To help keep our community safe, our practice temporarily closed mid-March in an effort to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19. In alignment with local and federal recommendations and guidelines, we have reopened to continue providing our patients with stellar cosmetic medical services. Like everything else, our world and our office are different, perhaps forever changed.

We are seeing patients in the office and are scheduling surgeries here at Hedgewood, Childrens’ and Ochsner-Baptist. The changes in our routines, for your safety and ours, are as follows:

• We will wear masks and will ask you to as well. If you don’t have one, we’ll give you one.
• When you get to our office for your appointment, stay in your car and call us and tell us you’re here.
• We’ll call you when the exam room is free and cleaned and you can come in and go straight to your room.
• We’ll wipe down every surface in the exam room with disinfectant after every patient.
• We’ll ask every surgery patient to get a COVID test two days before their surgery and to carefully self-quarantine from then through their surgery.
• Family members won’t be able to wait here at Hedgewood during surgery; we’ll call them when surgery is done with a time estimate as to when the patient is ready to go home.
• We won’t be using the Nitrous Oxide (the laughing gas) for injections, but we do have a new and much better numbing cream.
• We will use FaceTime and Zoom for routine post-op and follow-up visits when feasible.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work through these changes alongside you and the rest of the world. If we learned anything from Katrina, we learned that when the world seems hopelessly messed up, it will work out. We will get through this.

Michael Moses, MD

We often receive notes of thanks from parents of Dr. Moses’ pediatric patients, but it’s rare to get an update 20 years later. Yet that’s exactly what we received just a few weeks ago, when a former patient and her mom shared with us the impact that Dr. Moses had on her life—and her life’s work. They have graciously agreed to let us share excerpts of those letters with you here.

“Her life would be entirely different if not for the team at Children’s Hospital. I am so appreciative.”

Dear Dr. Moses,

Your name recently came up in a conversation with a friend of mine, whose daughter is being treated at Children’s Hospital for a cleft palate. I may just be overly sentimental, but I wanted to reach out to you with a brief update on one of your former craniosynostosis patients—my own daughter, who just celebrated her 24th birthday.

You might enjoy knowing the impact you have made in my daughter’s life. She has wanted to be a doctor for as long as I can remember. Her perseverance has paid off. She has been accepted to medical programs at the New York Institute of Technology in Jonesboro, AR and William Carey in Hattiesburg, MS, and she has an interview with LSU this Monday!

Her confidence and strength amaze me. There is no doubt in my mind that her life would be entirely different if not for you and the team at Children’s Hospital, and I am so appreciative. I still get choked up and emotional just thinking back to those days; my adorable little baby with her lumpy little head….

I’ve attached her personal statement she has submitted for her medical school applications (skip to the bottom where she remembers sitting in your office, Dr. Moses). I’ve also included a recent picture of her. Of course, I may be a tiny bit biased, but I think she is absolutely adorable!

Forever Grateful,
Proud Mother

“My surgeons did not just reshape my head; they gave me confidence, joy, and most importantly, the chance at life every child deserves.”

Adapted from this former patient’s personal statement

“When I was diagnosed with craniosynostosis, doctor visits and surgeries became a regular part of my childhood. My memories of the surgeries are blurred, but my routine visits with the Cleft and Craniofacial Team at Children’s Hospital through age 12 have made an engraving impression…I’d sit in the doctor’s office grinning from ear to ear while Dr. Moses and his team expressed how beautiful I was, and in admiration of their incredible work.

Despite my eye patch and the thick scar running across the top of my head, my heart was filled with gratitude and self-assured hope for the bright future these doctors had given me. My surgeons did not just reshape my head; they gave me confidence, joy, and most importantly, the chance at life every child deserves.

Unlike most children who dream of becoming a firefighter or ballerina when they grow up, I aspired to be a pediatric plastic surgeon like Dr. Moses. I wanted to help other children the way Dr. Moses helped me. That ambition remains with me today. After shadowing physicians throughout my teen and college years, and having experienced different perspectives, I am committed to making a positive impact in the medical field and, more importantly, a patient’s life.”

All plastic surgery is done for the same reason. Not to go from unattractive to pretty; not fat to thin; not old to young; not plain to sexy. Plastic surgery is a success if and only if it’s done to make the patient happy with how he or she looks. The formula is simple: if one is unhappy with how one looks, and there is a safe, reliable procedure that will change one’s appearance so that you would then be happy with your looks, then you should do it. It’s about unhappy to happy, nothing else. And it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks: not one’s spouse, his or her children, parents, friends, siblings. The only opinion that counts is the patient’s. If the patient is happy with his or her new look, the plastic surgery was a success.

By these criteria (and I live, breathe, and preach these every day), Bruce/Caitlyn’s surgery was a success. He was healthy; the surgery was reliable and safe; and he’s a happier person. That is a success. It doesn’t matter what I think, what you think, or what the readers of Vanity Fair think. I’m happy for Caitlyn’s newfound happiness. I wish this world allowed all of us to be who we are and who we want to be without having to wait as long as Caitlyn did.

My answer is “You will know”. You don’t need to be a plastic surgeon to know. There is no magic age; no measurement of aging or wrinkles; and no formula. Aging is a gradual process. We age every day of our lives, and we gradually look and feel older. But there is nothing gradual about how we FEEL about how we look. Typically, one is OK with the changes until, almost overnight, one suddenly thinks she/he all of a sudden looks old. When it happens to you, you’ll know the moment. You’ll understand the feeling of “All of a sudden, I look older than I feel I am.”

When you look on the internet, you’ll see that there are as many “facelifts” as there are plastic surgeons. But all facelifts should lift the deep layer with the facial muscles and fat, and then re-drape the skin up and back. A successful facelift gives you a long lasting improvement, and you’ll continue to look years younger than you actually are, even though aging continues.

A good facelift should look so natural that no one knows you’ve had one. If someone says “Great facelift. Who did it?”, that’s not a compliment to me. I want others to realize that you look good, but they don’t know why, or what is different. The best facelifts shouldn’t look like a facelift. But after the surgery, when you see your “before” pictures, you should be amazed at the difference.

To get to that point, we have to communicate with each other. You need to let me know what bothers YOU, and what doesn’t. Then I need to let you know what your options are: what they will and won’t do; the recovery; the pain; the risks; the expense; and the relative improvement we can expect. Then, together, we go over those options until we have an individualized plan just for you. This is a slow process. There is no all purpose facelift, just like there is no “one size fits all”. But this back and forth dialogue between patient and surgeon is the only way I know to get you what you want, and need. (Remember the Rolling Stones who, 50 years ago, wrote: “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try some time, you might find, you get what you need.”)

When your time comes for a facelift, and you will know it when it comes, we need to talk. I’m happy to share with you my thoughts and opinions. Together, we’ll find a facial rejuvenation plan that’s right for you.

As a start, I plan to share my personal views on the nature of plastic surgery itself. I believe that successful cosmetic surgery is really about making each patient happy with the way he or she looks. It really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, including a spouse or significant other, a parent or a child. If it bothers you, fix it; if it doesn’t, let it be. There is only one opinion that matters: yours. If we’re going to achieve this, you and I have to be very clear with each other about exactly what you do and don’t like, and about exactly what I can and can’t do, about the chances of success and complications, and then you can make the right decision for yourself. This is a slow process; it’s the opposite of the cookie cutter approach where everyone gets the same nose, or the same look. We’ll have a conversation until we’re both on the “same page”, no matter how much time it takes, or how many visits.

Please visit often; stay in touch.

Dr. Michael Moses