not a marketing technique. It is the physiology. The laser fragments the ink particles. Your lymphatic and immune systems carry them away. Compress the schedule and the skin pays for it with inflammation, prolonged redness, and in some cases scarring. Run the schedule correctly and the tattoo lifts cleanly, with the skin underneath reading normal at the end.
The 20 percent applies to each individual session, so on a full course it adds up to a real reduction in the total cost of removal. For patients who have been postponing the conversation because of the price, May is the month to start.
A few practical points I want patients to know going in. Pigment chemistry matters. Black ink and dark blue ink are the most cooperative and clear the fastest. Reds, oranges, and yellows take more sessions and respond more variably. White ink can be unpredictable and sometimes darkens before it lightens, which is a known reaction and not a complication. Cosmetic eyebrow tattoos and amateur ink are usually quick cases. Old, deep, multi-layered professional ink is the longer road. Skin type matters too. Higher-Fitzpatrick skin can tolerate the laser well in trained hands, but the parameters and the spacing both have to be adjusted, which is one of the reasons the supervising physician matters in this kind of work.
What I will not approve is sun exposure between sessions. A patient cannot hit the laser, then go to the pool, then come back six weeks later and expect the skin to behave. Sunscreen on the treated area is non-negotiable for the entire course.
If a patient has been carrying ink she has stopped wanting to look at, this is the month to start.
Restore. The Mother’s Day Radiance Facial, $125.
I am, by training and by temperament, suspicious of facials. Most facials are not medical. They are pleasant. The skin looks slightly better for forty-eight hours and then nothing has actually changed.
The Mother’s Day Radiance Facial my Med Spa team built for May is structured differently. It includes medical-grade exfoliation, deep cleansing, and the application of active serums chosen by our aesthetician based on what the skin is doing the day of the appointment. It is not a single fixed protocol. It is a treatment facial that adjusts to the patient.
At $125, this is one of the easier purchases I can recommend.
Three patient profiles I would book it for, in order of how often I make this recommendation in clinic.
A daughter buying for her mom. The Mother’s Day version of the facial is built to be giftable. The card prints cleanly. The mother who has been giving everything to everyone gets a piece of skin care she would not have bought for herself.
A patient buying for herself. I see this more every year. A woman in her forties or fifties putting a $125 line item in her budget for her own skin care, on her own terms, on a quiet Tuesday afternoon. I approve of every one of those bookings. The skin benefits. The mental health benefits.
A pre-event patient. The right window for this facial before a wedding, a reunion, or a major photographed event is twelve to fourteen days out. Far enough that any post-treatment redness has fully resolved. Close enough that the glow is still on the skin when the photos happen. Sooner than that and the patient risks a flare. Closer than that and the benefit has faded.
What this facial is not. It is not a chemical peel. It is not a laser resurfacing treatment. It will not erase a decade of sun damage. It is the maintenance layer of a real skin program. Used appropriately, it is one of the better $125 spends I see in our practice.
Revive. The Mother’s Day Refresh, $3,650.
This is the special on the May board that is most worth a careful read.
The Mother’s Day Refresh is a $3,650 facial balancing package. It bundles dermal filler with an upper-face neuromodulator, which is the wrinkle relaxer that quiets the muscles of the forehead, the area between the brows, and the crow’s feet. The specific products, the precise volumes, and the exact distribution across the face are chosen by the injecting nurse at the appointment based on the patient’s actual anatomy. The flyer phrase for that is “nurses’ discretion.” That phrase is the most important thing on the page.
A standard injectable package, sold by the syringe, treats faces as if they were standardized. They are not. A patient with a heavy lower lid and a flat midface needs a different filler distribution than a patient with deep nasolabial folds and prominent cheekbones. A patient with a strong forehead and quiet brows needs a different toxin pattern than a patient with the reverse. Counting units off a price list does not produce a balanced face. It produces a face that has been treated, in a generic way.
The Refresh is structured the way I want injectables done. It gives the nurse the budget to spend where the face actually needs it. If the upper face is the dominant feature of an aged appearance, the toxin moves there. If the midface is flat, the filler concentrates in the malar area. If the lower face is intact and the patient’s main complaint is fine perioral lines, the package shifts accordingly.
This is also a good moment for me to make my standard speech about filler.
Filler is a maintenance tool. It is not a substitute for a face that has structurally changed. I tell every patient who walks into my office that fillers are a tax and a facelift is an investment, and I mean it. The patient who has been getting filler every six months for ten years is the patient who often cannot tell where her face ended and where the filler began. The Refresh, used correctly, is the right kind of filler appointment, because it is balanced and it is not run on a quota.
Two cautions for anyone considering it.
The first. The Refresh is a refresh. If a patient’s face has changed materially in the last decade, the right conversation is a surgical one with me. Filler will not fix a face that has dropped. A deep plane facelift will. The two procedures live next to each other in our practice on purpose.
The second. A first-time injectable patient should walk in with realistic expectations. The result of a refresh package is a quieter, more rested version of the same face. Not a different face. Patients who confuse those two outcomes are the patients who are unhappy at follow-up regardless of the technical quality of the work.
A clean side-by-side
| Special | What it is | Investment | Best for |
| Renew | Laser tattoo removal | 20 percent off per session | A real course of removal, started in May, well advanced by holiday season |
| Restore | Mother’s Day Radiance Facial | $125 | A meaningful gift for mom, or a maintenance reset for the patient herself |
| Revive | Mother’s Day Refresh | $3,650 | Dermal filler plus upper-face neuromodulator, balanced across the face |
Where the work is done
The Med Spa at Southwest Plastic Surgery operates out of two El Paso locations. The Eastside office is at 1387 George Dieter Drive, Building C, El Paso, Texas 79936. The Westside office is at 5925 Silver Springs Drive, Suite C, El Paso, Texas 79912. The May specials run at both. The protocols, the products, and the supervising physician are the same regardless of which side of town a patient prefers.
About the supervision
I am Frank Agullo, MD, FACS, double board-certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery and the American Board of Surgery, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and a Mayo Clinic plastic surgery fellowship alum. I serve as Clinical Associate Professor of Plastic Surgery at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Affiliate Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. I have been named a Castle Connolly Top Doctor for thirteen consecutive years. The Med Spa at Southwest Plastic Surgery runs under my license and on protocols I have written. That is the bar.
For a more editorial read on the same three specials, see my piece on drworldwide.com: Renew, Restore, Revive: The May Med Spa Specials I’d Actually Book.
Ready to talk?
To book any of the May specials at our Eastside (1387 George Dieter Building C) or Westside (5925 Silver Springs Suite C) Med Spa, call (915) 590-7907. For surgical or combined consults, call my main office at (915) 590-7900, text 1-866-814-0038, or book online at agulloplasticsurgery.com/appointments. Follow me at @RealDrWorldWide on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, @Agullo on X, or @AgulloPlasticSurgery on Facebook. #StayBeautiful
