‘I Couldn’t Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical causes related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the result of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the initial time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You risk operating on people that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the percentage of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to restructure the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by older methods. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom fully dissipate,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face becomes somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, mentioned he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who make injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|