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

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons associated with a house full of clamorous preteen kids, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” states the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, 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 minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t 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: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people choosing to have a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are eager to highlight the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe people choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we grow older. “Our faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue known as the SMAS. Consider the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the skin down with it.”

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

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost medical tourism, and the development of new, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a different type 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 percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

Where a conventional rhytidectomy entails lifting the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the primary goal of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an attempt at “symmetry correction” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a list of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as blepharoplasty – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|