‘I Couldn’t Even Open My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical reasons related to a home packed of loud preteen children, but since it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her recently altered face to friends and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a somewhat startling – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, performed by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal 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 look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – well over a decade before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the facial area. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, elevates the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of supportive tissue called the SMAS. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and pulls the dermis down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and causes laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of customer towards this major operation. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facelifts over the last year in the UK; while a survey found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the SMAS, the comprehensive lift releases the underlying structures beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Elevating the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But long-term using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the injectable ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “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 term ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though studies into the area is early-stage, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking anonymously, says he would avoid using injectables in a patient because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her surgeon’s office.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the laxity she was finding in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in Turkey, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour operation, including a three-day|