November 12, 2025 • 48 mins
Is the most important part of plastic surgery the scalpel—or the psychology behind why you choose it and how you feel afterward?
In this candid episode of Plastic Surgery Uncensored, I sit down with my longtime patient-turned-friend, Alexis, to unpack her 15-year journey—four surgeries, eight procedures—and the mindset shifts behind each decision. From a post-pregnancy mommy makeover (tummy tuck with diastasis repair) to a breast lift with implants, then subtle upper-face rejuvenation (limited lateral brow lift + upper lids), and finally a lower-face/neck transformation (deep-plane facelift + small chin implant + lower lids + micro-fat grafting), we show how sequencing, restraint, and honesty can deliver results that look fresh—not “done.” We talk openly about why some patients stay secretive, why others are proudly transparent, and how to navigate judgment, social media distortion, and the myth that more procedures = a “cat face.” You’ll also hear how motherhood, weight changes, and aging shift priorities—and why sometimes the kindest thing you can do for your family is to put your own “oxygen mask” on first.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
If this helped you, pay it forward:
Leave a kind review (it means the world to our team), and share the episode with anyone you love who’s thinking about plastic surgery—before they book, so they can make informed choices.
— Dr. Rady Rahban, Plastic Surgery Uncensored
✨ If you enjoyed this episode of Plastic Surgery Uncensored:
✔️ Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
✔️ Rate & Review—your feedback helps more people find us.
✔️ Follow Dr. Rady Rahban across all platforms for daily insights, behind-the-scenes, and patient education:
In this candid episode of Plastic Surgery Uncensored, I sit down with my longtime patient-turned-friend, Alexis, to unpack her 15-year journey—four surgeries, eight procedures—and the mindset shifts behind each decision. From a post-pregnancy mommy makeover (tummy tuck with diastasis repair) to a breast lift with implants, then subtle upper-face rejuvenation (limited lateral brow lift + upper lids), and finally a lower-face/neck transformation (deep-plane facelift + small chin implant + lower lids + micro-fat grafting), we show how sequencing, restraint, and honesty can deliver results that look fresh—not “done.” We talk openly about why some patients stay secretive, why others are proudly transparent, and how to navigate judgment, social media distortion, and the myth that more procedures = a “cat face.” You’ll also hear how motherhood, weight changes, and aging shift priorities—and why sometimes the kindest thing you can do for your family is to put your own “oxygen mask” on first.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- The right procedure at the right time: why exercise can’t fix loose skin or diastasis, and when surgery is the missing puzzle piece.
- Sequencing that makes sense: convenience, recovery, and why breasts + abdomen often play better together.
- Face vs. filler: when fillers help—and when a facelift/necklift is the “screwdriver,” not the hammer.
- Chin implant reality check: tiny, customized implants that sharpen a jawline without changing who you are.
- Natural, not noticeable: how subtle technique (and using less pull, not more) avoids the “weird” look.
- Mindset matters: dropping shame, embracing empowerment, and being honest for the sake of others’ expectations.
If this helped you, pay it forward:
Leave a kind review (it means the world to our team), and share the episode with anyone you love who’s thinking about plastic surgery—before they book, so they can make informed choices.
— Dr. Rady Rahban, Plastic Surgery Uncensored
✨ If you enjoyed this episode of Plastic Surgery Uncensored:
✔️ Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
✔️ Rate & Review—your feedback helps more people find us.
✔️ Follow Dr. Rady Rahban across all platforms for daily insights, behind-the-scenes, and patient education:
- Instagram: @drradyrahban
- TikTok: @radyrahbanMD
- YouTube: @Rady Rahban
- Facebook: @Rady Rahban
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
All right, welcome to another episode of Plastic Surgery Uncensored.
As always, your host, Doctor Roddy Rabon, And I know
that I always say that we have a fantastic show ahead,
because we do. But this time we have an amazing
and extra fantastic show ahead because of our guest. Our
guests and I have been friends for now many years.
(00:29):
I say friends because patients of mine that are in
our practice for many years inevitably transition into being friends. Right.
You can't take care of somebody and then you know,
you may take care of them once and then they
disappear and then you never see them again, and that's wonderful.
But then when you have the sort of I don't know,
luxury and or the honor of taking care of them
(00:51):
multiple times, well, inevitably you start to become friends. So
I refer to you as a friend more than a patient.
But we've known each other now or probably fifteen years
something like that, and what we're going to be talking
about today is your journey over that fifteen years. We've
(01:12):
had now a total of four surgeries, eight procedures. So
I want you to first grasp that for a minute.
So if you and I are in our dialogue and
we're sitting at a party and I say to someone, Oh,
I have a patient. Yeah, I've done four surgeries with her,
and I've done eight procedures. Automatically, there's gonna be this
connotation or assumption that there's some excessive that person's must
(01:39):
look weird. There's all that that goes with it. And
while that's not uncommon in the global sense, it is
absolutely not necessarily true. And so why I'm so grateful
for you for being on the show is because you're
going to help us debunk this notion that a there's
like the number of procedures you do, the more crazy
(02:02):
you become, the more catlike you become, the more addicted
you whatever, those things are. So welcome to the show, LEXI,
thank you. All right. So let's just recap for everybody
the timeline of things that we did. So initially we met.
How many children do you have?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I have three children, and we met when my youngest
was about three years old.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Three years old the youngest, So you'd have three kids,
and what are the age differences between them?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Between the youngest and the oldest. It's four and a
half years.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, so you knocked them out right, And so that's
not uncommon where if a mother has children's sort ofly
sort of rapid fire back to back, it doesn't leave
a lot of room for that person to get their
body back, get themselves in lifestyle, lose the baby, wait,
get their bodies snap back and boom, go in it again.
So it's very common that if you've had three, four
(03:01):
or five kids back to back to back, that your
body sort of doesn't bounce back, so to speak. So
our initial get together was through the portal of Mommy Mako. Right,
you were a young mom. You had, as you had said,
I think you had said, you'd gained a lot of weight.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I had gained one hundred pounds with each pregnancy.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
So one hundred pounds with each pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I wasn't unhealthy, It just was my body put on
a lot of weight when I was pregnant.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Right, And you're let's just talk about how tall are you?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I am five six and.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
How much do you just generally weigh when when you're
not pregnant and just your normal, right, So five sixty
is considered it super healthy, super normal, regular person. So
you have your babies and you gain what's your what
do you what the max weight that you get at.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
I was I think I was two thirty.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
So two thirty is substantial, right, and oh, you must
have just ate yourself there. No, that's not true at all.
There are individuals who hormonally when they get pres my actually,
my cousin's wife has had four kids, and with each
pregnancy she gained one hundred pounds and it's just their
body just balloons up in terms of holding on to fluid,
(04:10):
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
So I worked out, I did everything I was supposed
to do. I just was that person, right.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
So boom, you have your children, God bless their healthy
and then you look in the mirror and you're like,
what the F I'm thirty seven, let's say, and here
I have the sequelae of not only just three kids
back to back, but three kids and having gained and
lost three hundred pounds. Right. Yeah, So we met under
(04:39):
the under the umbrella of mommy makeover. That's how we
came to know each other. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
So leading up to it, I know it's done having children,
and I really wanted to get back like my fighting weight, right,
And I worked out, I got a trainer. I was
in the best shape of my life, and I us
could not get that the loose skin, and I just didn't.
(05:06):
I was thirty seven and I was in great shape,
and I didn't feel good about myself, and it really
bummed me out because I'd worked so hard to get
back to where I wanted to be.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
And so that was when I came to And.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
That's you underscore a very important thing, there's all. And
so the global total topic today is the idea that
plastic surgery, when done correctly by the right surgeon, in
the right person at the right time, is supposed to
be enhansive and empowering and positive, so much so that
(05:38):
you would go to a rooftop and you'd say, look
at me, look at what I got. I was able
to do this for myself. But as we're going to
talk about it, for a lot of people, plastic surgery,
especially when you do a lot of it, becomes sort
of shameful and like you want to keep it to yourself.
