‘My Eyes Were So Swollen I Was Unable to Even Unseal Them’

Onemanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the usual reasons associated with a house full of clamorous preteen children, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to inform everyone as they come in, ‘Just so you know, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, admittedly, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her new – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – look is the outcome of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse teared up when he saw me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even unseal my eyes. That indicates swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is among a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – well over a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although many specialists are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties asking for facelifts,” states London-based aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Our faces are structured a bit like onion layers,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon 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 is what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the dermis downward with it.”

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

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the skin – combined with the common adoption of slimming medications, cut-price medical tourism, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a different type of patient towards this major operation. Reports indicate an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the percentage of younger facelift patients is growing, 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 techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a method promoted by figures including Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the facial ligaments underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the tight, stretched appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We avoid placing stress on the dermis because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The dermis comes with it as a secondary element.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of youth preservation – or rejuvenation, as the cosmetic field describes it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive many inquiries from patients aged 28 to 35 for this reason,” notes Grover.

Individual Experience

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at minimum not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she entered her late twenties, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I desired to appear youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I had avoided the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Studies have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block drainage pathways. A contributing factor to what we term ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its ability to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Although research into the topic is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and further research initiated. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, mentioned he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of plastic surgeons being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she required to exit the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in Istanbul, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for 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 arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her operation, one day after she’d touched down solo in Turkey, she decided to add a mouth enhancement. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ He added, ‘I think if we extract some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she says. She paid $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|