23 Years Old, Upper Eyelid Surgery. San Jose, CA

It's been almost 2 months since my surgery and everything has been doing great! The incision lines are still a little tender and I avoid pulling at my eyes, even when I wash my face. Other than that, my eyes are in great shape and look super natural!

The healing was straight forward and easy. Sorry for some shitty quality as these are phone pictures.

I've been wanting to get my eyelids done since high school, ever since I realized how puffy and heavy my lids were. I didn't seriously consider it until 2 years ago, back in 2013 when my mom mentioned that she wanted to get them done too. Her plans fell through and I chickened out until now! I just graduated from university and decided to just do it since I had the summer off.

First I went on real self, looking for other people's reviews and progress pictures (to find out what to expect and the healing process). Then I started to look for local reviews to figure out who I should go to. Yelp wasn't very helpful and randomly googling didn't make me feel confident about my choices. Through real self, I found someone local who was consistently getting great reviews and happy patients. That's how I found Dr. Chase Lay.

Dr. Lay is amazing. He is hilarious and super easy to talk to. Initially, there is a little hesitation because he is white and I was curious how well does he know about working with Asian features. That fear is unfound as the majority of his work are Asian patients and he understands the culture and features that Asians desire. He is definitely an Asian face specialist. He always look happy to see you and gives you his personal cell number for after hours, if you have any problems or questions after surgery. He calls you the night of your surgery day just to check up on you and makes sure you do not have any questions. His office is filled with super friendly people who do their best to make you feel at home.

I found Dr. Lay's philosophy to plastic surgery is to refine your look but not make you look like a completely different person. You but better. He prefers to take a more conservative approach because you can always remove more, but not add it back. He does do revisions for free, if you are unhappy with your initial result, but only less than 2% of his patients ever require it.

So for my consultation (which was $75 but that applies as credit for your procedure if you choose to go with Dr. Lay), Dr. Lay talked to me about what I wanted and showed me pictures of his work that are similar to how my eyelids initially are and the results. I already have double eyelids but the top was very heavy and I wanted a little more lid space for makeup. I had a good feeling about Dr. Lay and he ended up being the only consultation I went to and I made my appointment less than a week later for my surgery! (When you make an appointment for the surgery, you put down $750 nonrefundable deposit. The remaining balance will be due a week before your surgery, unless you pay in cash, which you can pay day of surgery.)

Day before your surgery, start your antibiotics. Dr. Lay's nice and orders antibiotics that are cheap even without insurance (I didn't want to go through insurance for my prescription because I wasn't sure if it was covered.) I paid about $13 for it from CVS. 3 pills a day for 7 days.

7/13/15 - On the day of the surgery, I wore my glasses and comfy clothing to my appointment. (No contacts, only glasses) My boyfriend came along with me to give me a ride home but I heard of patients who drove themselves just fine after the surgery. Dr. Lay goes over everything with me and double check what I want the end results to be. I go into the surgery room where I lay down and they cover me with a blanket. The assistant disinfects my face and Dr. Lay starts measuring and drawing on my eyelids. Dr. Lay then injects your eyelids with the local anaesthesia which feels incredibly strange. The initial feeling makes you feel like you cannot open your eyes at all but that feeling fades after a while. Yes, you are awake throughout the surgery, since Dr. Lay likes to see how the incisions look and asks you to open your eyes so he can see the symmetry. Then he starts cutting and you honestly cannot feel anything. The only strange/pressure part was when he remove some fat out of my eyes with some kind of vacuum but I do know that he doesn't like to remove fat unless your lids/skin is pretty heavy. The surgery takes about an hour or so. Then I iced my eyes for 45 minutes to an hour in the office. I got in to the office around 9:30AM and left around 11:30AM.

Healing: ICE YOUR EYES. Especially for the first 3 - 4 days. It helps so much. My swelling started around day 1 night and the worse of the swelling was day 2 and day 3. Clean your incisions with a q-tip and peroxide or warm water and apply Neosporin (or something similar) after to help with healing and to keep it moisturized. Dr. Lay provided 2 small packets of antibiotic cream which was enough for the 7 days since you don't need too much and I never opened my package of Neosporin. By day 5, the swelling was going down and my incisions/stitches started getting itchy. I didn't remove my stitches until day 8, since Dr. Lay was closed Day 7, and removing stitches stings. It made me tear up but it wasn't terrible, just an uncomfortable feeling. After you remove stitches, you might notice track marks and some hardened skin. That flaked off a day or two later so don't worry! not permanent! I also took Arnica Montana tablets during the whole healing process and I assume that it helped with the swelling and bruising. My eyes were also pretty dry during the first 7 days so I used single use eyedrops to help.

Your eyes should look fairly normal 10 days later and I started wearing my contacts again on Day 11. I've been doing check ups with Dr. Lay. I saw him on Day 4, Day 8, and today, Day 19. I'll be seeing him again about a month from now but that's an optional check up.

I'm very happy with my eyes right now and I don't regret it at all. Sometimes, I still get a little surprised when I look in the mirror that this is how I look now but it's not a shocking feeling. My mom is going to get her eyes done from Dr. Lay in 3 weeks! and I just recommended him to my waxing lady. I would highly recommend Dr. Chase Lay to anyone! He's a great doctor and you can sense how much he cares.