You feel amazing, you're proud of what you did. But
many patients, especially when I talk to them, they're like, yeah,
(05:59):
I don't want anyone to know. Oh, I don't want
to tell anybody. And while I totally understand the anonymity
of it. If I want an Olympic gold medal, I
sure as hell wouldn't be quiet about it. I promise
you'd be around my neck all day long. So I
think what I love about you is your plastic surgery
journey is an Olympic gold medal. Like you're not bashful, granted,
it's your personality and you are very much like an advocate,
(06:21):
like hell, yeah, that's right. And so I think that's
really important because you said, like, oh I did I
did everything I was supposed to do, and there's this
notion that, oh, well, you should have done more. But
you're not going to get rid of dyastasis, which we've
spoken about one hundred times, muscle separation, never with exercise.
You're never going to get rid of lu skin, never
(06:42):
with exercise. So yes, you're sort of stuck behind this
wall if you will, that will never move unless you operate.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I almost felt like it was the final piece of
getting back in shape because I had done everything else
and I just couldn't get to where I felt like
was good for me.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Got it. So we meet, we talk. I tell you
that I think you need an abdominoplasty, a tummy tuck,
muscle repair, fixing the diastasis, getting rid of the excess skin.
And I think at the time I mentioned to you, hey,
I noticed that your breasts have or we had chatted
about it, or you brought it up, and I took
a glance and I said, listen, I mean, your breast
are fine. They're not nowhere near as bad as your
(07:25):
abdomen was, but certainly they weren't fantastic in comparison to
where they you'd be. And I'd said, if you're interested
in doing it, now's the time, right because you have
three small kids, you're going to undergo anesthesia, blah blah
blah blah blah. And I think you had said I
wasn't ready, so you weren't ready, and we said, no problem,
let's knock out your abdominoplasty. So domo placy obviously went well,
because amazing your seven surgeries later, So domo plazi goes amazing.
(07:51):
And then what happens.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So I mean, first of all, I want to stress
I talked to a few other surgeons before meet you,
and she.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Did not know we hadn't met yet.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yes, we hadn't met and I just really felt like
you were honest with me. You took time with me.
I wasn't one of one hundred people you were seeing
that day, and that you saw me and you saw
what I wanted, and that was the huge decider for me.
You suggested doing something different that the other doctors didn't suggest,
(08:26):
and when I asked you why, you said, well, they're
suggesting it because it's easier for them, and that's not
what I'm about. So just my entire first meeting with
you put me at ease and made me trust you.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Well. I appreciate that. That means a lot.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
And then you said, oh, if you're going under, you
should do your bust as well, and I.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Said, absolutely not. I'm not ready and I should have
listened to you.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
So how long after your dominoplasty did you go and say?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Oh it was It was about six months after the
surgery and everything had settled, and I was feeling feeling good,
and I was kind of like, wow, I should have
done my breast at the same time.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
No harm, no foulah. So we meet again and we say, okay, hey,
doctor Bonn, you were right. My abdomen looks amazing and
now and part of the reason why you do them
together is the following things. Number One, from a recovery standpoint,
it is always easier the recovery from any surgery. Eylid knows.
Facelip is inconvenient. There's no way around that. It sucks.
(09:32):
It's not fun, not because it's painful, because it's inconvenient.
You can't do the things you want to do. And
then once you finally are like you the green light
to go live your life, the last thing you want
to do is circle back and do this shit again.
So from a convenience standpoint, doing them together is better. Financially,
they're better because whatever it is that whatever financial hit
you take from loss of revenue, bringing people to help you,
all that nonsense is once versus twice. And lastly, you
(09:56):
look more homogenous. You're standing in front of the mirror
and your ear lobe has nothing to do with your
abmin but your breasts and your abdomen are in the
same window. They're in the same viewpoint like.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It just made it more noticeable than correct.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
So when your adamin gets done, and while your breasts
were okay, then they become not okay, even though nothing's
changed because relative to your new abdomen. Perhaps they're now
taking the spotlight.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yes, that was exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
So we go back and we do a breast lift
and implant, right, because you had lost volume, which is
eighty percent of patients after having kids breastfeeding the whole
weight gain loss, win, whatnot. Twenty percent their breast keep
getting bigger and they need a reduction, and eighty percent
they lose volume. They get their upper pole, their chest flattens,
(10:46):
their breasts begin to sag and get contact with their chests.
So the second surgery redid was a breastlift and implant. Correct.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah, And I was very ambivalent about having the implant.
Always been full breasted and I didn't like the idea
of it. I was very nervous about that, and you
really felt like it was the best way to go,
and I trust you, and I'm so glad that's.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
What we did.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I as soon as the surgery was over, I realized
what you were talking about.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
It totally feels natural.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
My husband was nervous about me doing it because of
feeling something. You can't feel anything, And I'm really glad
I did it.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
So let's talk about that for a second. Why do
we need an implant. So one reason is because people
want to be bigger. That's not why we did yours.
You had plenty of breast tissue. On the contrary, you
were at the border of arguably too big. And as
a matter of fact, and I don't know if you
remember this or not, when I do a breast lift
in patients like you who have large breasts but still
need an implant, I actually remove a little bit of
breast tissue so that I could make up for it.
(11:54):
The second reason that you do a breast implant is
for roundness, for upper whole fullness. So ninety nine percent
of people who come to me, whether they like small
breasts or big breast, what they want as a woman
is some fullness in the upper chest. People who like
subtlety and classy and sporty want a little bit. People
who like sexy and volumptuous like more. But one thing
(12:18):
is for sure, no one has ever come here and
said I want a flat chest. And so the implant,
despite all that breast tissue you had, was to make
the upper pole a little fuller. That will never occur
with breast because your breast can't be back up so much.
So that even young girls like eighteen year old girl,
very large breast upper poles empty because breasts are not
(12:40):
anti gravitational, so they'll always settle. So we went ahead
into that surgery, and again we know it went well.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
You're static, and it was so great because I didn't
realize that that part of it was bothering me. I
just knew I wasn't I didn't feel like myself, and
so I was so happy with the outcome and so
happy with all of your recommendations.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
So great. So we did this mommy makeover, and you
move on with your life and instead of you know,
get from A to B, A to C an A
to B B two C no problem. And it's absolutely acceptable.
And for some people it's like the right path, and
other people it's like, God, I should have done it once.
It doesn't really matter because we get there. So time
passes by. And since I've known you for a long time,
(13:23):
I know that you struggled with weight. You had times
where your weight went up when you never got one
hundred pounds overweight again because you weren't pregnant. But there
were phases in your life. You had a lot of
challenges going on throughout your personal life, and so you
gain weight, and then I'd see you because I was
seeing you for botox and filler and just maintenance things,
and I would notice, Hey, you gain weight. You're like,
I know, FuG shit. And then you'd lose weight and boom,
(13:44):
oh you look amazing, and then you gain weight, and
you'd keep me honest well because I'd see you and
I know where you could be, I know where you
had been. And the difference is that like if again,
as a friend, if I see my friends and they're
starting to gain weight or they're starting to go off base,
it is incumbent on your friends and your family and
(14:07):
your clinicians to say, hey, what's going on. You're outside
the perimeter of what's normal for you.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
And when we had the conversation, that's always what it
felt like for me. It wasn't like you were a
doctor waving your finger at me. You were friends saying, hey,
what is going on in your life that you're not okay?
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:27):
And I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
And you always responded, well, you were very transparent and honest.
You're like, I know X, Y and Z is happening,
and I'm like, I got it. I totally understand that
that's very reasonable, but don't let go because if you
let go, once the whole thing passes, it's going to pass.
Every horrific thing passes, you're going to be so much
lower than you ought to be. And then you would
rel it back in. And so this process happened, and
(14:50):
then you came in and during these visits you said
to me, Hey, you know, I just I'm starting to
look older, right, And we took a look at your
face because you know, for people generally, the normal transition
is mid thirties, their body matters, forty mid forties, your
face is starting to matter, and then mid fifties, your
(15:13):
whole face matters. And so you were in that phase
where you were like, oh, you know, I don't know
what's going on. We're doing the botox, but it's not
helping your thin skinned, light eyed, freckly, dry skinned. So
those types of patients tend to have more wrinkles, more
loss of volume, and then the weight gain that had added.
So we looked together and we noticed that your upper
(15:35):
brow and upper eyelid, which I've done many episodes on,
has started to descend, which happens in everybody justin Susie
it's a little more. In Gale it's a little less,
and Tom it's a little You know what I mean?
