Busy 57-year-old Finds Time for a Facelift

Over the years I have been reasonably happy with my body and my face, but over the last 2 years, I started avoiding mirrors. I just didn't like seeing myself looking sad or angry when I was actually in a good mood. It started with my neck and then the jowls started sagging, too. When a family member (with the same neck and jowls) got a FL done 3 years ago, I was impressed with the improvement and got the name of the surgeon. I went for a consultation around that time, but it took me a while to get fully motivated. I did get a couple other consultations, but I knew I liked the work of Dr. Vogel, and I was comfortable with him and his staff.
In the time leading up to the surgery, I did not search online for information because I knew it would just scare me and I felt I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into, based on conversations with others who have had this surgery.
I have to say, I underestimated how tough it would be. I thought of myself as healthy & fit and I believed I would breeze through it. Ha ha!
On to the details! I did get through the surgery easily. It took about 4.5 hours. I had my upper eyelids done, neck & facelift and dermabrasion around my mouth for fine lines. When I woke up from the surgery, I felt pretty pain-free, and I was never nauseated, so that was a relief. I spent the night and it was great to have a nurse to taking care of me. I had planned 2 weeks off from work, and then there was Thanksgiving weekend giving me a total of 2.5 weeks to recover before going back to to work.
My husband took off a couple days to take care of me, so that was a huge help. The first few days were, honestly, awful. Because I was icing my eyes, face & neck, I couldn't read or watch tv and time seemed to move very slowly. Fortunately I figured out to get some audiobooks and listening to books entertained me a bit. The thing that made me the most miserable was the dermabrasion around my mouth. I came home with a white bandage that protected it, but with all the icing, that bandage came off after a day. Then it was brutal. The skin was raw and oozing pus. On the 3rd day, it also itched like crazy but Bendryl helped with that. On day 4, the swelling peaked and it felt like my skin would burst open. After that, things definitely got better. A week passed uneventfully, with a little improvement every day, but on day 10 my bruising and swelling returned on my left side. All along, my left side has been puffier than the right side. But this was pretty bad - and in retrospect, I should have called the doctor sooner. Unfortunately, I just waited for my scheduled appointment on day 14 at which time he used a needle to suck out the excess blood and fluids form my cheek and neck. It didn't hurt at all, and by that evening, the bruising was resolved. The next day was Thanksgiving, and we were hosting 20 people!
Yeah, that's crazy, but I really wanted to see them after 2 weeks of being cooped up at home. I sent out messages to everyone saying I was recovering from cosmetic surgery and they should bring side dishes and desserts. My dear husband cooked the turkey and it all turned out very well. My family was surprised I'd had a facelift, but they were all very supportive and it was a huge boost to my fragile self-confidence!
The fluids had to be drained a couple more times and I took a few extra days off, returning to work after 3 weeks.
I felt so swollen and self-conscious, but I tackled it head on by telling people that I'd had a facelift. I figured it would be easier on them and on me if I just told them the truth. People were actually really nice about it.
By 4 weeks, I was getting extremely antsy because I usually do yoga on a daily basis.
When I was 20, I was in a bad car accident and since then, it is very important that I keep my neck and spine limber. I take this for granted, so it never occurred to me that recovering from a facelift would prevent me from taking care of my health - but the stiffness and muscle pain had become almost unbearable. When I reached 1 month, I got a massage and it was a real game-changer. It improved my energy and my ability to sleep. I got another massage at 5 weeks. I was not able to lay face-down for the massages, but they were still able to give my muscles some relief. At 6 weeks, I went for acupuncture and I was able to lay on my stomach for that - and it REALLY helped me, too. I plan to continue both massage and acupuncture until I am much more healed.
I can see a lot of progress, but I know I am still swollen - in fact I look like I went heavy on the fillers. This swelling will subside.
Even though my doctor told me I can exercise, my body tells me it's too soon for yoga (the inversions anyway). Instead, I am using the exercycle, elliptical and going for long walks. I am feeling pretty darn good. I never had lumpiness like I've seen in other reviews. I can feel most of my face (but my ears are still pretty numb). The tightness isn't bothering me much - in fact it seems to fade into the background. And I can sleep on my side now. So, all in all, I am doing alright. I realize now that a facelift requires enormous amounts of patience and healing takes months. So that's OK. I do like the results and that's what matters.
I am posting this now because I have read so many reviews on this site over the last several weeks and it kept me going when I felt discouraged. Thank you to everyone who has posted their experience.

I think the best part about being at 7 weeks is that I am starting to see my own face again. It was more difficult than I expected to adapt to my new look, especially my eyes.

It seems I published my update before I was finished - oops! At 7 weeks, I no longer notice the sensations in my face very much. There is still numbness in front of my ears, but a lot of feeling has returned. The tingling has subsided to a mild buzz in the background. The tightness feels like I am wearing a hat with a ribbon tied under my chin. I am getting used to it, but it will be nice when that sensation is gone. My ears are still very numb, but I can feel a little bit in my right earlobe, so that is a good sign.
My scars are doing OK. The things that bother me a little bit are the scar under my chin (it is about twice the length of the other scars I see here) and the slight swelling & staining (from bruising) on the left side of my neck. I had trouble capturing these in photos, so they can't be that bad, right?
I am such a slow healer! My scars are still red, but that is just the way I heal, so I am used to that.

At this point, I am just so pleased to look in the mirror and see "me". The swelling has gone down enough that my smile is starting to look familiar, and I have gotten used to my eyes. At first, I was really afraid that the doctor had take out too much eyelid - and now I love my eyes. So I guess it is just a process.

If I had known then what I know now, I would have taken a different approach to this surgery. First, I would have gotten the upper bleph years ago. In my late 40's I stopped wearing eye shadow because my lids had gotten so droopy and that would have been a good time to just get my eyes done.
The necklift is great now and I don't think I would have gotten the dermabrasion around my mouth.

The reason I say this is because I found it too challenging to recover from 3 procedures. But, hindsight is 20-20, right? I postponed this because I really didn't know whether I would "age gracefully" or what I would find necessary. For a long time, I just focused on my skin. As long as that looked good, I didn't care about wrinkles.
Well now we know! I am MUCH HAPPIER with my tighter neck.
It is not perfect - there is still a little extra swelling on the left side under my chin and there is some staining there from the bruising. (I have no pics of my bruising episode between days 10-14, because I was so discourage I couldn't bring myself to take pictures).
At this point, I love the results and when all the swelling is completely gone, I will probably get fillers to get this look back :) Too bad we can't just flip a switch when we reach the results we like. But that's OK.
For me, it was all about the jowls and the neck and this subtle improvement is exactly what I wanted.

Just for the sake of being thorough (maybe this will help someone) I have been getting massages and acupuncture treatments to help me with my stiff neck. I actually have a little arthritis in my neck and I totally neglected to consider that it might be a problem. I didn't realize that staying mostly immobile for several weeks would cause knots in my neck and upper back muscles. By the time I was allowed to work out, it was agony.
I have had acupuncture in the past, so I felt comfortable with going that route. It has been a tremendous advantage, along with massages. I am taking baby steps to get my yoga routine going again.
That's it for now! Happy New Year. I didn't post a lot in my early recovery, but I will keep posting now to let people know what it's like to recover from a facelift.
It cracks me up when a friend asks, "How long did it take you to recover?" because it certainly is still ongoing. Sure we can go back to work after a few weeks, but it takes much longer to completely recover.