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KEEPING
A LID ON THAT LID
Cosmetic eyelid surgery, known as blepharoplasty or eyelidplasty,
occasionally turns out far from what the patient expected. That is what happened
in my case. My story is about the dire consequences of having chosen the wrong
person to do my eyelid surgery and eyebrow lift; about having expectations that
I would look much better rather than worse, after these surgical procedures.
I was 45 and living in Caracas when my right eyelid started its descent.
I realized, unhappily, that the eyelid was dutifully carrying out the
instructions of a genetic code. It
would be an exaggeration to say that at that time, my drooping right eyelid was
unsightly; however, I felt sure that it had begun a relentless decline, and that
one day I would have to put an end to its rebelliousness, by having it corrected
surgically. Every day—and countless times a day—throughout my forties, I
scrutinized my right eyelid to see how much more it drooped than on the previous
day. My left eyelid apparently was programmed differently; was subject to a
different set of laws, because there was no evidence of the kind of demoralizing
activity that my right eyelid was engaged in.
I kept hoping that somehow my right eyelid would reverse its course. I
invented exercises which consisted of raising my eyebrows rapidly as high as
they would go, as this pulled the drooping eyelid up.
As a part of me refused to acknowledge that the process of eyelid decline
was irreversible, I continued with the exercises hoping that I had discovered a
way to at least arrest the process.
I complained endlessly to my husband about my drooping right eyelid, and
then soon after, about my left eyebrow which had begun to sag. His response was
always, “There’s nothing wrong with your eyelid or your eyebrow.” Was I
crazy or was he? I wondered. My children thought there was nothing wrong with my
right eyelid; they did think, however, that there was something wrong with my
left eyelid. It seemed to me at the time, that there was a family conspiracy to
invalidate my perceptions.
Whenever I looked in the mirror, I felt stricken when I saw my errant,
droopy right eyelid and my rapidly collapsing left eyebrow. My right eyebrow,
inexplicably, was located at an acceptable level, however. I became depressed,
because the rest of my face was doing quite well I thought. The baggage or fatty
deposit under my right eye was very small, insignificant really, and there was
no baggage under my left eye. This
reinforced my conviction that my eyelids and eyebrows had conspired to engage in
an asymmetrical plan of action designed to ruin me.
I became increasingly convinced that each was following a different
agenda. My right eyelid and left eyebrow, and my left eyelid and right eyebrow
seemed totally unrelated, almost as if they were not occupants of the same face.
I had been a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist when I lived in
Caracas. My patients, when in crisis, and even when not in crisis, tended to
somatize many of the emotional issue they were struggling with. They complained
of sore throats, chronic headaches, colitis, lower back pain, chest pain and
double vision; they suffered from insomnia, heartburn, mysterious rashes, and
stiff necks. As for me, I wouldn’t have minded a rash now and then, a few
sleepless nights or occasional lower back pain, but I couldn’t cope with an
implacable drooping eyelid and collapsing eyebrow.
I had a very competent eye doctor in Caracas to whom I periodically
whined about my right eyelid and left eyebrow problem. Every time I complained
about this, he used to say, “I can fix the eyelid and eyebrow for you in 15
minutes.” I resisted the offer; what I had in mind for my right eyelid and
left eyebrow was a painstaking job that would be done in New York City and that
would take at least two hours. Furthermore, I wanted to have this done by a
plastic surgeon, not an eye doctor.
I had two friends in Caracas whose eyelids drooped, and whose eyebrows
sagged. Also, they had plenty of excess baggage under their eyes.
One of them who had money to throw out, went to a renowned plastic
surgeon in Brazil to have her eyelids corrected, her eyebrows lifted, and
baggage removed from under her eyes. All this was done successfully by the
Brazilian plastic surgeon. Unfortunately, her other baggage—expensive leather
suitcases-- were removed also at the airport in Rio de Janeiro. Her baggage was
never found, but the baggage under her eyes returned in just one year.
My other friend who was 55 and prematurely wrinkled, decided to have an
entire facelift in Caracas. It was a flawless job, the work of a Venezuelan
master craftsman. The skin on her face and neck was silky smooth looking; her
face looked as if it were carved out of marble; she looked like a fabulous 70
after the facelift! I decided not to bring my right eyelid and left eyebrow to
her plastic surgeon, because I was afraid he might talk me into having my entire
face lifted, in which case I was sure I’d end up looking 70. The thought had
occurred to me that looking 70 may have been her plastic surgeon’s
“signature” or logotype. No, New York City was where I was going to have my
eyelid and eyebrow corrected.
