THEFACELIFTTHAT LEFTMELOOKING 10YEARSYOUNGER
WHEN I was 50 and saw a photograph of myself looking 100, with double chins and wrinkles, I decided on a facelift. Why not?
I expected a lot of opposition from my husband, but all he was concerned about was that I should find a good surgeon who wouldn’t make me look like someone else. In the end, I had it done in South Africa.
Dr van Niekerk told me firmly there was no way he could make me emerge with a swan neck. Instead, he concentrated on lifting my top eyelids, which sometimes looked like great drapes hanging over my lashes, and getting rid of the bags underneath.
He did it while I sat up in a chair and self-administered the anaesthetic. In between nodding off, I quite enjoyed it. It hurt a lot afterwards, though, and my cousin Lee and I went off to her beach house for a week to hide. Facelifts were not as common in 1990, and kindly people in the pub assumed that my black eyes were the result of a car crash. I did look pretty awful.
Apart from the bruising, I had purple-black cheeks. This was the result of laser treatment to rid me of all the little red veins that had popped up after years of standing over too-hot stoves or riding in the freezing wind. But the swelling and bruising slowly vanished, and for the first time I could remember I could see my eyelids. The saggy bags had gone and so had the broken veins. I was thrilled.
Going to South Africa ‘for a holiday’ had proved an excellent idea. When I got back, I had a good deep suntan and I’d streaked my hair blond, so everyone attributed my looking ten years younger to sun and a hairdresser.