And what are my options? Doctor Raban? And I said
to you at the time, what did we discuss at
that time?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Originally you were just talking about the upper lids, and
then as we got closer to the surgery and you
were really looking in my face, you felt like I
wouldn't really get the result that I wanted, which was
that almost ten years before when I had first dabbled
in botox, when I would get that lift, I wasn't
getting that anymore. And so you suggested just doing the
(16:18):
whole upper brow. And again I was nervous about it,
but I trust you so much, and I just didn't
feel like myself. I felt like when I looked in
the mirror, what was representative was that I looked tired
or not happy, and that wasn't how I felt. And
I didn't want to change myself. I just wanted to
(16:41):
look how I felt totally.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
And it's interesting because brows are where we express right,
so it's natural that if your brows change you look
at yourself, you're like, I look angry, I look sad,
I look tired. Brows do that because when I want
to be surprised, I go, what right, and my brow
Unless you're someone's plaster with botox, then they don't raise anything.
(17:03):
But so it's very common. I'd say ninety percent of
the times, eighty percent of times I do upper eyelids
with brows because as your brow on the outside, not
in the middle in most patients on the outside starts
to sack, it makes your eyelids look heavier, et cetera.
So our one, two, our third surgery together was a
(17:23):
limited meaning just the outer brow and upper eelid surgery, right,
And that's super common in patients who are in their
forties of some age, right, I even have done it
in late thirties. But it's usually somewhere when you used
as a four in front of your age, at some
juncture in the four range, you're gonna notice your brow
and upper eyelids are starting to change. So we do
(17:44):
that and you go look in the mirror and you're like,
loved it.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Wow, fresh, so really easy recovery. Right, I was out
and about in less than two weeks. You would never
know I'd had anything done. And the most common thing
that people.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Said to me is like, wow, you look great.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Did you just go on vacation. I got that comment
NonStop after i'd done it.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
So the assumption is you had a browlift, and if
you're on social media even whatsoever, you say browlift, immediately
you think super high arch, cat brows, weird, slanted, and
that esthetic has really, in my opinion, been disadvantageous for
plastic surgery. Why because for the people who like that
(18:28):
weird ponytail high arch look, which is great if you
like it, awesome, But for the patients who just want
to look normal to them and just the same person,
just cleaner, then automatically assumption is, well, shit, I can't
do anything because if I do it, I'm gonna look weird.
Better just leave it alone. Yes, that's not true. That's
(18:49):
not true at all. You can absolutely do your eyebrow
and your eyelator or whatever and look totally normal. It's
just a matter of how much salt you add to
the recipe.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Well, I mean, I think that thing is normal is you,
and you're going to look like you just a little refreshed, sure,
and that's a great thing to give yourself.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
One hundred percent agree. So time keeps ticking tick tic
tic tick tick tick tick, and we go and then
we get to when was it that we got together
the last time? So that surgery one was your stomach,
Surgery two was your breast lifting implant, Surgery three was
your upper eyelid and your brow, and then surgery four
(19:30):
in the final surgery was what three years ago, two
twenty twenty two, and at that point you were forty nine.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
I think I just turned fifty. That was my fiftieth
birthday present.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
So you came in and you said, I'm there, I'm
at my welterweight again. I feel good, I'm lean, I'm thin,
but I look tired and old. And your man was
your neck.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I was really seeing it in my neck.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I was I just looked old and I was seeing
my grandmother and my mother, and that's not how I felt.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
I felt like I was on top of the world and.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
I was fit, and I was doing all the things
I wanted to do, and I just looked here and
then around my mouth. I just felt like I looked
angry all the time because I was starting to droop,
and that wasn't how I felt.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
So we sat down again. Notice every single time you
present with something that I'm not sure I really liked this.
We sit down. I've known you for now fifteen years.
We never just we always sit down and we formally
talk about it. There's no often what happens is actually
knowing a plastic surgeon well is the worst thing that
can happen to you, because you bypass all the formality,
(20:49):
and you should never bypass the formality. When I saw
my mother in law for a facelift, I made her
come to the office. She lives with us, and I
had her sit in a chair and I had Laura translate.
I gave her a full consolet she needs to know
where the nerves are. She needs to know blah blah blah,
because it's every one of these is a real surgery.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
And I was coming to you throughout that time for
a botox and killer, so you know, we'd I'm almost
getting there.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
I started to really bother me.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
We'd had those conversations, but we did sit down and
really have the conversation. When I was like, I don't
think I can stay on this anymore.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Great, So this is probably the hottest topic in plastic
surgery right now, which is I'm fifty not sixty or seventy,
and my neck and jaw looks not so good. Ten
years ago, fifteen years ago, you'd be told you look
pretty good for fifty. Just hold on, hold tight, hold
tight for what? Hold tight for sixty? What do you mean?
(21:46):
Hold tight for another decade to what? You'll get a
facelift at sixty. So you want me to wait another
goddamn ten years, unhappy, knowing I'm going to keep looking
worse till I'm sixty because what happens at sixty? Well,
it's appropriate then, but now, and I says, one of
the few areas where social media has been advantageous. Now
we're like, fifty fifty is your golden era. Fifty, you
(22:09):
don't like your neck, you don't like your face, let's
do a facelift. Where's Ten years ago? If I would
have said that word followed by the age fifty, everyone like,
oh my god, this person's crazy fifty, she's only fifty.
But now it's not that way at all.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Well, and I also think you were very honest, like
you're not going to get what you want anymore out
of fillers, like and there are people who do look
weird and you look at.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Them, and they've been overfilled very good. That I didn't
want that. I wanted to look like me, just a
little tweak.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
So you came in. I remember specific like, I'm like,
what's bothering? You're like, listen, I'm working out, I'm doing
the botox, I'm doing the filler. Can can we do
something about my chin, jaw, neck area? And I said
to you, which I tell every single patient, I said,
you've there's no filler that's going to fix this. You
brought up a great point which I'm going to highlight,
which is, unfortunately, if your hammer, the world is a nail,
(23:06):
which means that when you go to spas and dermatologists
and whatnot, and their tool is filler, and then you
come in with a problem that can't shouldn't be fixed
with filler, they're going to use filler to fix it.
And so you're seeing a lot of people walking around
with really wide jaws, their jowls, and their marionettes are
being overfilled to compensate for skin settling in sag and
(23:30):
none of them look good. And you see it everywhere
on celebrities, and the reality is that once you go
from a nail to a screw, you got to change tools.
You can't. You can't use a hammer anymore. Let me
go get the screwdriver. But if you don't have a screwdriver,
you're going to shove it in with the hammer. So
you came in, you said, my neck and things, and
you were under the impression that I would just get
(23:52):
this little mini neck lift. I'm fifty, let's just do
a little neck lift and call it a day. And
what was our dialogue you came in when it How
did we go from I hate my little my neck
and we need a necklift to what we ended up doing.
What was a dialogue?
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Well, the first thing was that you said, in order
to get what you want, you are going to need
a chin implant. And that really freaked me out because
I just felt like that was going to change my face,
and I liked my face and I didn't want to change.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
I just wanted, you know, what I wanted.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
So that took me a good six to eight months
to really like I was coming in for my maintenance things,
but I I just wasn't ready to move there. And
you said, well, then I'm not going to do the
surgery because I know what is going to be best
for you. And you can go somewhere else and they'll
do what you want. But and I didn't want to
(24:45):
go to anybody else, but I wasn't quite there yet.
And then I wrapped my head around it, and I
trust you and I know you wouldn't do something to
me that would be bad, and so I just said, okay,
I'm ready, and then we talked to about the chin
and what we needed to do. You said, because you
(25:06):
couldn't just do the chin, that you would have to
also do a little bit pull up here at lower facelift,
which again was a lot for me to take in
because I thought I was just that was all I needed.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
And we talked about how it would go and why.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
You said that to get a little bit more fullness,
I would have to add some that in here, and
I totally understood that, and that made sense to me,
and then we scheduled it.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
So what you talked about was a beautiful evolution. You're
not expected to know these things. You're expected to find
a person who you trust to teach you these things,
not be told these things. So when I go to
a lawyer, when I go to an accountant, when I
go to a dentist, I go there a trusting them
and be expecting them to deliver information to me in
(25:58):
a way in which I can understand and then allows
me to make an informed decision. That's medicine, that's professionalism.
