I Have One Facelift Regret. And It's Annoyingly My Own Fault.

I edited my facelift à la carte menu. Eight months later, I’m going back for seconds.

I’ve written a lot about my facelift over the past eight months, but for anyone new here, I had mine in February of this year at 47. I’m now 48.

I couldn’t be happier with my decision, and I’ve been sharing all the things: the good, the terrifying, the things I wish I’d known, and the things I’d do differently. It’s all in my facelift thread, whether you’re considering one yourself, recovering from one, or just here to read about someone else’s expensive decisions.

But there’s one particular “mistake,” if you want to call it that, that’s sending me back into surgery next week.

I didn’t share much of my original facelift on Instagram, but I’m planning to be a much better oversharer this time around. So follow along on my Instagram here. There will be stitches.

Before We Get Into It, Let Me Explain The Facelift À La Carte Menu

A facelift is rarely just a facelift.

The term is often used as a catch-all for what can actually be a combination of several different surgical procedures.

Depending on your face and what your surgeon recommends, your surgical plan might include a whole list of additional procedures beyond the deep plane face and neck lift:

• Upper blepharoplasty

• Lower blepharoplasty

• Different types of brow lifts

• Fat transfer

• Chin implant

• CO2 resurfacing

• Various types of lip lifts

Suddenly, you realize a facelift isn’t necessarily just about lifting your lower face. It can involve a whole lot more anatomy, a whole lot more procedures, and a much bigger surgical plan than you originally had in mind.

If you’re anything like me, as your surgeon starts walking you through all these additional procedures, you start to spiral. You went in wanting to fix your heavy jowls and drooping brow, and suddenly you’re contemplating surgery on practically every square inch of your face.

Not to mention the bill.

All those extras can dramatically change the price tag and, importantly, the result.

À la carte procedures can run anywhere from $5,000 to upwards of $50,000 each, depending on what you’re having done and who’s doing it. And if you’re consulting with big-name celebrity plastic surgeons like Dr. Ben Talei or Dr. Steven Levine, those extras can get expensive very quickly. At least they did during my respective consultations, where some additional procedures were quoted at around $25,000 or more apiece.

Suddenly, the à la carte menu starts looking less like a few optional upgrades and more like an entirely separate surgical bill you hadn’t mentally or financially prepared for.

But these are the very things that make the entire result look balanced and natural.

You’re not hiring a surgeon to make individual parts of your face look younger. You’re trusting their eye to make everything work together.

Which is why I always tell women during my facelift consultations to meet with at least three surgeons, prepare for each appointment, and choose someone whose skill, bedside manner, and aesthetic they trust emphatically.

Then go full monty into the surgical plan they recommend. Excellent advice, if I do say so myself. Unfortunately, I was much better at giving it than taking it. So I will be in the operating room again next week.

What Was on My Facelift Menu?

Here’s what I ultimately had done:

1. Deep plane neck lift

2. Deep plane facelift

3. Temporal brow lift

4. Fat transfer

5. Chin implant

These are my preoperative medical photos, which I drew on myself. You can see the hollowing under and around my eyes, along with the descent of my midface. A fat transfer was a non-negotiable “extras” item.

Going into surgery, there were three other procedures Dr. Mark Murphy and I had discussed that I ultimately took off my final order:

1. CO2 resurfacing

2. Upper blepharoplasty

3. Lip lift

One of the many reasons I chose Dr. Murphy was his incredible bedside manner. He’s kind, patient, and never pressured me into anything I wasn’t comfortable with.

Whenever I expressed hesitation about an additional procedure, his answer was some version of, “We can always do it later.”

Well, later is next week. I’m going back for the lip lift.

Despite all the advice I give other women to choose a surgeon they trust and then go all in on the surgical plan that surgeon recommends, I was absolutely terrified when it came time for my own surgery. The pre-surgery jitters are intense, even when you’re completely confident in your decision.

As my facelift bestie Michele Promaulayko discussed in this Allure article about my recovery, younger facelift patients in their 40s can experience more emotional anxiety around the decision than patients in their 50s, 60s, and beyond.

1000%.

Looking back, I wasn’t questioning Dr. Murphy’s recommendations. I trusted him completely. I was just overwhelmed by the idea of having so much done to my face at once.

And no matter how much research you’ve done or how confident you are in your surgeon, elective surgery is still scary. Any surgery is scary. As the date gets closer, you start questioning everything. Including decisions you felt perfectly good about just a few weeks earlier.

So I did what any perfectly rational woman having a minor existential crisis in a plastic surgeon’s office would do: I started negotiating over which parts of my face we could leave alone without compromising his overall vision.

I now talk to so many women who go through this exact same spiral in the weeks leading up to their surgery. You’ve paid the bill in full. The surgery date is approaching. There’s no backing out without a significant financial consequence. And suddenly, panic mode sets in.

One piece of advice I give every woman at this stage? Stay off Instagram in the weeks leading up to your surgery.

