#personal-development #personal-health one of my friends asked me a lot of questions on this after I got my procedure, so I'm writing up a brief guide on this. It's not as detailed as my jaw surgery account but I'll try my best and continue to update. I got double eyelid surgery with [Dr. Laura Phan](https://lauraphanmd.com/) in Saratoga, CA. My surgery was around the $5,000-ish ballpark and she was great and cared a lot about the procedure! :) ## Before & Consultations ![[Pasted image 20241214211514.png|200]] * This is my before photo! I had monolids and while they weren't ugly, you can kinda see in this photo that my left eyelid drooped lower than my right. I also always had to wear false lashes because I was insecure and felt like I had 0 lashes. * The surgeon noted that I essentially have ptosis on my right eye. * During the consultation, the surgeon does all your measurements and talks about what the procedure will be like for you. * I was suggested three procedures: * Epicanthoplasty (inner corner, quoted $5k) * Lateral canthoplasty (outer corner, quoted $5k) * Upper blepharoplasty (quoted $5k), with the option of incisional or nonincisional. * I opted for the **nonincisional**, because even though my monolids were pretty fat I didn't want my eyes to look too hollow and felt that this was the most natural option. * I also only opted for the upper bleph because lol spending an extra $10k cmon that's crazy. * In the future, I can always just do the other two surgeries another time. ## Procedure ![[Pasted image 20241214210922.png|200]]![[Pasted image 20241214211019.png|200]] I know I look so whack in the left photo, but this is after they injected the anesthesia. I closed my eyes for an hour while they went to work at my eyelids and honestly it's the craziest procedure ever. It also hurt a bit, and they had to cover my eyes with eye shields. But they fucked up the application on the shield on my left eye (probably because of the ptosis), and so I ended up with a hematoma for a little bit. The hematoma is shown on the right photo. I was worried because it grew for a bit, but by the 4th week it completely healed and did not impact my vision. This is a pretty normal aftereffect of the procedure. ## Recovery Timeline ### Week 1 ![[Pasted image 20241214211004.png|200]] Have you ever played Animal Crossing and got stung by a bee? I literally spent this entire week putting ice on my face and resting. I did a tech interview during this state though and they didn't notice that there was anything wrong with my face, lol. I only took 2 days off work and then I was able to work once I was back, but the fatigue from the surgery was exhausting. The bruising is *so bad* but don't worry too much about it because it's normal and you're not going to look like a stupid ugly ogre by the time it's over. You definitely feel like one though. Also this entire process made me think *I'll never do a cosmetic surgery again after this*. I feel like after going through two of them, I realized that you get the "plastic surgery uglies" and your face and pores turn into an oily swamp as your face goes into hyperdrive about what happened. So don't be freaked out if this happens to you too. It's part of the process. ### Week 2 ![[Pasted image 20241214211011.png|200]] My stitches were taken out and it was a pretty easy process that didn't hurt at all! I started wearing *some* makeup again but opted out of using eyeshadow and put eyeliner on my lash line, making sure I avoid the stitches and also disinfected them. It was a pretty quick process to feel confident again. It still felt weird to go out this week because I can still tell I was swollen, and I wasn't completely satisfied with my eyes yet because I felt the crease was too dramatic still. ### Week 3, 4, 5 ![[Pasted image 20241214211030.png|200]]![[Pasted image 20241214211040.png|200]]![[Pasted image 20241214211054.png|200]] I finally felt confident enough to just be walking around and I didn't feel weird about it. All these photos are in the same section to show kind of the process of the stitches healing, but they're really not all too different and by the end of week 5 I look like I have natural double eyelids. The crease gets less dramatic as time passes. After week 3, there is really no more difficulty in the healing process and you just have to keep up with your sunscreen and sunglass regimen to protect the scars and prevent them from discoloring from the sun. ## Recommendations * If you are literally blind without contacts, **BUY PRESCRIPTION SUNGLASSES.** It'll make it so much easier to get around without feeling too insecure and protecting your scarred skin. This is the only underrated tip I have honestly because nobody really talks about this lol.