About Ida

Clinician. Educator. Author.

For more than a decade, I've worked in cosmetic dermatology, helping patients navigate the changes that come with aging and the growing number of choices available to address them.

I'm a nurse practitioner specializing in aesthetic medicine, but I've never believed my job is simply to look at a face and decide what I can change.

I want to know what brought you in.

What bothers you?

What are you hoping to accomplish?

And just as importantly—what actually makes sense for you?

Over the years, I've learned that the best aesthetic medicine requires much more than knowing where to place a needle. It requires an understanding of anatomy, aging, skin, facial structure, psychology, expectations—and the judgment to know when not to treat.

My approach has always been natural. I don't want my work to announce itself. I want someone to look at you and think you look good without necessarily knowing why.

I've also learned that conversations about appearance are rarely only about appearance. I've had thousands of conversations with women about getting older, confidence, relationships, photographs, mirrors, wrinkles, daughters, husbands, weddings, menopause and the strange experience of looking at your own reflection and thinking, When did that happen?

Those conversations are ultimately what led me to write Saving Face: Natural Results. Honest Conversations.

The book is my perspective on aesthetic medicine from the other side of the treatment chair—the things I've learned about faces, aging and the people who trust me with both.

I believe aesthetic medicine can be wonderful.

I also believe you don't need any of it to be beautiful.

There should be room for an honest conversation about both.

Beyond the Treatment Room

Outside of work, I'm probably not what people expect from someone who spends her days in aesthetic medicine. I enjoy being outdoors, fishing, hunting, gardening, and taking care of my chickens. I'm just as comfortable driving a tractor or tackling a home project as I am working in a treatment room. I've always been pretty self-reliant and usually assume that if something needs to be done, I can figure out how to do it.

Apparently, as one of my patients recently pointed out, there's a bit of a dichotomy between the two sides of my life.

I've never really thought about it that way.

I appreciate beauty enormously. I study faces for a living and can obsess over a millimeter of filler placement—and then go home and get dirty working on something outside.

Both are me.

I'm also fairly private, which probably explains why I've spent more than a decade doing this work without documenting every minute of it on social media.

Writing Saving Face has been different.

After years of listening to other people's stories, I'm finally sharing a little more of mine—and what I've learned along the way.