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

Amanda Preisinger feels anxious about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a home packed of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to friends and relatives. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘For your information, this is not how I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a somewhat surprising – her face swollen and preternaturally lifted, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six aesthetic surgeries, including an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he saw me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I needed to inform him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not hurting. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Increasing Popularity of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of individuals electing to undergo a rhytidectomy in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a decade before most doctors’ typical patient age range of forty to sixty. (Although most surgeons are eager to highlight the professional guideline of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have individuals in their late twenties requesting facial lifts,” states based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a very significant surgery, and I’m a somewhat worried when I see people opting for 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. “Human faces are structured a bit like layers of an onion,” says based in Kent facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that’s what becomes lax and pulls the dermis downward with it.”

You endanger performing surgery on people that have deeper issues. It’s not a practice for an ethical plastic surgeon to pursue

Once the preserve of moneyed older people, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, cut-price medical tourism, and the development of novel, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are driving a new kind of patient towards this invasive surgery. Reports indicate an eight percent rise in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is growing, with one-third of procedures now conducted for patients aged 35-55.

“People are asking now to look like the best version of themselves and naturally the methods are following,” says Orfaniotis. At present, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the deep plane facelift releases the facial ligaments underneath, allowing surgeons to reshape the face by repositioning the underlying layers, and avoiding the taut, pulled look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We avoid placing stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the underlying structures,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the underlying layers that is repositioned. The dermis comes with it as a passenger.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and longer-lasting result. It also means that the surgery is no longer being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “enhancement” and contouring, too. “We’re getting numerous requests from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on getting a facelift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. 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 undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I did it because the filler ruined my face. I wish I had never using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that they seldom completely dissolve,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can block lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is additionally the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to drain lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the topic is early-stage, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the lymphatic system have been released, and additional studies initiated. An esteemed face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “Many surgeons don’t want to talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he adds, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she believed she had to keep replenishing it – particularly when it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in Florida proposed that a face and neck lift could be what she required to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself selecting from a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had scheduled an upper and lower blepharoplasty – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her surgeon recommended that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She arranged a brow lift, a mid-facelift and a neck lift. The day before her surgery, 24 hours post she’d arrived alone in the country, she opted to include a mouth enhancement. “Then he said, ‘We’re going to lift the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I think if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ Thus I ultimately adding two more surgeries,” she recalls. She paid $22,000 (£16,500) for the six-hour surgery, including a three-day|