‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Unseal Them’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent kids, but since it’s the first time she will debut her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not the way I appear,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – look is the outcome of half a dozen aesthetic surgeries, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the initial time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she explains to me via online call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a growing number of people choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facelifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a facelift, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are structured a little like onion layers,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of supportive tissue called 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 loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

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

Once the preserve of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of injectable gels stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the common adoption of weight-loss drugs, cut-price surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a different type of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facial lifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of younger facelift patients is growing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the optimal form of themselves and obviously the methods are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional rhytidectomy involves elevating the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance sometimes wrought by older methods. “We avoid placing tension on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” explains Harley Street plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether dermal fillers 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 migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the area is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they pose. “A lot of doctors don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to other parts of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of recommended hotels in the city, sent to her by the clinic assistant at her surgeon’s office.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for 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 finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her operation, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he said, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately including additional procedures,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|