‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Open My Eyes. That’s How Swollen I Was’

Amanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s impending 13th birthday party. Not for the usual reasons related to a house full of loud adolescent kids, but since it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to friends and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” states the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, well, a little surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the first time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of forty to sixty. (Though most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facelifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see individuals opting for it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” explains based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a layer of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the SMAS as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the dermis down with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of injectable gels expands the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a different type of customer towards this invasive surgery. Statistics indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey revealed that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

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

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy involves lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift loosens the facial ligaments beneath it, enabling surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It additionally implies that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and contouring, too. “We receive many inquiries from clients aged 28 to 35 for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But years of using injectable gels in an effort at “symmetry correction” meant that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she says. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be in this situation right now.”

If dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face gets somewhat waterlogged because its ability to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is preliminary, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the lymphatic system have been issued, and further research initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use fillers in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many doctors avoid discussing this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she believed 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 local plastic surgeon in Florida proposed that a facial and neck surgery could be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she ended up selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, texted 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 facelift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a cheek lift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some buccal fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up adding two more surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, including a three-day|