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

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual causes related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but because it’s the initial occasion she will showcase her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘For your information, this is not the way I look,’” states the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via online call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to have a rhytidectomy in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” states London-based cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe people opting for it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” explains Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and causes laxity in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a study revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the techniques are evolving,” comments 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 facelift entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the primary goal of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers completely disappear has historically been a point of contention in the aesthetics industry. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Though studies into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use fillers in a patient because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who make filler can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he adds, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep adding more – especially as it began moving to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up selecting from a list of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor recommended that a facelift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Subsequently the surgeon said, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some buccal 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 operation, including a three-day|