My real estate agent, same thing. Everybody you go to
should do that. So you come in and you say,
Arthur Rabon, I don't like my neck and I don't
like this jolly thing that's going on. And the answer
is at fifty with the amount of weight loss that
you had, here are the things that you need to do.
(26:18):
Now what I want to do that you need to
do in order to look what I know you want
to look, which is just fresh and good because you
had a weaker chin, because you had a weaker chin
when you and here's the basic principle. When you do
a necklift or a facelift, you're pulling ultimately everything up
at a diagonal, up towards let's say you're inner ear.
(26:38):
When you do that, you're pulling against a point. That
point is the chin. When the chin is weak, the
area under your neck, which is the holy grail, the
holy grail of Angelae and Jolie Margo Roberts, every single
Brad Pitt every single attractive person in the world has
(27:01):
a badass jaw. It can have fifty acne scars, doesn't matter.
An amazing jaw, And it's because there's more space under
the neck. And when you start out with a weak
chin and we're pulling against it, you're going to be
incredibly underwhelmed because while you're tight, you're tight with a
weakened chin. So in a facelift, when you're dealing with
(27:23):
someone with a weaker chin, if you don't correct it,
you're almost guaranteed that at the end they'll come back
and be like, hey, you didn't pull tight enough, it
doesn't look sharp, et cetera. So that was why that
one was there.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
And obviously I didn't have an aversion to surgeries. It
was more the headspace of I just still want to
eat one.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Hundred and you say chin implant, you think immediately j
leno chin and plant jay Leno your chin implant like
freak chin, I plant huge. I just want you to
understand chin implants. By the way, we have many different
shapes so and many different sizes. There is a small
which is so small that you'd be like, wait, I
(28:04):
totally wasted my money. So if we have that notch
on our dial. It means that a surgeon can truly
customize it. It isn't like chin plant, we open it.
It's just just dark, jargantuan thing. We just shove it
in there. The second thing is that you thought that
it would just be your neck. But if you look
at a neck, where did the neck skin come from?
It came from the mid the lower face. The lower
face SAgs into the neck, so a nine out of
(28:27):
ten neck issues have to be addressed into the lower face.
So you have to take that skin not behind the ear,
but up and towards the front of the ear. Hence
why a neck issue becomes a faced issue. It's a misnomer.
And then what happens then is if you're hollow, which
you were at that point, and you pull, you're just
(28:49):
tight hollow, you're not youthful looking, and then you need
to replenish the airs that are a little hollow.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
And no one is getting filler here, so I mean right.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
That, but it's the cheapest, most glorious filler in the world.
It's your own body. And the last thing actually interesting
that we added, which was sort of the last second thing.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Well, so we had a conversation.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Once I wrapped my head around that, and I said, okay,
I don't want to do anything else for ten years,
like this is it?
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Look at my face? What else would you do?
Speaker 2 (29:22):
And at that point you said, I wouldn't put you
under for this, but since you're already going to be under,
let me do a little bit more on your upper list.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
What about your lower eyelid?
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Well, at that point you didn't think I needed it,
got it, And so I said, okay, I'm going under.
I trust you, like, let's do it. I do not
want to have anything else done for ten years. So
that was the plan and we were I was wrapping
my head around it. We had that was like a
three month before the surgery. So two weeks before the surgery,
I had my final prey off right and it had
(29:54):
been right after my birthday and I boozed it up
and I had had a night and I I came
in and I was really puffy under my eyes and
you were like, what is that.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
I've never seen that on you. That is crazy. And
I said, oh, that happens, you know, only when I drink.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
And you were like, if that happens when you drink
or eat something salty that's only going to get worse,
and I'm doing everything else.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
We should add that on.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
And again I was ambivalent, but I was like, Okay,
I trust you and I'm doing everything else and I
don't want to do you know, I don't want to
regret it.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
And honestly that was the best. Like that I think
makes the most difference.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
So this discussion, and one of the reasons why I'm
happy that you're on, shows the normal process that should
be taken between a patient and a surgeon. Despite our
longevity of relationship. You'd think you'd come in I'd be like,
lexis you need ABCD, You'd had surgery with me before,
We're like, sure, let's sign up. That's farthest from how
(31:01):
this went. This went me telling you what I will
or won't do. You sitting there going I don't know,
you sitting with it, thinking about it, looking at it,
taking your time coming back adding subtracting, did this is
your face? And every one of our surgeries has gone
that way, and what it shows you is a very
healthy relationship. So when you hear eight procedures, the eight
procedures are now Tommy tuck, breast lift, and implant and
(31:26):
then facial rejuvenation. If you want the damn thing to
look wow, you look great. You can't leave one area
of the face untouched. It just doesn't look normal. It's
like going into a house remodeling the whole house, the kitchen,
the living room, yet the powder room you just don't touch.
It's a nineteen eighties powder room and a twenty twenty
(31:46):
four house. Like you walk into powder and you're like,
whoa did you guys run out of money? What is this?
So we're lifting your neck. We have to add a
little strength to your chin. We're going to add a
little volume to your mid face where it's hollow, and
when you recruit the skin upwards, it creates folding and
actually makes your lower eelid issue worse because now you're
(32:10):
recruiting a little bit of snugness underneath the eyelids. So
our fourth and final surgery was a facelift. You can
call them mini lift, you can call it a lunchtime lift,
you can call it a Rabond Lasky lift, and call
what the hell you want. It's a deep plane face lift,
skin and muscle, a chin implant, and a lower bleft
(32:30):
with some fat added. So that was the completion to
the top half, which we had already done, and we
took a little more skin out of your lower eyelids
because your skin is thin and it tends to settle.
So in totality, during the time that we've known each other,
you've had four surges and eight procedures. When I think
about our journey together, I see it as two parts.
One is the doing of the surgeries, and the other
is the psychology of doing other surgeries. Because passic surgery,
(32:54):
unlike a gallbladder or hysterectemy or breast well, breast cancer
has so much of an identity defines you. Your gallbladder
doesn't define you. So I want to talk about the
second half of this because people approach plastic surgery in
two ways. I have patients, i'd say half of them
that are like super hush hush, I don't want anyone
to know. You can't use my photos, don't tell my friends,
(33:16):
don't tell my husband, and it's like okay. And they
approach it as if they've done something egregious or shameful,
like they rob the bank or I don't know, they
have to do prostitution or something in order to make
ends meet. Where's the other half and the half like you?
And the way I would do it is more embracing,
more proud, more like, wow, I won this Olympic gold medal,
(33:39):
like look at this, Look at what I was able
to afford or to earn or to give myself. And
I'm proud of it. I'm not shame of it, and
I'm not throwing in your face. But if someone asked
me like, oh my god, alexis you looks better yet, like, oh,
doctor Ron, you look so good. Oh my god, you
have no wrinkles. Oh that's because of botox. I have
(34:00):
hit turn of wrinkles, Like I'm that guy. And it
always it kind of irks me when patients are so secretive.
And I'll tell you why, because I feel I take
it almost personally, because I've built you this incredible statue
that you love, but then you're going to hide it
in a closet.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Well, I feel like it's an unfair expectation that you're
putting out into the world, and especially with social media
and young girls are just people all over. You look
at a picture of somebody and you're like, wow, they
look amazing, and it's like yeah, because they've done stuff
and that's okay, but be honest about it, because I
(34:43):
feel like it makes people feel bad about themselves as
if they don't look like that, and it's like why
I've done a few things.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
So totally agree. So we're going to talk about the
psychology of it, because I think you're an amazing walking
billboard for the benefits of plastics, not because you look good,
but because psychologically you feel good. Because remember, looking good
is kind of irrelevant. If you look stunning and you
are miserable, then you lost the game. Because the only
(35:13):
reason to do plastic surgery is because then you look good,
you feel good, you are happy, and you approach the
people you love with joy. You're not your sex, you
feel sexy, you want to take your clothes off, you
put on makeup, you go to work in your boss
lady like. It has to impact the quality of your
life otherwise it's just evacuum.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
I mean, look, I'm married to an amazing man.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
I gained a lot of weight. I lost a lot
of weight. Never he could have cared less. It was
nothing to do with him. I needed to do this
because I didn't feel good about myself in a way
that I couldn't fix.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
And look, it's a balance. I have a daughter.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
I don't want to seem like I'm totally focused on aesthetics,
but it was more about me feeling good in a
way that I couldn't achieve myself.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
And I think the reality is and this is where
the judgment comes in. So I think there's three categories
of people. When you say plastic surgery's just, and I
keep saying it because I think that's really the trigger here.
