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  • Hit By a Semi at 25, This Doctor Shares Her Personal Surgery Experience
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A face lift is a real surgical procedure. It has a two week recovery. A patient should allow two weeks to listen to their body, to rest when they need to, and to be able to heal. There's not a lot of bruising, not a lot of pain, but patients generally feel quite tight and even feel as though their jaw is tight when they chew or open their mouth. I see every patient the day after their face lift and follow them throughout their recovery period. The recovery period for a face lift is two weeks. They should be able to listen to their body for two weeks, take two weeks off of work. It's a relation of the patient with me and I see every face surgery patient the day after their surgery. They go home and sleep in their own beds the night after surgery, have a wrap. Generally they don't have a lot of bruising or swelling unless they have fat grafting, and do need to realize it's not like a lunchtime lift, which some of those things do not work at all. A real face lift that works takes some real recovery. The experience of going through a face lift, I often start telling people about my own experience, which was at 25 I was hit head-on by a semi who was drinking and not taking his seizure medicines. So I went through 18 reconstructive surgeries of my face including bone grafts, scars everywhere and all of that. So I talk a lot to patients about even if they don't, and they don't usually, have a lot of bruising or swelling, they will go through a period of time of a high, 'Look how good I look.', and a little bit of a low, 'Is this me?'. Often in the second week people are ready to be healed, they're ready to be done, and they are still healing, and so it's something to really talk about and it is why I see my patients the day after surgery, the week after surgery, two weeks after, and a month after. If they can't do that then they shouldn't see me.

Hit By a Semi at 25, This Doctor Shares Her Personal Surgery Experience

Dr. Barbara Persons shares her experience as both a doctor and a patient in this personal story.