Island Life Magazine Ltd January/February 2006 | Page 38

HEALTH & BEAUTY
Starting a family brought the chance to carve out a
whole new way of life for former NHS consultant
ophthalmologist Máire Rhatigan.
Mother-of-two Máire, who had previously worked as
an eye specialist in NHS hospitals in Manchester and
Southampton, decided to follow her interest in
cosmetic surgery, which had first manifested in 1998,
during her oculoplastic training in Melbourne,
Australia.
“I found I wanted a completely different way of working
once I had the two children” says Máire, “and this was
one of the factors which prompted my decision to leave
the NHS after my son Joseph was born in 2004”.
Máire, who already had a daughter, Shauna, born in
March 2002, had already been doing private
ophthalmology work at the Island’s Orchard Hospital in
Newport since 2000, and it was there that, in June last
year, she set up the Orchard Cosmetic Skin Centre to
offer the latest techniques in cosmetic skin care.
The clinic offers a whole range of treatments, from
permanent hair removal to facial peels and pulsed light
rejuvenation to Botox ® treatment and fillers.
On the more radical side, there is also eyelid reduction
surgery and the revolutionary new Isolagen therapy,
which implants a patient’s own cells to regenerate skin
tissue.

“I found I wanted a completely different way of
working once I had the two children”

Hi-tech
treatments
can change
lives.
38

Máire, who spent the year following Joseph’s birth
training in the various cosmetic procedures, says she
found no shortage of friends wanting to act as guinea
pigs!
“Many of my friends were kindly volunteering
themselves for treatments” says Máire, who at 44,
admits to having had Botox injections herself.
“I’ve had loads done … I’ll be looking like Joan Collins
before long” she jokes.
So how has she made the leap from serious medical
surgery to what some might see as a rather more
frivolous branch of the profession?
”These are all questions I asked mysel