Life-changing Facial Makeover - Boston, MA

Jeffrey Spiegel saved my life. I'd spent my entire adolescence dissociated from my body and especially my face. I was horribly androgynous, too angular, my nose was too big, etc. The only thing I liked about my face were my lips. I never wanted to be one of "those girls" but after deliberating for years and spending the first half of my nineteenth year intensely soul-deadeningly suicidal, as though a drumbeat death-knell of all my insecurities was ricocheting cacophonously through my body with every heartbeat, I made a consultation and four hellishly suicidal months later, booked my surgery, and just over a month later on a soft gentle spring day, walked into Boston Medical Center and transformed my life forever.

Spiegel and his assistants are absolutely gorgeous, warm, efficient, funny, everything you'd expect from a world-class cosmetic surgery clinic. I've never felt in safer hands. They answered all my questions in detail, gave me ample time to discuss anything I wanted to discuss, handled everything so so so much more smoothly than expected, and managed to book a surgery date months sooner than I expected. I was so so so impressed with everyone involved, but especially Katie and Kelly. They were patient, kind, supportive, and generally over-and-above expectations in all interactions with them. Spiegel himself was the one surgeon I consulted with that made me feel completely completely safe in his hands. I trusted him from the moment I saw him, and my trust paid off completely.

The surgery itself took six hours, during which I had a lip lift, rhinoplasty, brow contouring, mandible (jaw) contouring, chin reduction, and tracheal shave. He didn't push unnecessary procedures on me at all, and even gently discouraged me from tacking on a cheek augmentation procedure. Very ethical. I was worried he would be too subtle from the research I'd done, but he wasn't at all. The results are in line with how I always saw myself in my mind, which is an incredible achievement for a presumably non-telepathic surgeon. I really do believe that my appearance is very close to how I would have looked if my hormones had been at healthy levels through puberty.

Recovery was... traumatizing, in a word. It will obviously vary depending on your procedures, but for the full face makeover I had done, it was the most traumatic experience of my life. It was totally totally 10,000% worth it and I would do it over again without question, but I wish someone had clearly warned me how horrific it was going to be. I felt like a disgusting slug for months afterwords, my nose stank of rotting flesh for days, I had bubbles of fluid in my forehead, a mouth full of stitches and weird flesh tentacles, near-constant hallucinations from the pain meds for the first four days, I didn't leave the house unnecessarily for three months, and the post-surgery depression was as bad as I've ever had. But I consider that part of the price of significantly raising your attractiveness and self-worth. Self-worth isn't won easily... it takes pain and hardship more often than not, and esp. if you are at all hypersensitive, this is about as painful as it gets. I've experienced so much trauma in my life and I thought this would be nothing, but there's something so invasive about having your face ravaged so that you're unrecognizable and as ugly as you can imagine. For better or worse we associate our sense of self with our faces to some degree, and when your face looks like it was bit by a hundred angry hornets, it's hard not to feel worthless inside. It's insidious. This is not to dissuade you; it's just to give you a clear warning of how bad it can be. My advice is to take selfies or have your companion take them as soon as you wake from the anesthetic, before the swelling kicks in. I still have the pics from just after, and I treasured them through the hellish months following surgery, because there's no doubt that black eyes or not, I looked so much better the evening after surgery than the evening before.

It's now been five months and eight days since my surgery. My nose and chin are still a little tender, but nearly all of the numbness on my forehead and elsewhere has gone, and though I can't be sure, I think all of the swelling is gone. I have dignity for the first time in my life. I look in the mirror and where before I nearly threw up in my mouth, I smile and feel my spirits lift. The mirror is a friend now, not the enemy it always was. I didn't take care of myself before surgery because what was the use when I was so hopelessly ugly, but now for the first time in my life I'm starting to take care with hygiene and hair and makeup and such-like. I was never cat-called pre-surgery; now it's a regular enough experience that it's even starting to annoy me.

It hasn't fixed all my problems, but it has done far far more than society would have had me expect. People are hypocritical on this point. They tell a girl with low self-esteem that her looks don't matter, only her inner, and five minutes later rave about another girl based on her looks alone. We are half our inner and half our physicality, but half is a LOT, and the two are so symbolically entertwined that raising one will raise the other, especially in others eyes. Before surgery, I was withdrawn into myself, too scared of judgements from the cruel world to do much more than peek out of my shell and hide on the internet with anime profile pics. The world seems kinder now and I feel free, indeed encouraged to express the vibrant feminine self that was always imprisoned behind the betrayal of my external androgyny. People treated me androgynously; now they treat me as a girl, which allows me to be the girly-girl I always was. That my exterior better reflects me now allows me permission to BE myself.

People will tell you that you need therapy not surgery, but I have had $8k surgery in the past few years of my life, and $40k cosmetic surgery. I value the $8k of therapy at about ten dollars, and I value Spiegel's mind-blowingly tear-inducingly phenomenal work at about ten million dollars. Without him I would have killed myself; I was spiraling off the edge of the world, and he was the one thing that arrested my descent.