If I said somebody had their eyelids done, I don't
think many people would say anything and don't give a shit.
But if I say somebody who, by the time of
fifty has had eight procedures and four surgeries without knowing
(36:27):
anything about the person, without meeting them, without knowing them,
without seeing them, there's judgment being passed. So there's three
categories of way people judge. One group was like Mike,
my wife or whatever, like hell, yeah, good for her,
Like if she wants to and she can and she's
you know, and again nobody knows what you look like,
yet they're like good for her. There's a neutral group,
(36:47):
they're indifferent, and then there's the naysayers and the negative
she doesn't love herself. There must be something deeper going on.
She must look like a freak. I can't imagine. God,
how unhappy she isn't all that clearly, no one has
a clue because no one knows that person is individualized.
But you are a testament to You look super normal.
(37:08):
And that's not because I did the work, but like
if you walked into a supermarket, nobody we just posted
a picture of this lady who had had six facelifts.
I mean, she looks ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Well, the number one conversation I have with my girlfriends
is why I don't want to look weird. And it's like, well,
I don't think I look weird. Do you think I
look No, you look amazing. And it's like, okay, well,
then you know somebody who you see, who you can
tell has had plastic surgery, didn't have good plastic surgery
one hundred percent. If you can't tell somebody had great
(37:40):
plastic surgery, and if they look good, they probably had
plastic surgery.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
And they're fifty.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
And there's a saying to that. So you walk into
a party and you and your husband are walking around
and you look at it. There's one hundred people there
and then you leave going did you see those five
people's facelifts? They look awful, and in your mind you do.
It's called selection bias. This is something that's known in statistics.
Selection bias means you're biased to what you can select.
(38:07):
You go home, you tell your husband, God, I I'm
never going to get a facelift. Did you see those
five women? They look ridiculous? And then you say, five
out of five people who got face lifts look bizarre.
But the reality there was forty five people had face lifts.
Forty of them you didn't even know, and so you
(38:30):
should be doing five out of forty five look weird,
not five out of five. And it's exactly to your
point that if something's done subtly, so the recipe calls
for salt, there's a pinch and there's a spoonful, So
it's plastic surgery comes down to the degree of pulling,
the degree of augmenting, the degree of adding fat. It's all.
(38:53):
Every single tool is ideal, but it's just how much
of it.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
Look and leading up to it. We have lots of conversations.
You took a lot of time with me.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
I expressed my concerns about things I'd seen and why
I was nervous, and you talked me through why that
wouldn't happen with me because of the techniques that you
were using and really assured me. I never felt pressured.
I never felt like I had to do everything you
were recommending. It was just this is the way I
(39:22):
do things, and if you want me.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
To do it well. Because you come to me and
you say, hey, I want you to get me off
the hook. For not off the hook. You come to
your lawyer and you say, listen, I'm being sued for X,
Y and Z. You can't then go in there and
tell the lawyer how to defend you. You hired the guy,
and he or she has to use the knowledge and
skills that made them successful, that made you select them
(39:46):
to do the thing. And plastic surgery, it is collaborative.
It is what you want and what I want. But
I certainly am not going to do something that I
know is going to end poorly or not the way
you want because you're not able to see it. I'll
just opt out, but I have the obligation to have
to show you why you won't look that way. It
(40:07):
won't be it's not gonna be one of these, oh,
because I'm the master. And if you don't want a chance,
get the f out of my office. It's like, listen,
I can't do it because you'll be unhappy. And let
me show you thirty such examples and show you a
small and a medium and explain you why there is subtleties.
We should be able to make you bridge that gap
for you. And if you're educated as you are and
(40:28):
open minded, you should be teachable and you should learn
and say oh, okay, that makes sense. And then when
you go and interact with your friends, are you know,
you're the type of person that's like very proud in general.
You're not a sheepish type of individual. So if people
are like, oh my god, your neck looks so good,
I'm assuming you're like, oh, yeah, I had a face slift.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
I have my Like I mean, i'm too people, I
don't know that well.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Like when people hear my age and I mean they
see me, they're like, really, you're fifty two, and I say.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Yeah, I've had work done, like of course, I you know,
like I don't. I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
And that's what the if you ask me. The whole
crux of this entire podcast episode is the notion of
being proud of and embracing and enjoying and almost I
don't want to say broadcasting because it's not that, but
you know, you should be able to say, Like, again,
(41:30):
if your son won a gold medal and Peo were like,
oh my god, he's so great, He's like, oh yeah,
my son's a gold medalist, It's like I would brag.
I'd be like, hell yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
But when I say it, people are always like, wow,
I would never know, and I said yeah, because I
went to somebody really good.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
And there's a lot of Listen, ten percent of the
surgeons in this country are excellent. Ninety percent are okay
or average or whatnot. But there is a boatload of
skilled people that can deliver subtle and elegant results in
eyelids and noses, in breasts and stomach. So it's not
like I'm the only guy that does it. There are
(42:07):
people you can identify, you have to do more than
your routine homework. You can't go to them based on Instagram.
But the reality is this fear that if I do
a lot, I'll look weird is absolutely not true. This
notion that I can't tell anyone because I'm embarrassed, I
think is silly, and I think the truth of the
matter is that if as you as you get older,
(42:28):
you identify issues within your body, you're healthy, you have
a good relationship with your life partner, you're eating well,
everything is good. You're just like God, I can't get
rid of this goddamn blue skin on my stomach, or
holy shit, my breathing is terrible, or my god, my
lips have disappeared. Fix it. Just go fix it and
then check move on. It's not gonna make you happy,
(42:50):
but if you're unhappy, but it sure as hell gonna
make you enjoy your quality of life much more.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
I mean, after every single thing that I've done, I
felt amazing. I just felt I felt depressed going into
my first surgery because I just couldn't believe that I
couldn't you know, I'd always been a physical person where
I worked out and was in good shape, and I
(43:19):
just couldn't believe I couldn't get there. And it was
really bumming me out. At were thirty seven years old.
It was like, is this the best it's going to be?
And I mean, you changed my life, Like, I felt
so much better about myself. Yeah, in a way that
I didn't even think was possible anymore.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
And the beauty of that is that then trickles into
your interpersonal relationships. You know how many people I've taken
care of through the years, and then you talk to
them and you're like, how are things with your husband amazing? Really? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (43:49):
I was.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
He's a great guy, but I was. I felt embarrassed.
I never wanted you know, I'd always run out after
the shower and I'd make sure the lights were off,
and there's all these shenanigans that they would do. I
would never take photos because I hated my neck or
all those things. And every person I've operated on, every
person twenty years, has a story about what they were
doing to circumvent the thing they dislike. In other words,
(44:12):
it was on their minds so much that they had
created I jut my jaw out, I wear my hair down.
There's a mechanism in place to circumvent the thing. And
when they have the surgery and it's done well, the
liberation of that whatever was that obstacle is so profound.
To wear your hair and a high ponytail as a
(44:34):
young girl because your ears were prominent. It's so liberating
and so small that it's unbelievable. And hence the reason
why I love plastic surgery, because nothing anyone can do
can liberate you of such a massive burden.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Well, and I think as moms, you know, although it's
for everyone, every woman, you know, there's a hesitancy like, oh,
I need to do this for like it's so much
money to sure put you know, and it was, you know,
it wasn't insignificant, and I'm incredibly fortunate, but it was
still a big chunk. But I think it's really like
(45:12):
there's this saying I'm blanking on his name, but the guy,
the Oracle of Omaha always says you should treat your
body like if you bought any car you wanted and
you had that same car for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
And that's kind of how I think about it.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
It's like, this is my body for the rest of
my life, Like I should treat myself as well as
I can within my parameter.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
One hundred percent. And the last thing I'll I'll leave
it with is this idea that being a mom and
you know, if a plane is if you're in an
airplane and you're about to take off, they do their
introductory video. The first thing they tell you is, if
this plane, god forbid, were to crash and we're going down,
an oxygen mask we're to deploy. Put the oxygen mask
(45:58):
on yourself first, not your life one. You don't put
the oxygen masks on your son or your daughter. You
put it on your face first. Because once you're down,
the rest is over. And so when you are a mom,
particularly more so than fathers, you are the helm of
this entire universe, the ethos of your family. And when
you are down and depressed and don't love yourself and whatever,
(46:20):
as much as you think you're being selfless, that energy,
that depression, that whatnot, it permeates throughout the relationship of
your kids and everything. So you taking care of yourself
is actually selfless. And that's where the whole idea of
put the oxygen on, because when you're breathing, you can
now take care of everybody else. So thank you so
much for coming on our episode. I think everybody who
(46:42):
listens is always so grateful that someone would go put
themselves out there, get on the rate on a podcast
or a video and share their most intimate stories. But
for those people who are struggling and their mile two
of this marathon and you just crossed the finish line,
it's very rewarding and very encouraging to be able to
(47:03):
look on the JumboTron and be like, I can see
the finish line. I can make it the rest of
this race. So we're grateful that you came on the show,
and we look forward to your next surgery.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Well, and I mean thank you. You've been welcome, you
have changed my life, and you've been a really good friend.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
You're very welcome. It's been a true pleasure. All Right, guys,
that wraps up yet another fabulous episode of plastic Surgery Uncensored.