Seriously. Nothing good comes from spending your final days before a facelift watching strangers document their worst postoperative swelling, bruising, and complications. You’ve done your research. You’ve chosen your surgeon. You do not need the algorithm introducing you to 47 new reasons to have a nervous breakdown.

Here are some recent photos of me from this month. No ring light, one taken in my bathrobe, and all the procedures lovingly labeled by yours truly.

Some Extras Aren’t Really Extras

Some procedures are simply too important to the overall result to cross off the list without potentially compromising what your surgeon is trying to achieve.

In my case, Dr. Murphy did not want me removing the brow lift or fat transfer. He felt both were essential to creating balance with the changes he was making to my face and neck. And I listened.

The chin implant wasn’t necessarily a must-have, but Dr. Murphy recommended a very small one to improve my facial proportions and balance the overall result.

I am so glad I listened to him on this one.

A little internet research, and quite frankly, your own eyes, will tell you that our chins can appear to recede as we age. This is partly due to changes in the underlying bone structure, along with the loss of facial fat and changes in the surrounding soft tissue.

Dr. Murphy assured me that if I didn’t like it, we could remove it later.

I love it.

So Why Am I Going Back for a Lip Lift?

Of the three procedures I removed from my original plan, the lip lift is the one I’ve reconsidered.

If you have no idea what a lip lift is, here is a great article in Allure by Jolene Edgar, along with another one about the risks.

Lip lifts are a common addition to facial rejuvenation surgery. But I took it off my original plan because I’d seen so many freshly operated lip lifts on the internet that I’d become terrified of having an incision sitting square in the middle of my face.

My brain immediately went to: What if I don’t heal well?

These are my facelift scars eight months later. Honestly, where are they? I can barely find them myself.

Facelift scars are mostly hidden around your ears. Worst-case scenario, I figured, I have hair. I can hide them.

But under my nose? Not a whole lot of camouflage available.

Seeing how beautifully I’ve healed from my facelift has given me the confidence I didn’t have eight months ago.

And there’s a reason Dr. Murphy recommended the lip lift in the first place.

As we age, the space between the nose and upper lip tends to lengthen, and asymmetry can become more noticeable. A small lip lift can help address both.

I’d been getting teeny tiny amounts of lip filler from my amazing dermatologist, Dr. Doris Day, to correct some asymmetry in my upper lip. But filler and a lip lift do two very different things.

Here is an illustration of where incisions are placed.

Filler adds volume. A lip lift actually shortens the distance between the nose and upper lip, otherwise known as the philtrum.

In my case, Dr. Murphy felt I was a good candidate for a subtle lip lift.

This isn’t about fixing something that went wrong with my facelift. It’s about addressing something I was too nervous to do the first time.

This is NOT an image of me. This is an image of Taryn Brooke in an article she wrote for Allure in July 2023, titled How I Really Feel About My Lip Lift. I recommend reading it. It is linked here.

And the Two Procedures I’m Still Not Ordering

First let’s discuss my CO2 resurfacing fears. Anyone else as terrified of CO2 lasers as I am?

Instagram has done a sufficient job of literally scaring the shit out of me. I was more scared of this procedure than the facelift itself.

I was more comfortable looking like a stitched-up Frankenstein after a facelift, but the thought of looking like I’ve survived a house fire after CO2 laser sends me into a full psychological crisis. I blame social media.

When I brought this fear up with Dr. Murphy’s staff, they reassured me that what I’ve seen on Instagram isn’t necessarily what I should expect. They explained that some of the more alarming results I’ve seen may involve treatments performed more aggressively than necessary, and that I’ve probably scared myself by looking at the worst examples on social media.

This is likely true.

But the fear is still there, and I’m still not doing it.

Maybe that’s another story for another day.

And the other procedure I haven’t worked up enough courage for yet is the upper blepharoplasty.

Dr. Murphy recommended removing some excess skin from my upper eyelids. I can see why, and I suspect he was right about this one, too.

The Psychological Fine Print of Facial Surgery

But here’s something I don’t think people talk about enough. There’s a psychological tipping point when you’re planning facial surgery. At some point, even the smallest additional procedure starts to feel like one change too many.

With my eyes, I was particularly nervous about changing their shape. They’re such a defining feature of your face, and I didn’t want to lose something that makes me look like me.

At this rate, I’ll likely eventually order the entire menu that Dr. Murphy suggested. I absolutely trust Dr. Murphy’s aesthetic. My facelift is proof of that. I reiterate that I am ecstatic with the results and I can’t recommend him enough. But for some reason I’m just not quite ready for the bleph.

By the way, last week’s post, Can You Afford to Blow Up Your Life?, got such a great response that I am indeed working on a few follow-up on personal finance posts next week. I’ll be tackling a few questions that keep coming up, including how to convince your husband a facelift is a good idea, how to actually save for elective surgery, and how to make the financial side of all this work.

I’ll be writing these from my Palm Beach hotel room, conveniently located next door to Dr. Murphy’s office, while recovering from my lip lift. I’ll do my best to post to my stories.

Nothing like recovering from another elective facial surgery to establish your credibility as a financial advisor on how to save for one.

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