Face Lift Chronicles: After the Cut--the First Week

Wednesday, two days after the operation, my daughter drove me in to
have the tape and stitches on my lower eyelids removed. That burned,
but not much. Dr. Chung did it in the conference room—something tells
me she could operate in a mud hut and it would come out all right. We
then went to a nearby Walgreens, tape, extremely gross bloody hair and
ears, puffy face and all (they wouldn't let me clean anything up before
the Dr. saw me). Yes, they stared at me, and I didn't give a flying
f?!k. I would have sold my grandma for baby shampoo. I do believe that
hair wash was the best of my entire life. Thank you, nurse Nikki—what a
blessing to have so much care.
I was still taped over the top lids. I can almost open my eyes. I had
my first full night's sleep last night (thanks to my old buddy
Temazepam), and I'm feeling, if not exactly perky, perkish. I need to
lay down and re-ice every few hours. I took pictures every day. I
really want to remember this.
After the stitches on my lower lids came out on Wednesday, I could
see better, and was able to start taking NSAIDS like ibuprophen, which
really helped with the swelling. I only needed to ice four times
Wednesday—Friday, twice on Saturday. The swelling and bruising went
down a little every day. I slept at least once each day, sometimes
twice.
Saturday night, I saw Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge,
with Nicole Kidman and Ewan MacGregor: two of the most beautiful people
on the planet, in a gorgeous eyeful of a romance. I may become obsessed
with movies. Reading doesn’t seem to interest me, which has never
happened before. The first few days, the thought of eating appalled me
(now we know how models stay thin), but now my appetite is back,
especially for fruit and buttered popcorn.
On Sunday, good Dr. Chung came to my house in between stints on-call
and took out my upper-eye tape and stitches, forewarning me to take one
Tylenol and one ibuprophen an hour ahead—getting surface stitches out
stings a bit, and I had a good 200 to remove. Dr. Chung mentioned that
good sewing skills really come in handy to a plastic surgeon. I was
surprised to find I could take Tylenol and ibuprophen together, but it
usually isn’t advised because Tylenol is processed through the kidneys
and ibuprophen through the liver, so it’s easier on your body to
stagger them—however, I refused to take an Oxycodone (no more walking
into walls for me!), so I had the next best thing. When the tape came
off and the stitches out, I felt like a new woman, though I had some
trouble raising my left eyelid all the way. This worried me. I’m no
longer taking either Tylenol or ibupropen 24/7, though I do take a
4-hour dose late in the afternoon or evening, and an 8-hour naproxen
sodium before bed. Works well. I can’t believe it’s been less than a
week. I have to add what Dr. D'Amore told me before the operation: I
was a casual cigarette smoker for a few years, but haven't touched one
for more than a decade. He told me it didn't matter how long ago I
smoked or how much--it would impede my healing and make it slower. I
wish I knew that then.

Face Lift Chronicles: After the Cut, Days One-Three

I've never  had surgery before, least of all on my head. The first 20 hours were the worst, with the drains (long plastic tubes inserted by needle under your scalp) in the back of my head making me feel like I was trying to sleep on iron rods; the preferred form of oblivion came in a tiny cup: morphine. It was blue and tasted like apple juice--very thoughtful. I was able to exit two-four hours at a time. They kept me off oral fluids and food because I was on the table for 10 hours (!). That was the price I paid for getting this done in a teaching hospital. If you ever decide to do this, make sure you limit the amount of time you’ll be on the table—I was told three hours, but there you have it. A machine breathed for me the entire time. In a way, it's better you DON'T know what's going to happen.
This surgery is under full anesthetic, so I had a breathing tube down my throat for the entire 10 hours, and an oxygen tube in my nose for the whole time I remained in hospital. Thanks to being under for so long, the next two days after surgery I began to cough up rubbery phlegm from deep in my lungs. The nurses encouraged it—less chance of pneumonia.
Time seemed interminable when I began to come to. I was in hospital from 6AM Monday morning until about 2PM Tuesday. The operating room nurses and recovery room nurses were outstanding--right there on the dot whenever I could find the call button to summon them. When I went to "the floor", however, it was a different story. I could hear the nurse talking on the phone: "Oh yeah. Should I pick you up or what? That sounds good. OK. OK.", and after the fifth or sixth time I hit the call button (I was covered in ice water as the ice pack on my face had leaked and burst open), she came over to the bed and said, in a tightly controlled voice, "We're busy here." Hey, I couldn't see (thanks to tape on both upper and lower lids), but I sure could hear! Apparently the nursing shortage is forcing hospitals to hire people who formerly worked as telemarketers.
Oxycodone and ice became my BFFs. I was very stoned and had long involved conversations with my daughter/nurse after she came to pick me up. She said I seemed quite lucid. A friend sent me a news clip about wallabies in New Zealand (where most legal/pharmaceutical opium farming is done). Apparently they munch on the poppies and wander in circles for hours. Undoubtedly, they were looking for walls and doors to run into, which I found with unerring frequency in my own shuffle to the bathroom and back.
Friend Jan brought flowers by that night--when she picked up the car on Monday, she checked to see how it went, found out I was still on the table, and got very worried. She was relived to see me, puffy and alive, bless her heart.
Wednesday I felt a little better. I was able to open my eyes enough to see a slit of reality.  I felt like I had a pillow tied over my face and I looked like an overweight 15-year-old Japanese boy. I never slept more than two hours without rummaging through the freezer for cold peas. I have never felt so warmly about iced vegetables. That night, I had my first Oxycodone nightmare (not much of one--I was defending myself in slow motion from what turned out to be an empty closet--I was making stabbing motions with a sharpened pencil. How obvious!). Bye Bye Oxycodone, hello Tylenol Arthritis formula.
More anon....

