‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Couldn’t Even Unseal Them’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a house full of loud adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the common adoption of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique promoted by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a conventional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at right now.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, commenting anonymously, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|