Barbed wire facelift that’s banished my Mummy frown
When the Mail’s SARAH VINE caught sight of herself on TV, she was horrified. Now she feels utterly transformed and ready to reveal how she did it... while her family didn’t even notice!
designed for safe re-absorption into the body.
Once they’re all in, the doctor simply pulls the ends, and they latch on to the internal tissues, lifting everything into place like an open umbrella. And there they stay while they slowly dissolve — over roughly a three-month period.
In the meantime, the body rushes to repair the damage caused by the threads, and in so doing goes into collagen overdrive in the affected areas. This has the very pleasing effect not only of holding the lift in place — but also improving the texture of the skin from within.
Dr Charlotte worked fast and with purpose.
The first few threads were completely painless. But when we got to the third or fourth, the one that had to traverse my jaw muscles, the discomfort was, I will not lie, acute. It wasn’t so much painful — the anaesthetic saw to that; it was more the invasive nature of having something alien in one’s head. If you’ve ever had root canal treatment or a dental implant you’ll know what I mean.
Still, with the help of an ice-pack and Dr Charlotte’s calm demeanour, it was all over within an hour. The immediate impact was striking: although a bit swollen and chipmunk-like, there was no mistaking the lift.
But otherwise I felt — and looked — pretty normal.
So much so that I trotted off to a lunch with some lovely ladies from an animal charity in Somerset I help out with and, for the most part, felt remarkably unscathed.
I even managed to pose for a selfie with them. I look a little pained, but all things considered not bad. It was only later on, in the afternoon, that I felt a bit tired.
It wasn’t until the following morning, when I woke up, that I truly appreciated the extent of what I had done.
EVEN
though I was still sore from the procedure, and even though I hadn’t had the best night’s sleep, I looked like I had just returned from a three-month holiday in the Caribbean.
The only downside was that, over the course of the following few days, I did develop a bruise on the side that had been uncomfortable — but it was easy enough to cover, and faded relatively quickly. The other, slightly more disconcerting thing, was the fact that every now and again when I moved my face, one of the tiny barbs would nibble at my cheek. Weird. But it soon stopped. Almost immediately, people started commenting on how well I looked. As the weeks wore on, and the swelling disappeared (it took about a week to ten days), my skin just kept improving. Several girlfriends cornered me, wanting to know what I had done. Was it a facial? A new face-cream? A boyfriend? I kept them guessing.
My family, as is always the case, didn’t notice a thing.
So why, you might ask, have I decided to come clean now, a whole year after the event? Well, quite simply I wanted to see if it was worth it. Whether the effects would last, and whether it would survive the test of time. One year on, and my lift is still going strong. I haven’t had any more Botox or fillers, and apart from the odd facial when I’m feeling self-indulgent, my skincare routine consists of nothing more time-consuming than a bit of facial oil or cream.
Best of all, I feel confident enough to leave the house with minimal or no make- up, something I haven’t really done since I was in my early 40s.
Is it worth it? That depends on how much you care. Ten years ago the thought of having £2,000 worth of surgical barbed wire inserted into my face would have seemed completely bonkers. Now it seems like a perfectly reasonable, not to mention sensible, longterm investment.
For more information, visit: riveraesthetics.com