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

Onemanda Preisinger feels anxious about her child’s impending 13th birthday party. It’s not due to the usual causes associated with a home packed of clamorous adolescent children, but since it’s the first time she will reveal her recently altered face to acquaintances and extended family. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I appear,’” says the 30-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and preternaturally lifted, as though held together by heavy-duty tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, short-term – look is the result of half a dozen cosmetic procedures, including an minimally invasive facelift, performed by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My spouse became emotional when he viewed me for the initial time because I wasn’t able to even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she explains to me via video call from her home. “I had to tell him: ‘Honey, I’m okay, I’m not in pain. I just appear as if someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Early Facelifts

Based on plastic surgeons, Preisinger is one of a rising count of people electing to undergo a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the professional guideline of: “We treat heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who specialises in the head and neck. “It’s a very significant procedure, and I’m a somewhat worried when I observe individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Explaining the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a rhytidectomy, lifts the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” explains based in Kent face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the surface, then a stratum of supportive tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Think of the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that is what ages us; that’s what loosens and sags and drags the skin down with it.”

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

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when overuse of injectable gels stretches the face and causes looseness in the skin – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost medical tourism, and the advancement of new, famous-figure-promoted operative methods are attracting a new kind of customer towards this major operation. Reports show an 8% increase in facelifts over the last year in the United Kingdom; while a survey revealed that the portion of younger facelift patients is increasing, with 32% of facelifts now conducted for individuals aged 35-55.

“Patients are now requesting to appear as the optimal form of themselves and naturally the techniques are evolving,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the deep plane facelift, a technique promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

While a more traditional rhytidectomy entails lifting the superficial layer, the comprehensive lift loosens the underlying structures underneath, enabling doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding 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,” says Harley Street cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the underlying layers that is adjusted. The skin comes with it as a passenger.” Elevating the entire soft tissue layer as a single unit allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or rejuvenation, as the aesthetics industry describes it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on undergoing a facial lift – at minimum not at the thirty years old. But long-term using injectable gels in an effort at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the injectable harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t think I would be in this situation right now.”

If injectable substances ever fully dissolve has historically been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Studies have shown that not only do they rarely fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we term ‘puffy appearance’ is also the reality that in a sense, the face becomes slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Although studies into the area is preliminary, warnings on dermal fillers’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been issued, and further research announced. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a client because of the dangers they pose. “A lot of doctors avoid discussing this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be quite forceful.” He’s been told accounts, he says, of cosmetic doctors being landed with court orders after raising their concerns.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she had to keep replenishing it – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was just 28 when a nearby cosmetic doctor in the state suggested that a facial and neck surgery could be what she needed to finally step off the injectable hamster wheel. After 24 months, she found herself choosing between a selection of recommended hotels in Istanbul, texted to her by the clinic assistant at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – better known as eyelid surgery – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She booked a brow lift, a cheek lift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, 24 hours post she’d touched down alone in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We’re going to elevate the lower eyelid puffiness.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we extract some buccal fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she recalls. She spent $22,000 (£16,500) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|