Neck of a 70 Year Old...But I'm 53! Seattle, WA

I haven't been on here very much lately, business travel and trips to visit my dad in the hospital have been taking a lot of time. I just received copies of my doctor's before and after photos today so I made some side by sides to share. I'm just astounded at the difference. Now that I've been living with my new face for 6 weeks I'm starting to forget how unhappy I was with my old appearance (yay). In the before pictures I can see someone not happy with her face/neck, and someone a little worried and unsure if she is doing the right thing. I'm so glad I finally did this. At 6 weeks post my neck is still numb ear to ear above my adam's apple to the bottom of my chin. My cheeks are still numb from my ears toward my nose an inch or two on each side in the areas where you'd find sideburns on a guy. At my last appointment my doctor said the feeling would completely return in time so I'm not concerned but it is a strange feeling. The numbness is slightly better than right after surgery. The pain in my neck is essentially gone. It feels tight every morning so I stretch it out and then it feels normal. There is no more pain at any of the incisions and I'm able to aggressively massage the under chin scar now without pain. Seeing these pictures today brought out a lot of different emotions for me. Mostly I'm thankful. I wore my hair in a pony tonight and really appreciated not having that old feeling of dread at showing my side profile to the world. I hope all my RS buddies are doing great in their journeys. Hugs!

This weekend I was at a small get together with some friends and at the end of the evening I was chatting with one of them and my time away in Seattle came up...and I mentioned that I'd gone over there for surgery. I shouldn't have mentioned surgery because then he was concerned so I ended up telling him what it was. He was pretty curious so I showed him the before and after pictures on my phone. His response was pretty cool, he said that during the evening he'd noticed something was different about me but it wasn't my face, he said he noticed that I was smiling and talking more than I usually do, like I was really happy. I was really happy to hear him say that, I do smile more and that's what I was hoping people would notice. :)

With my face/neck looking better to me I've noticed that I'm wanting to take better care of my skin. I've had so many issues with acne over the years that until menopause I'd given up on all moisturizers because they would just cause me to break out. In fact I still get acne so I have to be careful with what I choose to use. Well, a few weeks ago I started using a skin care line from my PS office, so far so good there, and I saw my dermatologist this week and just started using a retinoid cream. I'm going to be adding vitamin C soon as well. This is all new stuff to someone who's previous regimen has consisted of washing her face once or twice a day and using minimal makeup!

I'm getting phantom pains and lightning zaps to my neck! It's waking up! Started yesterday with feeling like something was rubbing my neck but when I reached up to move the collar, there was nothing there, so weird. But now its got that waking up from Novocain feeling so I think its just a little behind my face in the getting feeling again progress. Yay!