Was obsessing about my drooping right eyelid and left eyebrow
inappropriate for a psychotherapist? I
wasn’t sure. Countless comments from patients such as “You always look so
tired, doctor,” and “You look so depressed,” finally resolved the
psychotherapists-shouldn’t-be-preoccupied - with-their-appearance conflict I
was experiencing. These comments made me wonder what fantasies patients were
having about my emotional health. Looking tired all the time to a patient whose
mother died when he or she was three years old, could be very threatening; my
appearance may have portended abandonment, the way he or she interpreted the
mother’s death. Looking tired all the time could be construed by a patient who
has a history of having to please others and a need to be entertaining, as a
lack of interest on my part, as being bored. Similarly, my looking depressed
might make a person who feels guilty about everything feel that he or she hurt
me in some way; this would exacerbate the patient’s guilt feelings. I
convinced myself that I would be correcting my drooping eyelid and sagging
eyebrow not just for myself, but for my patients’ well-being, also.
I should have explored patients’ comments about my sleep-deprived
appearance and their fantasies about it. Valuable opportunities to explore their
fantasies and the conflicts and issues surrounding them were subordinated to my
right eyelid and left eyebrow. What I thought was a profound concern for my
patients’ well-being, was, I finally admitted to myself, a rationalization: I
hated the way I looked! I did not
think I looked attractive anymore.
My eyes, which I had always thought were the most striking
part of my face, had lost their primacy there.
When men looked at me in the street, our eyes locked only briefly; once
they spotted the drooping right eyelid and sagging left eyebrow, their glance
went elsewhere. I
went to New York to have cosmetic eyelid surgery while I could still see out
of my right eye; by then, the drooping eyelid was encroaching significantly on
my eye’s turf and was beginning to impair my vision;
also, I was sure that my
rapidly descending left eyebrow had begun an
irreversible course. I had to act quickly. Unfortunately, I didn’t know
of any plastic surgeons in the New York area, so I called an eye doctor in New
York I had consulted 20 years before for a minor problem. I told him about my
drooping eyelid and sagging eyebrow, and asked him for the name of a good
plastic surgeon. Why did I want a plastic surgeon just for an eyelid and
eyebrow? he wanted to know. “I
can recommend an eye doctor who does cosmetic eyelid surgery at a small hospital
in Jersey City, New Jersey. He’s Chief of cosmetic eyelid surgery there;
he’s a true artist.”
I was so impatient to get that wayward lid and eyebrow back to where they
belonged, that I decided I’d have to abandon the idea of having the surgery
performed in New York. Jersey City, New Jersey. So let it be in Jersey City, as
long as the man could restore some dignity to my eyelid and eyebrow. What could
go wrong? I reasoned. Chief of Cosmetic Eyelid Surgery sounded very impressive
to me. My husband looked perplexed when I told him the surgery would be
performed by an eye doctor in Jersey City.
“Why an eye doctor in Jersey City?” “Well, he’s chief of cosmetic
eyelid surgery at this Jersey City hospital. “What hospital, my husband
persisted.”
“I forgot to ask,” I said.
Two days later I was sitting in the eyelid surgeon’s office in Jersey
City, wondering why I had gotten an appointment so quickly. Why didn’t I have
to wait a few months or at least a few weeks for an appointment? Was it because
there wasn’t much of a market for cosmetic eyelid and eyebrow surgery in
Jersey City?
The eyelid surgeon’s name was a sound made up of a particularly
unattractive grouping of letters. If his name could be tasted, as if in some
unusual deviation of sensory function such as in synesthesia, it would have a
mealy texture, I thought. It had instantly created an image in my mind of a
bleached-out looking man with hair the color of
seaweed that was plastered artfully to his scalp.
I imagined his eyes to be the indeterminate color of a stagnant pond of
water. It took a few moments for me to adjust to the appearance of the real man,
so remote was it from the image of the man I had created. He was in his early
50’s, tall, with an attractive face and very soft-looking brown hair. He was a
hairsbreadth away from being handsome; however; I couldn’t figure out then why
handsomeness eluded him.
He was pleasant in a rather detached way. Nevertheless, I was concerned
that I wasn’t getting a good feeling about him. Basically, he was charmless,
and had noxious breath, the expulsion of which made me turn my head away. He examined my eyes and told me I needed new lenses. When I had the prescription filled and wore the glasses in the street for the first time, the sidewalk seemed to levitate and come within inches of my face. I had become dizzy, had kept tripping over my feet, and finally zigzagged to the ground. I wondered briefly if this incorrect eyeglass prescription augured darkly for my eyelid surgery. I quickly decided it was a mistake made by the optician.
