Temporal/Lateral Brow Lift

I am writing this review because I couldn't find much information about the lateral/temporal brow lift when I was researching procedures. I am not including pictures for privacy reasons, but I'll do my best to describe things in detail.
I'm in my late 30's and I've always had high brows, but in the past couple of years they have started to droop causing lateral hooding. This gave my eyes a heavy, downturned look which I hate...We decided on a lateral lift because it was mostly the outer part of the brow that was drooping. I chose to do an in-office procedure because I was afraid of being put to sleep.
The day of the procedure I was very nervous, my Dr. did not prescribe any Valium but I wish I asked for some because it was hard to relax. That said, the actual numbing of my head was the most painful part of the operation. The numbing shots burned/stung but no worse than what you would get at the dentist. After it was numb, I couldn't feel any pain although it's very odd to feel the pressure and pulling sensations when they are loosening the temple muscles. The scraping sounds when they loosen the muscles made me a bit uneasy as well. A couple times I wanted to leap out of the chair and say forget it, I'm done! Again, a Valium would have helped! The whole operation only took about 1.5 hours, and I was able to go home immediately with antibiotics. I looked in the mirror and I actually looked pretty good immediately besides a bit of swelling. The incisions were about an inch long on each side and hidden within my hair. My maim concern was hiding this from my family...I saw my mother for a few minutes that night and she had no idea. The bandage they used to wrap my head was removable so I just took it off when I saw her.
Later that night I felt some pain in the incision sites, and a headache but Tylenol every 4 hours took the edge off. Sleeping was very tough, as my head was tightly wrapped with a bandage (supposed to leave it on for 24 hours which I followed except for the 15 minutes I saw my mom) and I needed to sleep elevated on my back. I am a side sleeper, so I must have kept turning over in my sleep and the pain would wake me up. I got very little sleep that night! The next morning I woke up in some pain, on a scale of 1-10 I would call it a 6... with some swelling on the left side and a light bruise that went from my temples to under the eye. My right side looked mostly normal with very mild swelling only. Sleep was slightly easier this night because I took the bandage off but it was still pretty hard to sleep. The next day was probably the most painful, the incision sites hurt quite a bit and my headache was throbbing...the swelling on the left side stayed steady but I felt like I could still go in public if I needed to for a quick stop to the grocery store etc (but I didn't).
By the 4th day after surgery the swelling went down a bit, and I was able to cover the light bruising with makeup and go out in public. It still hurts today, but not nearly as bad as two days ago. I thought I would have had worse bruising since I bruise very easily, but I took Arnica and Bromelain which I think may have helped. I'm not 100% sure though because I have an unrelated bruise on my leg that hasn't made any change since taking these supplements. I still have a bit of swelling and I haven't seen what my scars will look like so I'm not sure if it was "worth it" yet. My brow looks a bit higher, but I'm not sure if it's high enough. It cost a lot of money, and I still see some lateral hooding on my eyes, so at the moment I am not totally satisfied with the results... but I'll wait a few weeks to decide how I feel about it. It's definitely too soon to tell. I have high hopes!

I'm not sure if anyone will even read this update, but it's been exactly 2 weeks now and all swelling/bruising seems to be gone. I feel like I'm healing properly, which is great! The stitches are slowly dissolving/breaking down in my hairline so it's just a waiting game to see how scarring will look. It still hurts a bit when I touch the incisions, or try to lay on them so sleep hasn't been great for the past few weeks, but I'm getting used to it and it hurts a bit less every day. Overall the recovery was very easy.

As for how I look, at the moment I actually don' think this was worth the price. I'm not a rich woman, so coming up with this kind of money was not easy. Honestly, I don't see enough of a difference to justify what I paid (and will continue to pay for many months to come). Yes, I do see a bit of difference in my brow placement but I still wish I had more lift. I still see enough lateral hooding on my lids that I'm disappointed in the outcome. Nobody can tell I had anything done, which is always a good thing but I was hoping for at least a couple of "you look great/refreshed" comments but that hasn't happened because I look exactly the same to the untrained eye. I am looking into options to tighten that upper eyelid skin, but it's more money out of my pocket so I may just leave it alone for now. I'll update if anything changes, but at the moment I wish I had just left it alone and spent the money on blepharoplasty instead.

I see a coupke people have read this so I'd lije to offer an update. I am now 6 months out, and still not truly happy with my results. I look better than before, but feel like I could use some more lift. I made a follow-up appointment to talk about it. My eyebrows themselves look good, but there is still some loose skin on the upper eyelid and there is a strange wrinkle along the crease that seems to indicate it's not lifted enough. My doctor actually agreed with my assessment, but thinks I look good enough to leave it alone but offered me two suggestions. We can either do botox to slightly lift the area, which I quickly rejected because I want permanent results - or a possible revision. The only catch with the revision is that he'll need to make two new incisions in front of the hairline to better address the exact area that needs to be lifted and not bring my hairline back any further. I need to wait 6 more months to do this (he only does revisions after one year). My scars are still very raised and red so I'm nervous about getting more visible scars that will be visible.... but I guess after 6 months I can really gauge how the scars look and decide if I want to go through another minor surgery.