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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade prior to typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” explains Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an ethical plastic surgeon to follow

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when overuse of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of customer towards this invasive surgery. Reports show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at right now.”

If injectable substances completely disappear has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|