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

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual reasons related to a home packed of loud preteen children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s eager to emphasize, short-term – appearance is the outcome 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 first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she tells me via online call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

According to plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “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 Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the SMAS as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You risk operating on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods 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 UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are now requesting to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a conventional rhytidectomy entails elevating the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the underlying structures underneath, enabling surgeons to restructure the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re going below, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” says Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can block drainage pathways. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove lymphatic fluid has been diminished.” Although research into the area is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called blepharoplasty – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The eve of her operation, one day after she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will elevate the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the six-hour operation, plus a three-day|