I (30F) had a deep plane “mini” facelift yesterday. Will post my experience and recovery here!

So I had a “mini” facelift which was in fact a deep plane face lift, just targeting my lower and mid face. Today is the day after surgery. I’ll share my experience here and if anyone wants photos feel free to DM me :) I may post a before and after once im a week or two out, im just concerned about people I know seeing haha.

Day of surgery: So, day of surgery I was an anxious wreck. I almost didn’t go through with it. How today, I’m happy I did. My surgery was in the afternoon. I arrived and things got started pretty much right away. Please form your own opinions on surgery, I don’t want to scare anyone off. But for me, the pain was FAR worse than I imagined. The numbing was nothing like the painful numbing you get at the dentist. I’m not even joking to me it was about 10 times worse. I consider myself to have a high pain tolerance and I was CRYING during the numbing phase. It felt like I was being cut into like no joke lol. (I was on Valium at this point to help calm the nerves for surgery but I’m a very anxious person and it honestly did nothing) Once I was numb, I hardly felt anything. I did feel some odd tugging sensations that freaked me out a bit and when something did hurt my doctor was really good about giving more local anesthetic. Once the surgery was done (I want to say it took about 1.5-2 hours) they wrapped me up with dressing and a super compressive wrap. The wrap over night SUCKED. I was in a lot of pain. They gave me hydrocodone which felt like it hardly did anything. It would make me sleepy for about an hour or two and then I’d be in pain again. Most of the pain I believe was from the dressing moving around and the drains they put in your face for the first 24 hours. I hardly slept.

Day after surgery (today): today I had to be back at the office at 9 am so they could look at everything, remove the drains (if ready) and drain any fluid that built up. I took the pain meds in preparation for this because they told me it would be uncomfortable. Well, the nurse started to massage and drain my left side and when I tell you I was in EXCRUCIATING PAIN. It was awful. I had to take a break. Then she did the right side and oddly enough I had almost no pain on that side. She told me it was normal for people to experience more pain and sensitivity on one side. I was just glad she got my painful side over with first haha. She reassured me that this was the last super painful part and that everything was smooth sailing from here. She put a much less bulky dressing on and a lighter compression wrap. I left and had extreme nausea from the strong pain killers and ending up throwing up :(. So, I bought some Tylenol and got home and decided I’ll stay off the strong stuff and just use Tylenol from here on out. It’s been about 7 hours since they took my drains out and drained the fluid and I feel WAYYYYY better. I definitely have some swelling and pain but nothing compared to the night of. Tylenol will be plenty to get me through from this point. The nurse told me swelling and bruising will probably be its worst day 4. On Monday I get my stitches removed and will update more then!

When my bulky dressing was removed my caretaker (who is someone I know well) immediately said omg it looks so good you look like you have baby skin, which was nice to hear haha. Despite the swelling I can already see that I am looking better and more lifted, but still much like myself which is perfect. Would I ever do an awake deep plane face lift again? Absolutely not, but that’s just because of my own anxiety around these things. It was miserable for me because I was so worried. My doctor and his staff are amazing though. It’s just if I ever do it again when I’m older, I will go under haha. Anyway! If you have any questions I’d be happy to answer as much as I can :)

My reasons for getting this done are that I’ve had some weight gain and loss over the years, I’m very into fitness and I’m hard on myself when it comes to looks. I also had a lot of orthodontic work over the years that I believe contributed to my face looking more “sunken” or really just pulled down. Fillers were not a good option for me as I hate the idea of something hanging out in my body, and it also wouldn’t have given the lift I really needed.

TLDR; I 30F had a deep plane mini facelift yesterday. Was miserable yesterday. Much better today. Ask me whatever!

Edited to add: my doctor is Dr. Shah in Denver, CO. I 10/10 recommend him to anyone who is interested

Update day 2 post op: I am swollen as can be 😂 they said swelling gets worse till about day 4 then starts improving, just relaxing and being patient now

Update day 3: definitely swollen still, some light bruising on one side but nowhere near as bad as I expected. Mostly feel terrible because I have barely slept. Due to being forced to sleep on my back in the garment and neck brace thing. Have been dealing with pain by only taking Tylenol at this point, nothing stronger needed. I got a big ole scarf and wrapped it around my compression sleeve yesterday so I could go on a walk around the block, felt pretty weak so might give myself one more day of total bed rot, then try walking again :) most of the pain is oddly in my jaw area right now. Will keep updating until I make a new post at week 1 :)