“Hate my Hollowed Eyes After Blepharoplasty - New York”

I am so sorry to hear that you have had such a bad result. However I am not surprised. Surgeons will say whatever they think you want to hear and then do whatever they want when they do the surgery. They then of course deny that anything is wrong. Also the true facts are that no surgeon can truly predict the outcome no matter how highly regarded they appear to be. Did your surgeon offer to do anything to fix things? I ;personally have used some filler to restore some fullness. This does help, but I would definitely seek out an expert in this. Tell your surgeon you want your money back...you did not get what you paid for. DO NOT let him touch your eyes again. I agree there should be a group and there should be more expose of these bad surgeons and the reality of the high risk involved.

Hi ernurse,

My surgeon went on vacation shortly after my surgery and just recently came back. I'm going to see him in early April. I know he will offer suggestions to "improve" my result. However, I am NOT going to let him touch my eyes. I mainly want an opportunity to tell him in person how much this has devastated me.

I want to tell him how inadequate my consultation was. (How inadequate most consultations seem to be.) At the time, what he said seemed to make sense - just take out a little fat and puffiness will be reduced. He was such a charming salesman. "This procedure goes very smoothly and produces a wonderful result." Yeah, it produces a wonderful result if you forever hold your face at rest with perfect overhead lighting!!! But try smiling, laughing, being in dim light, or side lighting and the shadows on your new eye hollows will make you look like a goddamn Halloween ghoul !!!

Only NOW do I know that the fat around our eyes is an essential structural element that supports our eyelids. It is also an essential cosmetic element that provides fullness and balance to our upper face. Yet, these doctors treat it like wisdom teeth or tonsils - some superfluous anatomical feature that they can remove without consequence.

I should have been told that it was surgically impossible to "give me back my old eyes" - and that achieving a reasonable facsimile was a crapshoot at best. That removing fat would, in fact, reduce puffiness, but it would also change so many other things. That all surgery could accomplish was the exchange of one set of circumstances for a different set of circumstances - then letting me decide if the trade-off would be worth it. In my case, the puffiness was not so bad that is was worth the hollowness.

I have set up three consultations with some of the Los Angeles oculoplastic surgeons. All three consultations will happen in April. Each of these docs is an "expert injector" around the eyes. I'm hoping they say I'm a good candidate for Restylane. I think it will give me some peace of mind just to have some fullness back.

I'm also starting therapy this week. I have so much regret and I need help getting past it. I responded to a comment on my own thread: "Sunken Right Eye After Lower Transconjunctival Blepharoplasty - Northern California" where I admit that I was not in the best state of mind to undergo surgery when I did. Ultimately, I made a bad decision. But my doctor also needs to know that he played a role in my dissatisfaction.

Ernurse, please reach out to me via personal message or post on my thread if you would like to keep in touch. I would greatly appreciate your support. Every connection brings comfort during this nightmare.

This website is great, but I really feel "plastic surgery regret" is underrepresented in the world of recovery. There are recovery programs for so many other problems that cause despair - alcoholism, drug abuse, compulsive behavior, eating disorders, etc. The list goes on and on. But other than RealSelf, and a couple of other message boards, it is hard to connect with others who understand this special brand of regret and devastation. Let's be honest, people who haven't been through it really can't relate and can only offer limited support. In addition to being able to vent, we need a path of emotional recovery, maybe along the lines of a 12 step program.

Again, please keep in touch.

Best wishes - JessieR

There is one more thing that my doctor should have told me during my consultation. That the probability of asymmetry was HIGH. That it is damn near impossible to produce adequate symmetry. If he had told me that ONE FACT alone, I would have walked out the door. But he didn't. He never mentioned the possibility of asymmetry, which is what I ended up with.

My eyes weren't perfect to begin with, but the minor asymmetry was NATURAL and did not look freakish. The surgical asymmetry is really unacceptable to me.

I just hope Restylane can even it out.