Having facelift surgery in 10 days - support and advice needed

[MerryForever]

HI there,

I'm due to go for surgery on 15th March. Face and neck lift under local anaesthetic. I'm 53, medium weight, would like to be a bit lighter. I've had a horrendous few years personally and it's shown a lot on my face. I'm in a better place now and feel this will give me a boost to restart the 'new me.' I'd love to hear from anyone really as I haven't told many people I'm having it done as it seems so vain. My dd is very supportive though. I don't have a current partner.

Any tips from those who have had similar procedures? Or chats with anyone thinking of getting some work done. Or even haters who will tell me that looks don't matter and I should bin it off.

Thank you . I love York but we are around 5 hours away

My plan is to do this once Ive saved up, have 2 weeks annual leave and then request to work from home for the 2 weeks after

i could book accommodation for a week perhaps for the first week of recovery if I went somewhere far away from home.

soupyspoon I’m a good 3 hours from York but worth travelling for the right surgeon

Had an awful night - really bad pain in my jaw and ears - the sort of pain I remember from having a tooth abscess but the whole jaw. I didn’t sleep at all and had a massive cocktail of pain meds. Really glad I had an overnight stay because the level of pain was more than I could have handled.

still hurts like hell - can’t eat anything unless it can be sipped from a mug and can’t brush my teeth.

heading home soon with lots of meds including morphine!

I’ve got no real sense yet of how I’ll look as I’m so swollen. The surgeon seems happy though and unconcerned by the pain and swelling levels.

hoping to start to feel better in a couple of days!

Sending a hug, Merry.

@MerryForever Sorry to hear you had an awful night. That's good they have given you pain meds which will hopefully keep on top of it. That's great that the surgeon is happy with everything.

After I had the surgery I wasn't actually in any pain, but my problem was that over the following 24 hours I had a lot of bleeding from all the suture sites - I was totally panicking as it looked like a blood bath! 😩 Luckily the bleeding stopped after around a day.

I also couldn't open my mouth wide so had to drink through a straw!

I think our bodies can react in all sorts of different ways to surgery. It can all feel like a bit of a shock really, but it definitely gets easier over the following days/ weeks. Hope you can now have a good rest and eat and drink what you can to keep your strength up and help your healing.

Check out Nyak Plastic surgery on Facebook, he has some amazing results and might give you an idea of what to expect. He is in the US.

Oops too late.

I’m back home now. The swelling is pretty unbelievable and I barely recognise myself but the pain is a lot less and I can brush my teeth!

I’m really curious to know how I’m going to look at the end of all this.

Ah patience grasshopper, you'll look lovely in a few weeks.

Just take it easy for the next while OP, I heard some good advice from a surgeon who said try not to obsessively look in the mirror for the first few weeks, as it always looks worse before it looks better, although he acknowledged that most people can’t help themselves 🙂

He also said it’s quite common for people to feel a bit ‘WTF have I done?’ in the first while, and some people get a bit down about it. Anyway he said it’s totally normal and you just need to trust the process and think about how you’ll look/ feel in a month or two.

Did you tell many people? Have you got much time iff work?

You’re going to look amazing Merry. Rest up and recuperate for now.

I just looked in the mirror without the compression garment on and I look like an alien! Really quite bizarre.

I'm sure it'll be very much worth it in the end. I hope you have a speedy recovery!

Thanks for keeping us updated OP! You're over the worst of it now hopefully, I'm sure it'll all be worth it!

Hello from me. Still v stiff and painful. Sleeping sitting upright in that compression thing is no joy. But it’s only day 4 and it was a 7-hour op so I know I need to be patient. I’m going to try to anonymise some photos later to share.

If you have an L shaped sofa, sleeping in the corner of that was a game changer for me when I was still having to sleep upright. Otherwise just so so many pillows around you in the bed.

I'm can't wait to see how it looks when the swelling goes down. So exciting! I hope you heal soon.

I’m on day 6 and it’s the first day I haven’t woken up desperate for pain relief. Still lots of swelling, stiffness and fullness. I look weird and football-headed. My ears hurt and I’m still on the soup, juice and yoghurt but I can see a bit of light ahead. And I’ve got some anonymised before and after pics as promised. I think the after pics make things look a lot better than they actually do when you can see my whole face and also there’s loads of swelling still to go down so I won’t be as smooth or tight around the mouth. But I hope they’re helpful. The before images are from the morning of the surgery which explains the purple pen marks. The black pen mark on the first one is random.

Wow!! That is such a noticeable difference already! Delighted for you OP and that you're starting to feel better, as you said yourself a 7 hour operation is a lot for your body to go through so you're bound to need time to recover. Congrats on what certainly looks like a successful glow-up!

And a couple more.

Thank you! The photos I took on the morning of the surgery made me feel really sad. I looked so far removed from how I feel inside. Kind of lost behind my face. It spurred me on.

Wow, it’s looks so good & it’s only early days.

Looks great and will continue to improve

Amazing improvement

Impressive!