Cheek Lift: Stories

Doctor sometimes had good bedside manner and sometimes didn't. It depended on his mood and how distracted he was. When we talked on the phone because I live elsewhere, he always sounded distracted. He did not answer all of the questions I emailed to him, and he did not answer all my questions in person. He answered those he wanted to answer and the others he brushed off. There's been no after care follow-up. After the surgery over two years ago, his staff did not contact me Once to see how I was doing, even though they knew I was making a stop in another state different from my own home state and then traveling on home a few weeks after that. The doctor reassured me that his office would not just abandon me because I was leaving his state, but I never heard a word from any one of them. Not once. After I returned to my own state, again I heard from no one in his office. Not once. They did not respond to emails when I asked them to until I was a little angry about it. After the surgical revision to my lumpy chin six months after the first surgery, no one from his office ever contacted me for any reason whatsoever. Not once. He sent me away with a huge scar under my chin, and he knew I was unhappy about my smile, but he never once contacted me to ask how I was healing or if I was happy. So much for the claims regarding dedication to achieving patient satisfaction made in his written material and on his website. I paid cash, and he was more expensive than the average. Wait times were fine. His medical team seem fine, and I liked his anesthesiologist a lot. The after-care transportation and facility wasn't that good. The driver was talking about me on his phone in the van, and braking hard. He couldn't find the door to the place and had me in the hot Arizona sun without anything covering my face. My sutures, especially on my eyes felt like they were on fire. The day nurses were nice, but one of the night nurses was impatient and curt. Another patient in the room kept waking me up all night with her computer and music. A few weeks before the surgery, I talked to his patient coordinator and told her that I thought I was rushing into it and I had decided I should think about it some more. She assertively insisted cold-feet nerves were normal, but everything would be wonderful and I would be so happy that I really needed to trust the doctor and go through with it. I told her I was worried about ending up with a lumpy chin. She insisted I had nothing to worry about, and said, "Oh no! You will have a smooth, firm chin. You'll love it and be very happy. Trust the doctor." I did, and I ended up with a lumpy chin, which he fixed by leaving me with a very large visible scar. After feeling sort of pushed into the surgery because I initially had asked for only a consult but as soon as the doctor was finished doing the consult I was taken to the patient coordinator to look at photos and schedule my surgery as though it was given), and then she was so insistent about not letting me back out, I now think she was working on commission. No one in a physician's office who deals with encouraging medical procedures should be working on commission for this very reason. I also felt like up-selling was going on, because I was talked into the mid-face cheek lift when I wasn't asking for one, and then the doctor tried to convince me to have a $5000.00 laser procedure afterward, and actually talked about it as though it was almost a given, when I'd never asked for it and it had never been brought up before my surgery. After the first surgery over two years ago, I was sent away with no instructions for scar care or even that I needed surgical tape to replace what was on me. Because I was having trouble getting time for specific questions answered about how long I had to sleep sitting up, how long to wear the chin band, and other timeline questions, before I was ushered out the last time, I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote those questions down and had him fill in the answers before I left his office the final time. When I asked about creams or something for the incisions and to prevent scarring, his staff looked like they didn't know what I was talking about. When I asked him, he told them to get me two facial creams that would prepare my skin for laser resurfacing. I paid about $250.00 for them and they made me break out so I ended up throwing them away. (I told him that, and he had no response.) He said nothing about scar creams, surgical tape, or anything else. After I left the state, I called his office 2.5 weeks later when the surgical tape I left his office wearing was scuzzy and sliding off. I'd not heard a word from his office since I'd left even though he'd reassured me they would follow-up with me so I did not need to feel insecure about leaving. I wanted to know if I could just throw the surgical tape away and to verify I didn't need it anymore. That's when I was told I was supposed to be changing it regularly and I needed to wear it for the next three months! I tromped through the rain in the city I was in (not my own home city) looking for a pharmacy that sold it, wondering how in the heck they'd sent me away without explaining it to me and giving me a roll of surgical tape? I've never had a surgery where the surgeon's office didn't send me away with what I needed! When I saw him six months later for a revision of another procedure, I told him about it and he argued with me, telling me that it wasn't true they sent me away without instructions because they are very careful about that. He said I just didn't remember because of what I'd gone through and that to ensure I couldn't forget the second time he would send me home with the instructions written down. They did neither. Again there was no discussion at all about scar prevention until *I* specifically asked *him* about Mederma as he was preparing to leave, and then he said yes to do that. I also left with nothing in writing. (It isn't only me because I know another of his patients who had the same experience: no instructions for wound care and scar prevention, and she never heard a word from anyone in his practice after she left. No one even called her to check up and see if she was having any problems.) To get any follow-up that doesn't include an office visit, the patient has to initiate it and be persistent. I haven't even bothered to contact him over my horrible smile because because when I went back for the revision of something else, he made it clear he had no interest in what I had to say about my self-consciousness over my smile, and he also had no interest in tweaking my eye-lids even though he'd previously said when I went back he would tweak them if needed because doing multiple procedure at once caused so much swelling it is difficult to assess how much eye-lid skin really needs to be removed. Because of the swelling from multiple procedures when he did my eyelids, he did not remove enough to make that much of a difference, and he'd acknowledged that would happen because of the swelling, but when I went back, I guess because I'd refused anymore expensive procedures, he refused to acknowledge the issue, changed the subject, and did not follow through on his "tweaking" promise. What he was interested in was a $5000.00 laser re-surfacing to "finish off" the other work (which was never mentioned in my initial consultation), but my skin is in much better shape than most women my age and two others told me no way was I a candidate for such deep burning of my face. I don't like the shiny look skin is left with after that procedure either. Because of my ruined smile (way too tight, sort of joker looking, with a distinct thick ridge running horizontally under my nose) and what he needed to correct from the first surgery, I decided not to follow his recommendation regarding the face resurfacing, but instead waited to see how the revision went first. I guess since I wasn't there to purchase another expensive procedure, he had no interest in keeping his word about my eye-lids and he didn't care to live up to his written material about caring so much about the satisfaction his patients feel about their outcomes. Given the unhappy result of his revision (which I will write about under face lift/neck surgery), I'm glad I didn't agree to the facial resurfacing.