The procedure itself took around five minutes.

What took up most of the time were the nervous tears due to the anaesthetic injection – which is pretty understandable as the patient was 12 years old, and the needle was being inserted just below the eye.

But the sheer relief at the end of the operation was worth all the tears.

Not because the operation was done (well, maybe a little), but because the viral papilloma growth underneath her right eye had been removed.

“Every time I would talk to someone, I felt they were looking at it,” my daughter told me on the way home.

“It just made me feel really self-conscious.

“It’s such a relief to finally have it removed.”

The smile on her face told me we’d made the right decision to have the operation.

We could not have had this done on the NHS as it does not routinely carry out cosmetic surgery – for obvious reasons!

So, we chose to go private.

And this was because of how our daughter felt. Her reasons for wanting the growth removed… her confidence, her mental health, her self-esteem.

Some people don’t have this option and can go years suffering from the impact of feeling self-conscious about how they look.

Others have to endure years of bullying or mocking.

Of course, Dr John does not operate on 12-year-olds!

But this tale is a reminder, as our client and friend Paul Godfrey told us last week, that not all cosmetic or plastic surgery procedures are done because of vanity… not that there’s anything wrong with that!