The cosmetic eyelid surgeon took pictures of my face from different
angles. Unfortunately, the prints were ready before I had worked up the courage
to look at them. I looked so freakish that I thought it would be an act of
kindness to myself, an act of mercy, not to postpone the surgery. On the
photographs, my collapsed left eyebrow, as if
it were being pushed up by
an express current of air, appeared to soar exaltedly; my right eyebrow shared a
lower level indignity with my right eyelid. More than anything else, I resembled
a Picasso painting on those photos, because of the dislocation of my
features—an eyelid here, an eyebrow there; a lopsided mouth veering from its
centrality in my face, but incongruously providing some structural balance to
the whole. The face on those photos cried out for some drastic cosmetic measures
to save it from itself. Maybe the surgeon was indirectly trying to tell me that
he did complete facelifts, also!
He didn’t even wait for the shock to subside. He said, “As long as
you’re going to have the right eyelid done, you should have the left one done,
also. And I’ll create a set of eyebrows that are complimentary.” He went on,
barely pausing to take a breath. “I’ll do away with the fatty deposits that
you have under both eyes, also.” He tried to convince me that I had a fatty
deposit under my left eye, as well as under my right eye.
“It will cost you twice as much if you don’t have your eyelids and
eyebrows done at the same time,” he said. Was this indeed a bargain? I
couldn’t make any sense out of what he was saying, but I stopped trying to
understand what he meant, as soon as he pushed those hideous photos closer to
me; the sight of them made both of my eyelids twitch uncontrollably. I felt
stricken, powerless, and heard myself ask in a voice that sounded as if it were
borrowed from a toddler, “What is your fee for doing everything at the same
time?”
“$3,500.” Absolutely no contrition in his voice; nothing to soften
the blow. The man was all business. “Make an appointment with my secretary for
surgery,” he said.
I took another compulsive glance at the photos of me spread out on his
desk, and said wretchedly, “Okay.”
I asked his secretary to show me some before- and after-surgery photos of
patients on whom the surgeon had performed cosmetic eyelid surgery.
“Pictures?” She seemed surprised by my request, but went to a filing cabinet
and began to search through its disordered contents. She pulled out two before-
and after- photos, one of a man, and one of a woman. The before-photos of the
woman showed eyelids that were grossly misshapen, because of the puffiness and
multiple folds of skin on her eyelids. The woman looked as if she had been
crying steadily for six months. The man looked as if he had been sleeping for 50
years with his eyes open; his eyelids looked as if they had been sentenced to
death. There was some improvement on the after-photos of both people, but
something still didn’t look right, only I couldn’t identify what it was. My
spirit drooped like my eyelid. I asked the secretary to show me more pictures.
“Most of them are in our L.A. office,” she said crisply.
“Like in Los Angeles?” She nodded distractedly.
The surgeon was bi-coastal; this was heady news for me! My confidence
soared; he probably did the eyelids and eyebrows of the Hollywood crowd. I felt
immeasurably better; no need to feel uncertain about this man. Yet I couldn’t
sustain that surge of confidence I’d had when his secretary first told me
about the L.A. office. Conflict erupted and swept all my uncertainty right back
into its roiling core. I really didn’t like the surgeon. I didn’t feel
comfortable with him. Once again I wondered why, if he was such a good cosmetic
eyelid surgeon, I didn’t have to wait to get an appointment with him. Was his
surgery agenda bone-bare, because he had just started practicing and therefore
referrals weren’t pouring in? Was there really an L.A. office? But in spite of
the doubts I had about the surgeon, the searing memory of how I looked on the
photos he had taken, summarily excised those doubts, just as the extraneous
folds of skin surrounding my eyes would soon be excised.
The operation was scheduled for 7:30 a.m. two days later in that small
hospital in Jersey City whose name I still didn’t know. My husband said,
“You can still cancel the surgery, if you’re not getting good vibes from the
doctor; your eyes haven’t
stopped twitching since you agreed to have him do the surgery.”
Wearily, I said, “ You should see how ugly I look on those pre-op
photos.”
The operation was scheduled for 7:30 a.m. in that small Jersey City
hospital whose name I still didn’t know.
At 7:10 a.m. I was sitting in a chair in the hallway off the operating room
gasping from my rollicking angst. I had been given an injection to sedate me
before surgery; however, instead of feeling relaxed, looking dreamily at
nothing, and thinking about how nice I was going to look, my heart hammered
arhythmically. Heat undulated throughout my body, and I had difficulty
breathing. I was sure I would never make it to the operating room; I’d be
D.O.A.
Just before being wheeled into the operating room, I was given another
injection that made me feel as if a wad of
cotton that had been steeped in glue filled my mouth. Still, I tried to
get a message through to the surgeon. “Not Sedated…not….relaxed,”
somehow pushed thickly through the gluey cotton.
Hiding behind a green surgical mask and gown, the surgeon said,
“We’re going to give you some oxygen; it will make you feel better.” I
think I was more grateful that he was wearing a mask and I wasn’t being
assailed by his fetid breath, than I was when the oxygen started flowing through
the tubes in my nose, and breathing became easier.