As always, I'm going to ask you two things. I
do it every end of every show. Number One, if
you love our show, go write something nice. I mean,
in the world of negativity, if you have nothing nice
to say, well don't write anything. But if you have
something nice to say, go write nice things. There's tons
(47:43):
of people here that are helping put this production together
and it makes everyone feel good. And the second is,
you have no idea who you love or know is
about to have plastic surgery. So send them our link
so they can become educated, because if you find out
after the fact, it's too late for them to get
the information that you think they need to know. So
disseminated to everyone you know and love, and we'll see
(48:05):
you next week. And yet another episode of plastic surgery
Uncensored
All right, welcome to another episode of Plastic Surgery Uncensored.
As always, your host, Doctor Roddy Rabon, And I know
that I always say that we have a fantastic show ahead,
because we do. But this time we have an amazing
and extra fantastic show ahead because of our guest. Our
guests and I have been friends for now many years.
(00:29):
I say friends because patients of mine that are in
our practice for many years inevitably transition into being friends. Right.
You can't take care of somebody and then you know,
you may take care of them once and then they
disappear and then you never see them again, and that's wonderful.
But then when you have the sort of I don't know,
luxury and or the honor of taking care of them
(00:51):
multiple times, well, inevitably you start to become friends. So
I refer to you as a friend more than a patient.
But we've known each other now or probably fifteen years
something like that, and what we're going to be talking
about today is your journey over that fifteen years. We've
(01:12):
had now a total of four surgeries, eight procedures. So
I want you to first grasp that for a minute.
So if you and I are in our dialogue and
we're sitting at a party and I say to someone, Oh,
I have a patient. Yeah, I've done four surgeries with her,
and I've done eight procedures. Automatically, there's gonna be this
connotation or assumption that there's some excessive that person's must
(01:39):
look weird. There's all that that goes with it. And
while that's not uncommon in the global sense, it is
absolutely not necessarily true. And so why I'm so grateful
for you for being on the show is because you're
going to help us debunk this notion that a there's
like the number of procedures you do, the more crazy
(02:02):
you become, the more catlike you become, the more addicted
you whatever, those things are. So welcome to the show, LEXI,
thank you. All right. So let's just recap for everybody
the timeline of things that we did. So initially we met.
How many children do you have?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I have three children, and we met when my youngest
was about three years old.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Three years old the youngest, So you'd have three kids,
and what are the age differences between them?
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Between the youngest and the oldest. It's four and a
half years.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, so you knocked them out right, And so that's
not uncommon where if a mother has children's sort ofly
sort of rapid fire back to back, it doesn't leave
a lot of room for that person to get their
body back, get themselves in lifestyle, lose the baby, wait,
get their bodies snap back and boom, go in it again.
So it's very common that if you've had three, four
(03:01):
or five kids back to back to back, that your
body sort of doesn't bounce back, so to speak. So
our initial get together was through the portal of Mommy Mako. Right,
you were a young mom. You had, as you had said,
I think you had said, you'd gained a lot of weight.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I had gained one hundred pounds with each pregnancy.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
So one hundred pounds with each pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I wasn't unhealthy, It just was my body put on
a lot of weight when I was pregnant.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Right, And you're let's just talk about how tall are you?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I am five six and.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
How much do you just generally weigh when when you're
not pregnant and just your normal, right, So five sixty
is considered it super healthy, super normal, regular person. So
you have your babies and you gain what's your what
do you what the max weight that you get at.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
I was I think I was two thirty.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
So two thirty is substantial, right, and oh, you must
have just ate yourself there. No, that's not true at all.
There are individuals who hormonally when they get pres my actually,
my cousin's wife has had four kids, and with each
pregnancy she gained one hundred pounds and it's just their
body just balloons up in terms of holding on to fluid,
(04:10):
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
So I worked out, I did everything I was supposed
to do. I just was that person, right.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
So boom, you have your children, God bless their healthy
and then you look in the mirror and you're like,
what the F I'm thirty seven, let's say, and here
I have the sequelae of not only just three kids
back to back, but three kids and having gained and
lost three hundred pounds. Right. Yeah, So we met under
(04:39):
the under the umbrella of mommy makeover. That's how we
came to know each other. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
So leading up to it, I know it's done having children,
and I really wanted to get back like my fighting weight, right,
And I worked out, I got a trainer. I was
in the best shape of my life, and I us
could not get that the loose skin, and I just didn't.
(05:06):
I was thirty seven and I was in great shape,
and I didn't feel good about myself, and it really
bummed me out because I'd worked so hard to get
back to where I wanted to be.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
And so that was when I came to And.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
That's you underscore a very important thing, there's all. And
so the global total topic today is the idea that
plastic surgery, when done correctly by the right surgeon, in
the right person at the right time, is supposed to
be enhansive and empowering and positive, so much so that
(05:38):
you would go to a rooftop and you'd say, look
at me, look at what I got. I was able
to do this for myself. But as we're going to
talk about it, for a lot of people, plastic surgery,
especially when you do a lot of it, becomes sort
of shameful and like you want to keep it to yourself.
You feel amazing, you're proud of what you did. But
many patients, especially when I talk to them, they're like, yeah,
(05:59):
I don't want anyone to know. Oh, I don't want
to tell anybody. And while I totally understand the anonymity
of it. If I want an Olympic gold medal, I
sure as hell wouldn't be quiet about it. I promise
you'd be around my neck all day long. So I
think what I love about you is your plastic surgery
journey is an Olympic gold medal. Like you're not bashful, granted,
it's your personality and you are very much like an advocate,
(06:21):
like hell, yeah, that's right. And so I think that's
really important because you said, like, oh I did I
did everything I was supposed to do, and there's this
notion that, oh, well, you should have done more. But
you're not going to get rid of dyastasis, which we've
spoken about one hundred times, muscle separation, never with exercise.
You're never going to get rid of lu skin, never
(06:42):
with exercise. So yes, you're sort of stuck behind this
wall if you will, that will never move unless you operate.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I almost felt like it was the final piece of
getting back in shape because I had done everything else
and I just couldn't get to where I felt like
was good for me.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Got it. So we meet, we talk. I tell you
that I think you need an abdominoplasty, a tummy tuck,
muscle repair, fixing the diastasis, getting rid of the excess skin.
And I think at the time I mentioned to you, hey,
I noticed that your breasts have or we had chatted
about it, or you brought it up, and I took
a glance and I said, listen, I mean, your breast
are fine. They're not nowhere near as bad as your
(07:25):
abdomen was, but certainly they weren't fantastic in comparison to
where they you'd be. And I'd said, if you're interested
in doing it, now's the time, right because you have
three small kids, you're going to undergo anesthesia, blah blah
blah blah blah. And I think you had said I
wasn't ready, so you weren't ready, and we said, no problem,
let's knock out your abdominoplasty. So domo placy obviously went well,
because amazing your seven surgeries later, So domo plazi goes amazing.
(07:51):
And then what happens.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
So I mean, first of all, I want to stress
I talked to a few other surgeons before meet you,
and she.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Did not know we hadn't met yet.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yes, we hadn't met and I just really felt like
you were honest with me. You took time with me.
I wasn't one of one hundred people you were seeing
that day, and that you saw me and you saw
what I wanted, and that was the huge decider for me.
