‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of clamorous preteen children, but because it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the 30-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

How she looks is, well, 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 – look is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Istanbul, Turkey, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That’s how puffy I was,” she tells me via online call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – well over a ten years before typical surgeons’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We address genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds asking for facial lifts,” says London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I observe individuals choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Facelift Procedure

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the tissues in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a little like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the SMAS. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that is what causes aging; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

You endanger operating on individuals that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers stretches the face and leads to laxity in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Statistics show an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a study found that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on individuals aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“Patients are asking now to look like the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method evangelised by everyone from reality TV star Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments beneath it, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by moving the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled appearance sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who focuses on the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit results in a more natural-looking and more durable result. It also means that the procedure is no longer being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facial lift – at least 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 reached her late twenties, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she says. “I did it because the injectable harmed my face. I wish I had never done it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think 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. “Studies have indicated that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they move and can block lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to drain bodily fluid has been diminished.” Although studies into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been issued, and additional studies announced. An esteemed face specialist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the risks they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to discussing this, because the companies who make injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s heard stories, he says, of plastic surgeons facing legal actions after raising their concerns.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue replenishing it – particularly when it began moving to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery might be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an eyelid surgery – better known as 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 mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in Turkey, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional procedures,” she says. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, including a three-day|