‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Unseal Them’

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons associated with a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the first time she will showcase her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like onion layers,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled look occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed facial plastic surgeon, speaking anonymously, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it began moving to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|