You suggested doing something different that the other doctors didn't suggest,
(08:26):
and when I asked you why, you said, well, they're
suggesting it because it's easier for them, and that's not
what I'm about. So just my entire first meeting with
you put me at ease and made me trust you.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Well. I appreciate that. That means a lot.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
And then you said, oh, if you're going under, you
should do your bust as well, and I.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Said, absolutely not. I'm not ready and I should have
listened to you.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
So how long after your dominoplasty did you go and say?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Oh it was It was about six months after the
surgery and everything had settled, and I was feeling feeling good,
and I was kind of like, wow, I should have
done my breast at the same time.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
No harm, no foulah. So we meet again and we say, okay, hey,
doctor Bonn, you were right. My abdomen looks amazing and
now and part of the reason why you do them
together is the following things. Number One, from a recovery standpoint,
it is always easier the recovery from any surgery. Eylid knows.
Facelip is inconvenient. There's no way around that. It sucks.
(09:32):
It's not fun, not because it's painful, because it's inconvenient.
You can't do the things you want to do. And
then once you finally are like you the green light
to go live your life, the last thing you want
to do is circle back and do this shit again.
So from a convenience standpoint, doing them together is better. Financially,
they're better because whatever it is that whatever financial hit
you take from loss of revenue, bringing people to help you,
all that nonsense is once versus twice. And lastly, you
(09:56):
look more homogenous. You're standing in front of the mirror
and your ear lobe has nothing to do with your
abmin but your breasts and your abdomen are in the
same window. They're in the same viewpoint like.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It just made it more noticeable than correct.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
So when your adamin gets done, and while your breasts
were okay, then they become not okay, even though nothing's
changed because relative to your new abdomen. Perhaps they're now
taking the spotlight.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yes, that was exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
So we go back and we do a breast lift
and implant, right, because you had lost volume, which is
eighty percent of patients after having kids breastfeeding the whole
weight gain loss, win, whatnot. Twenty percent their breast keep
getting bigger and they need a reduction, and eighty percent
they lose volume. They get their upper pole, their chest flattens,
(10:46):
their breasts begin to sag and get contact with their chests.
So the second surgery redid was a breastlift and implant. Correct.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah, And I was very ambivalent about having the implant.
Always been full breasted and I didn't like the idea
of it. I was very nervous about that, and you
really felt like it was the best way to go,
and I trust you, and I'm so glad that's.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
What we did.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I as soon as the surgery was over, I realized
what you were talking about.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
It totally feels natural.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
My husband was nervous about me doing it because of
feeling something. You can't feel anything, And I'm really glad
I did it.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
So let's talk about that for a second. Why do
we need an implant. So one reason is because people
want to be bigger. That's not why we did yours.
You had plenty of breast tissue. On the contrary, you
were at the border of arguably too big. And as
a matter of fact, and I don't know if you
remember this or not, when I do a breast lift
in patients like you who have large breasts but still
need an implant, I actually remove a little bit of
breast tissue so that I could make up for it.
(11:54):
The second reason that you do a breast implant is
for roundness, for upper whole fullness. So ninety nine percent
of people who come to me, whether they like small
breasts or big breast, what they want as a woman
is some fullness in the upper chest. People who like
subtlety and classy and sporty want a little bit. People
who like sexy and volumptuous like more. But one thing
(12:18):
is for sure, no one has ever come here and
said I want a flat chest. And so the implant,
despite all that breast tissue you had, was to make
the upper pole a little fuller. That will never occur
with breast because your breast can't be back up so much.
So that even young girls like eighteen year old girl,
very large breast upper poles empty because breasts are not
(12:40):
anti gravitational, so they'll always settle. So we went ahead
into that surgery, and again we know it went well.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
You're static, and it was so great because I didn't
realize that that part of it was bothering me. I
just knew I wasn't I didn't feel like myself, and
so I was so happy with the outcome and so
happy with all of your recommendations.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
So great. So we did this mommy makeover, and you
move on with your life and instead of you know,
get from A to B, A to C an A
to B B two C no problem. And it's absolutely acceptable.
And for some people it's like the right path, and
other people it's like, God, I should have done it once.
It doesn't really matter because we get there. So time
passes by. And since I've known you for a long time,
(13:23):
I know that you struggled with weight. You had times
where your weight went up when you never got one
hundred pounds overweight again because you weren't pregnant. But there
were phases in your life. You had a lot of
challenges going on throughout your personal life, and so you
gain weight, and then I'd see you because I was
seeing you for botox and filler and just maintenance things,
and I would notice, Hey, you gain weight. You're like,
I know, FuG shit. And then you'd lose weight and boom,
(13:44):
oh you look amazing, and then you gain weight, and
you'd keep me honest well because I'd see you and
I know where you could be, I know where you
had been. And the difference is that like if again,
as a friend, if I see my friends and they're
starting to gain weight or they're starting to go off base,
it is incumbent on your friends and your family and
(14:07):
your clinicians to say, hey, what's going on. You're outside
the perimeter of what's normal for you.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
And when we had the conversation, that's always what it
felt like for me. It wasn't like you were a
doctor waving your finger at me. You were friends saying, hey,
what is going on in your life that you're not okay?
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:27):
And I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
And you always responded, well, you were very transparent and honest.
You're like, I know X, Y and Z is happening,
and I'm like, I got it. I totally understand that
that's very reasonable, but don't let go because if you
let go, once the whole thing passes, it's going to pass.
Every horrific thing passes, you're going to be so much
lower than you ought to be. And then you would
rel it back in. And so this process happened, and
(14:50):
then you came in and during these visits you said
to me, Hey, you know, I just I'm starting to
look older, right, And we took a look at your
face because you know, for people generally, the normal transition
is mid thirties, their body matters, forty mid forties, your
face is starting to matter, and then mid fifties, your
(15:13):
whole face matters. And so you were in that phase
where you were like, oh, you know, I don't know
what's going on. We're doing the botox, but it's not
helping your thin skinned, light eyed, freckly, dry skinned. So
those types of patients tend to have more wrinkles, more
loss of volume, and then the weight gain that had added.
So we looked together and we noticed that your upper
(15:35):
brow and upper eyelid, which I've done many episodes on,
has started to descend, which happens in everybody justin Susie
it's a little more. In Gale it's a little less,
and Tom it's a little You know what I mean?
And what are my options? Doctor Raban? And I said
to you at the time, what did we discuss at
that time?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Originally you were just talking about the upper lids, and
then as we got closer to the surgery and you
were really looking in my face, you felt like I
wouldn't really get the result that I wanted, which was
that almost ten years before when I had first dabbled
in botox, when I would get that lift, I wasn't
getting that anymore. And so you suggested just doing the
(16:18):
whole upper brow. And again I was nervous about it,
but I trust you so much, and I just didn't
feel like myself. I felt like when I looked in
the mirror, what was representative was that I looked tired
or not happy, and that wasn't how I felt. And
I didn't want to change myself. I just wanted to
(16:41):
look how I felt totally.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
And it's interesting because brows are where we express right,
so it's natural that if your brows change you look
at yourself, you're like, I look angry, I look sad,
I look tired. Brows do that because when I want
to be surprised, I go, what right, and my brow
Unless you're someone's plaster with botox, then they don't raise anything.
(17:03):
But so it's very common. I'd say ninety percent of
the times, eighty percent of times I do upper eyelids
with brows because as your brow on the outside, not
in the middle in most patients on the outside starts
to sack, it makes your eyelids look heavier, et cetera.
So our one, two, our third surgery together was a
(17:23):
limited meaning just the outer brow and upper eelid surgery, right,
And that's super common in patients who are in their
forties of some age, right, I even have done it
in late thirties. But it's usually somewhere when you used
as a four in front of your age, at some
juncture in the four range, you're gonna notice your brow
and upper eyelids are starting to change. So we do
(17:44):
that and you go look in the mirror and you're like,
loved it.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Wow, fresh, so really easy recovery. Right, I was out
and about in less than two weeks. You would never
know I'd had anything done. And the most common thing
that people.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Said to me is like, wow, you look great.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Did you just go on vacation. I got that comment
NonStop after i'd done it.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
So the assumption is you had a browlift, and if
you're on social media even whatsoever, you say browlift, immediately
you think super high arch, cat brows, weird, slanted, and
that esthetic has really, in my opinion, been disadvantageous for
plastic surgery. Why because for the people who like that
(18:28):
weird ponytail high arch look, which is great if you
like it, awesome, But for the patients who just want
to look normal to them and just the same person,
just cleaner, then automatically assumption is, well, shit, I can't
do anything because if I do it, I'm gonna look weird.
