October to April: sequencing a season when someone is only here for half of it

Roughly 145,000 seasonal residents arrive in Palm Beach County from October. A good number of them are treated by one injector up north from spring through the fall, and by a different one down here from the fall through spring. In many of those cases neither has seen the other's notes.

That is usually what people are describing when they say a face drifted. Nobody made a dramatic decision. Two people each added a little, twice a year, and nobody was ever looking at the whole year at once.

Does it matter that a different injector treats the same face in each place?

It matters more than any one of the individual appointments does. A neurotoxin plan is a map (which muscles, how much product, in what balance) and that map is only useful to whoever is holding it. When two people each hold half of it, both are working from what they can see on the day rather than from what was done six months ago.

The same is true of filler, with a longer memory attached. Filler placed in April is generally still doing something in October, and the person treating in October needs to know it is there, which product it was, and where it went. Without that, the reasonable-looking decision is always to add.

When should the first appointment of the season be?

Generally in the first two or three weeks after arriving, and earlier than most people plan for. There are two reasons for that.

The first is that the two-week follow-up needs somewhere to sit. It is part of the price of a neurotoxin treatment rather than an addition to it, and it is the visit where a result gets judged instead of predicted. A first appointment in late November puts the follow-up in the middle of December, which is the stretch of calendar everyone protects. There is a separate note on what that visit is for.

The second is that the calendar fills from October onward, along with the county's population. An appointment that is straightforward to arrange in the first week of October is harder to arrange in the third week of November.

What does a season look like laid out as a schedule?

For most people who arrive in October and leave in April, it is four visits rather than a standing arrangement.

• Week one or two after arrival. A proper look, and a plan for the season rather than for the day. Generally the first treatment happens at the same visit.
• Two weeks after that. The follow-up, which is part of the treatment price, along with any adjustment made at it.
• Somewhere around January. A neurotoxin result generally runs three to four months for most people, sometimes longer with Daxxify, so one October appointment does not carry a whole season.
• Two to four weeks before the flight out. The last visit, and the one that gets skipped most often.

What is the last appointment before leaving actually for?

It is a planning appointment as much as a treatment one. What comes out of it is a written page: product names, amounts, areas and dates for everything done that season. That page goes with the patient rather than staying in a file here, because the next injector, me in October or somebody else in May, cannot work from notes they have never seen.

It is also the visit where I turn down the most work. I will not start a course in March for someone flying out in April. Collagen stimulators run over months and several sessions. Laser and device protocols run as a series with real sun avoidance attached to them. Starting either one four weeks before a departure means the part that matters happens somewhere else, assessed by nobody. Starting it next October is a better answer than starting half of it now, and that is the same reasoning that sits behind every other recommendation here.

What is worth bringing to a first visit in October?

• Product names and dates for anything done since April. Brands are not interchangeable: there are four wrinkle relaxers on this shelf and they do not behave the same way, and neither do the fillers.
• The doses, if the other practice will release them. Most will, and it is quicker to ask at the end of an appointment than to chase it months later.
• What was liked and what was not, in ordinary words rather than clinical ones.
• The departure date, and anything in the calendar between now and then. Events move timing more than anything else does.

Anyone who wants to see how that first conversation runs before booking one can read the consultation page. It is the same appointment whether or not anything is treated that day, and leaving without booking a treatment is an ordinary outcome.

One habit is worth building regardless of which practice anyone uses, here or anywhere. At the end of every appointment, ask for the product name, the amount and the date, and keep them in one note on a phone. It takes about thirty seconds. It is the difference between a face treated in two states and a face treated twice a year by two people who are each starting from scratch.

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Written and medically reviewed by Jamie S. Lobacz, APRN, MSN. Last reviewed 2026-10-05.