When I was about seven or eight in the 1950s, I told my mom and six sisters that when I got old, “I’m having a face lift!” They laughed. I insisted. I was dreaming of a luxury way out of my league. I figured by the time I needed one, science would have invented some wonderful new way to do it, and do it cheaper.

Nowadays, it is much cheaper than back then, but it’s still cut, pull and bleed. Then suffer. Internet prices ranged from $5-10,000. After four years saving overseas and feeding my pension plan, I figured I better get rid of my frown lines.

Norman Mailer had the two deep thought lines over his nose, often hidden with glasses. However, on a woman, walking down a street, even with glasses, men would order me to smile. Customs officers would order my luggage inspected. Students feared angering me. Overseas job applications demand a photo. I needed a new look. The author of the First Wives Club died from her facelift when she was 54. She was a smoker. I was 54. I was a light, social smoker. I stopped smoking.
 

Imagine my shock to learn from a Seattle hospital that a facelift was a three-operation procedure, with a three-operation price: $10,000 each for the ‘brow lift’, ‘the eyes’ and ‘the jowls and neck’.  Thirty thousand. 

A friend who had had a tummy tuck recommended her doctor. His facelifts, in his clinic, cost just a tad less than $10,000. If I became a ‘bleeder’ I’d be transferred immediately to the hospital a few yards away and billed for expenses used to save my life. I prayed that would not happen since such hospital bills would kill most anyone.

 
The doctor was required by law to read me a list of 30 questions for each of the three procedures. I had to answer 90 questions and sign on the dotted line three times, that yes, I knew this would not change my life, my marital status, earn me a higher salary, and I could die. Three times. One for each of the three operations. By the time I was in the chair to be anestisized the next day, I was terrified. 

Maybe the Nigerian doctor who entered the room with a white coat with a blue stain by his pocket where his ink pens had leaked was a famous Nigerian scammer? I told him and the anastheologist who was readying the needle how terrified I was. “We can stop the procedure now, if you like,” the doctor said. 

I looked at them both in surprise. That was an option for a nano second.  “Just because I’m afraid, doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it.” I said. “I’m just as afraid of needles as I am of the whole operation, so don’t pay attention to me. Just get that needle in me and knock me out, okay?” 

I paid the extra $150 to have the nurse come home to my tiny summer studio sublet. I don’t know why she fed me if she knew I was going to vomit. But she removed the original bandages, replaced them, fed me Vicodin pills and left. I was sadly surprised I didn’t experience any kind of illegal high with this infamous drug. 

I had two plastic bulbs hanging near my ears, to drain the blood away. I couldn’t read the small print on telephone cards to call my friends. The doctor said that should clear up in a few days. I covered my head and the offending bulbs with a black scarf when I walked to the corner grocery store for some food. I overhead one renter complain, “This isn’t a hospital.”

A friend was totally unprepared for my new look: bandages and bulbs collecting blood. She escorted me in a taxi to the doctor’s for the removal of the two bulbs and bandages. THEN she was happily shocked at my new look. So was I. 

I looked weird! Not at all like myself! My face had changed shape from a square-ish kind of thing to an oval with a high forehead. My eyes were finally visible! The thin line of the lid outlined the eye, no longer hidden by layers of fatty tissue. Later a friend noted with my nose lifted a bit, my nostrils were now visible. And the frown/squint/thought lines had vanished! 

Was it worth it? Someone forgot to tell me that caffeine mixed with pain pills produced uncontrollable diarrhea. Thus with a new face, and only a month of recovery, sleeping with frozen blueberries on my forehead, I began a new job in South Korea, a country I had lived in earlier. I replaced the blueberries with a blue plastic eye contraption which I re-froze the next day. I needed the icy cold to soothe my aching head and forehead so I could sleep. 

Without Vicodin, by the time I was dressed and ready for work, I couldn’t open my apartment door. So back to the meds. I could now even walk the 20 minutes to work and teach classes. When I ran out, a local doctor said Korea didn’t have that medicine, but he could prescribe what was given cancer patients. 

At the school, I was given two huge books for one class and told to write a syllabus for tomorrow. In a new academic environment, with new stress, and constant rushing to the far away bathroom to prevent diarrhea accidents, life became precarious. One time I reached the bathroom, but not the toilet. When my 97 year old father said he was dying and, “Come home,” I did.

Much later I learned that mixing caffeine (Pepsi or Coke a Cola) with strong pain pills nearly always causes diarrhea.

Four years later, I look at my face and I’m pleased. Knowing what I do now – I’d do it again. But it was scary. And it didn’t take ‘six weeks for recovery’. It was more like three months.  And if I had known about the mix of caffeine with the medication, the whole experience would have been much more tolerable. But yes, I’d do it again. But I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. It’s too scary and the risks are too high.