The Face Chronicles: Before and After

What an adventure! I’m writing this now so I’ll remember how PAINFUL the operation was, and how quickly the healing process is taking place. I’m taking pictures every day, and I’ve learned a lot.
First, you find out who your real friends are, and how much you can lay on their doorstep. I had to leave for the hospital for the operation at 5:30 AM on Monday, June 15, and neither of the people who volunteered to drive me wanted to get up that early. Yes, it hurt my feelings, as I would have done it for either of them in an instant. I had to spend a bit of time remembering that it’s not always about me, it doesn’t mean I’m being deserted, etc. Also, if it was for a cancer treatment or some “real” medical treatment, I think it would have gone differently. We all learned a bit about ourselves courtesy of this event. I did have one volunteer who was willing to make the sacrifice, even though he was working through the weekend into late Sunday night: Thank you, Jim—you are the world’s nicest guy. Another friend came up with the cleverest solution to the problem: I could drive myself in, and she would drive in later that day with her son and pick up my car. That’s what we went with. Darn creative, Jan!
I got to the hospital, met the incredibly perky anesthesiologist, Annie, who lives in Marin and showed me pictures of her view from Sausalito on her cell phone. She postponed the dose that would send me to my “happy place” until Dr. Chung (my adorable senior resident surgeon) marked me up with a pen, and the supervising surgeon Dr. D’Amore (he had to make that name up—so cute, just like him!),  came in and discussed her preliminary marks and drew on me again. Amazingly, a woman I had met just the week before at a party spotted me (marks, hairnet and all) came over to say hello—she’s a nurse at that hospital.
Once the happy juice hit at 8AM Monday, I didn’t come to until 1AM Tuesday morning. Then began my endless quest for oblivion, which would last about two hours until I woke up again. Let’s be frank. In a face-lift/upper and lower eyelid combination, your ears are basically removed and replaced on your head while “excess” skin is removed and the muscles underneath are stitched up. Skin and muscle are cut and moved from your lower eyelid and upper eyelid, fat is placed in a “better” position, and the brow muscle is stitched up through your brow. It’s like a car accident where you’ve gone through the windshield. You can’t see the muscle work, but you can feel it—it’s tight, like a heavy workout/pulled muscle. In addition to the incisions (which you can both see AND feel) across your upper eyelid and inside your lower eyelids, and around your ears from the hairline in front around and through the inside of the ear across the bottom up the back and into the hairline, there are these marvelous things called drains. They are long tubes attached to your head by needles, and you are laying on them and occasionally pulling on the tubes accidentally, ripping the needle a bit. No need to ask, “Why morphine”, but rather, “When morphine?” People actually do this voluntarily, more than once. More later….

The FACE Chronicles Or Oh My God, I’m Almost “Done”

THIS IS A RE-POST OF THE DRAMATIC TALE OF MY FACELIFT, DONE IN JUNE, 2009


It’s now S (for surgery) minus 12 days, and counting. On June 15, I will be getting a new face. Oddly, this wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t approached a plastic surgeon at a nearby teaching hospital with a few questions about the safety and development of new procedures a few weeks ago; one look at me, and he dubbed me the “perfect candidate” (not sure whether this is good or bad).
It so happened that the senior resident at the hospital was specializing in cosmetic facial work, and looking for a few good faces to rearrange before she moved on to private practice. So on June 15, the resident, under the supervision of a local plastic surgeon of excellent reputation (I checked—hey, research is what I do), will be chatting over a table full of instruments and yours truly, out cold.
I’m trying not to think about it—I’ve never been one to welcome pain (Hi there! Come on in and take a seat. Coffee?). But I couldn’t say no to the adventure AND the opportunity to stock up on Glucerna (the equally yucky low-sugar version of Ensure), as I’ll not be able to open my mouth much for a few days after the operation. People could be anticipating this all over town.
I MIGHT run the pix of before, during and after on this blog. I don’t know yet.