At last I felt a soothing, warm kind of drowsiness. It didn’t last
though, because sharp bursts of panic invaded the beginning calm. Each time I
was about to drift off to sleep, panic heralded its arrival by way of galloping
palpitations and feelings of terror.
“I’m experiencing panic,” I said. “Who doesn’t?” was the
surgeon’s glib reply. “Concentrate on the oxygen. As they say, just go with
the flow.” Panic gripped and then released its grip over and over for two
hours. At times the panic struck with the force of a whiplash. I wanted to stop
the operation, to pull the intravenous needle out of my arm, but the thought of
something viscous, hanging by a thread from one of my eyelids stopped me.
“Could you put on some music?” I thought that music might stop the
panic. A nurse turned on the radio, and the exuberance of the Rhapsody in Blue
suddenly burst into the operating room; it was a strange counterpoint to the
insistent rushes of panic that still stabbed me. Finally the words, “We’re
finished” reached me. The panic stopped; I was no longer its captive.”
I had probably slept a bit, because I never had any awareness if the
surgeon was working on the baggage that I didn’t have under my left eye; on my
drooping right eyelid; on the baggage that I did have under my right eye. Then I
heard the doctor say, “Come back to my office in a week.”
At home I avoided looking in the mirror, because I was afraid that in his
zeal, the surgeon may have lowered the right eyelid more. Finally, on the third
day home, I looked in the mirror and saw a very bruised woman with the hardened
eyes and heavily eye-shadowed eyelids and lower lids of a hooker staring back at
me. I smiled; was another career staring me in the face? Was it really possible
for me to put down the tools I’d used for so many years to explore a
patient’s psyche, and take to the streets and street corners with a new bag of
tricks?
One week later, I was back in the eyelid surgeon’s Jersey City office;
he inspected his handiwork. With a shaking hand I pointed out to him that my
right eyelid drooped even more over my right eye than it did before surgery, and
that there was now a flap of skin which draped itself over my left eye. “I was
crying as I shouted, “And why is my left eyelid drooping now? And what have
you done to my eyebrows? When I raise them, my right eyebrow is an inch lower
than it was, and my left eyebrow almost collides with my hairline.
His response was, “But how do you like the smooth area under your eyes?
No more fatty deposits, eh?
I wasn’t crying anymore, just shouting. “Don’t you see that my
right eyelid is drooping more than before surgery? And now my left eyelid is
drooping, also. What were you doing in that operating room for two hours,
figuring out how to cheat on your income taxes?”
“Now don’t get hysterical on me,” he crowed. “Don’t you
remember that your right eyelid practically used to cover your lower eyelashes?
I raised it considerably.”
“Oh, of course I remember,” I said, giving him the momentary
satisfaction of joining him in his delusional state.
Then I shrieked, “Doctor, you are aware, of course, that you completely
dislocated my eyebrows, aren’t you? Who do you think you are, Picasso?” He
smiled fatuously, as though I had conferred a compliment on him.
He answered with, “You don’t seem happy that I created an aesthetic
balance between your eyebrows.”
“The only aesthetic balance between my eyebrows is the bridge of my
nose,” I said coldly.
Desperate, frustrated by his devious
defensiveness, I tried once again to bring up the subject of the two
drooping eyelids. “Do you agree that both my right and left eyelids droop
now?”
“I don’t know” was his reply. “Make an appointment with my
secretary for four weeks from today.”
I knew that four weeks, six weeks, six months from then, both eyelids
would look the same, both hapless victims of his inexcusable ineptitude. It was
just before I walked out of his office that I noticed his left eyelid for the
first time. It drooped; an unattractive diagonal fold of skin covered a sizeable
portion of his left eye. I felt as if ice water had suddenly been splashed on my
face. He had used his left drooping eyelid as a model for both of my eyelids!
I’m not saying that he did it consciously, but it was very apparent to me that
at a deeper level, he wanted both of my eyelids to look like his left one.
“Do you think I should sue him?” I raged when I came home.
“I think you should forget the whole thing,” my husband said soberly.
“But look at my eyelids and eyebrows,” I howled. “I’ll sue
him.”
“You’ll be wasting money; it would be better if you tried to forget
the whole thing.” I was angry at my husband for not being outraged; for not
wanting to denounce the eyelid surgeon to the American Opthalmological
Association.
“How can I let him get away with it?” I shouted.
“By forgetting the whole thing,” he said.
I wrote a letter to the surgeon accusing him of flagrant incompetence; I
also said I considered him to be clinically crazy. When I finished the letter, I
suddenly broke into gales of liberating laughter that soared and resonated well
beyond the boundless terrain of hysteria. What if he had transplanted my right
eyebrow to the bottom of my chin, I was thinking. Send questions or comments to Judy Dunn at dunnjm@eckerd.edu
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