Better just leave it alone. Yes, that's not true. That's
(18:49):
not true at all. You can absolutely do your eyebrow
and your eyelator or whatever and look totally normal. It's
just a matter of how much salt you add to
the recipe.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Well, I mean, I think that thing is normal is you,
and you're going to look like you just a little refreshed, sure,
and that's a great thing to give yourself.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
One hundred percent agree. So time keeps ticking tick tic
tic tick tick tick tick, and we go and then
we get to when was it that we got together
the last time? So that surgery one was your stomach,
Surgery two was your breast lifting implant, Surgery three was
your upper eyelid and your brow, and then surgery four
(19:30):
in the final surgery was what three years ago, two
twenty twenty two, and at that point you were forty nine.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
I think I just turned fifty. That was my fiftieth
birthday present.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
So you came in and you said, I'm there, I'm
at my welterweight again. I feel good, I'm lean, I'm thin,
but I look tired and old. And your man was
your neck.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I was really seeing it in my neck.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I was I just looked old and I was seeing
my grandmother and my mother, and that's not how I felt.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
I felt like I was on top of the world and.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
I was fit, and I was doing all the things
I wanted to do, and I just looked here and
then around my mouth. I just felt like I looked
angry all the time because I was starting to droop,
and that wasn't how I felt.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
So we sat down again. Notice every single time you
present with something that I'm not sure I really liked this.
We sit down. I've known you for now fifteen years.
We never just we always sit down and we formally
talk about it. There's no often what happens is actually
knowing a plastic surgeon well is the worst thing that
can happen to you, because you bypass all the formality,
(20:49):
and you should never bypass the formality. When I saw
my mother in law for a facelift, I made her
come to the office. She lives with us, and I
had her sit in a chair and I had Laura translate.
I gave her a full consolet she needs to know
where the nerves are. She needs to know blah blah blah,
because it's every one of these is a real surgery.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
And I was coming to you throughout that time for
a botox and killer, so you know, we'd I'm almost
getting there.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
I started to really bother me.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
We'd had those conversations, but we did sit down and
really have the conversation. When I was like, I don't
think I can stay on this anymore.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Great, So this is probably the hottest topic in plastic
surgery right now, which is I'm fifty not sixty or seventy,
and my neck and jaw looks not so good. Ten
years ago, fifteen years ago, you'd be told you look
pretty good for fifty. Just hold on, hold tight, hold
tight for what? Hold tight for sixty? What do you mean?
(21:46):
Hold tight for another decade to what? You'll get a
facelift at sixty. So you want me to wait another
goddamn ten years, unhappy, knowing I'm going to keep looking
worse till I'm sixty because what happens at sixty? Well,
it's appropriate then, but now, and I says, one of
the few areas where social media has been advantageous. Now
we're like, fifty fifty is your golden era. Fifty, you
(22:09):
don't like your neck, you don't like your face, let's
do a facelift. Where's Ten years ago? If I would
have said that word followed by the age fifty, everyone like,
oh my god, this person's crazy fifty, she's only fifty.
But now it's not that way at all.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Well, and I also think you were very honest, like
you're not going to get what you want anymore out
of fillers, like and there are people who do look
weird and you look at.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Them, and they've been overfilled very good. That I didn't
want that. I wanted to look like me, just a
little tweak.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
So you came in. I remember specific like, I'm like,
what's bothering? You're like, listen, I'm working out, I'm doing
the botox, I'm doing the filler. Can can we do
something about my chin, jaw, neck area? And I said
to you, which I tell every single patient, I said,
you've there's no filler that's going to fix this. You
brought up a great point which I'm going to highlight,
which is, unfortunately, if your hammer, the world is a nail,
(23:06):
which means that when you go to spas and dermatologists
and whatnot, and their tool is filler, and then you
come in with a problem that can't shouldn't be fixed
with filler, they're going to use filler to fix it.
And so you're seeing a lot of people walking around
with really wide jaws, their jowls, and their marionettes are
being overfilled to compensate for skin settling in sag and
(23:30):
none of them look good. And you see it everywhere
on celebrities, and the reality is that once you go
from a nail to a screw, you got to change tools.
You can't. You can't use a hammer anymore. Let me
go get the screwdriver. But if you don't have a screwdriver,
you're going to shove it in with the hammer. So
you came in, you said, my neck and things, and
you were under the impression that I would just get
(23:52):
this little mini neck lift. I'm fifty, let's just do
a little neck lift and call it a day. And
what was our dialogue you came in when it How
did we go from I hate my little my neck
and we need a necklift to what we ended up doing.
What was a dialogue?
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Well, the first thing was that you said, in order
to get what you want, you are going to need
a chin implant. And that really freaked me out because
I just felt like that was going to change my face,
and I liked my face and I didn't want to change.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
I just wanted, you know, what I wanted.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
So that took me a good six to eight months
to really like I was coming in for my maintenance things,
but I I just wasn't ready to move there. And
you said, well, then I'm not going to do the
surgery because I know what is going to be best
for you. And you can go somewhere else and they'll
do what you want. But and I didn't want to
(24:45):
go to anybody else, but I wasn't quite there yet.
And then I wrapped my head around it, and I
trust you and I know you wouldn't do something to
me that would be bad, and so I just said, okay,
I'm ready, and then we talked to about the chin
and what we needed to do. You said, because you
(25:06):
couldn't just do the chin, that you would have to
also do a little bit pull up here at lower facelift,
which again was a lot for me to take in
because I thought I was just that was all I needed.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
And we talked about how it would go and why.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
You said that to get a little bit more fullness,
I would have to add some that in here, and
I totally understood that, and that made sense to me,
and then we scheduled it.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
So what you talked about was a beautiful evolution. You're
not expected to know these things. You're expected to find
a person who you trust to teach you these things,
not be told these things. So when I go to
a lawyer, when I go to an accountant, when I
go to a dentist, I go there a trusting them
and be expecting them to deliver information to me in
(25:58):
a way in which I can understand and then allows
me to make an informed decision. That's medicine, that's professionalism.
My real estate agent, same thing. Everybody you go to
should do that. So you come in and you say,
Arthur Rabon, I don't like my neck and I don't
like this jolly thing that's going on. And the answer
is at fifty with the amount of weight loss that
you had, here are the things that you need to do.
(26:18):
Now what I want to do that you need to
do in order to look what I know you want
to look, which is just fresh and good because you
had a weaker chin, because you had a weaker chin
when you and here's the basic principle. When you do
a necklift or a facelift, you're pulling ultimately everything up
at a diagonal, up towards let's say you're inner ear.
(26:38):
When you do that, you're pulling against a point. That
point is the chin. When the chin is weak, the
area under your neck, which is the holy grail, the
holy grail of Angelae and Jolie Margo Roberts, every single
Brad Pitt every single attractive person in the world has
(27:01):
a badass jaw. It can have fifty acne scars, doesn't matter.
An amazing jaw, And it's because there's more space under
the neck. And when you start out with a weak
chin and we're pulling against it, you're going to be
incredibly underwhelmed because while you're tight, you're tight with a
weakened chin. So in a facelift, when you're dealing with
(27:23):
someone with a weaker chin, if you don't correct it,
you're almost guaranteed that at the end they'll come back
and be like, hey, you didn't pull tight enough, it
doesn't look sharp, et cetera. So that was why that
one was there.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
And obviously I didn't have an aversion to surgeries. It
was more the headspace of I just still want to
eat one.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Hundred and you say chin implant, you think immediately j
leno chin and plant jay Leno your chin implant like
freak chin, I plant huge. I just want you to
understand chin implants. By the way, we have many different
shapes so and many different sizes. There is a small
which is so small that you'd be like, wait, I
(28:04):
totally wasted my money. So if we have that notch
on our dial. It means that a surgeon can truly
customize it. It isn't like chin plant, we open it.
It's just just dark, jargantuan thing. We just shove it
in there. The second thing is that you thought that
it would just be your neck. But if you look
at a neck, where did the neck skin come from?
It came from the mid the lower face. The lower
face SAgs into the neck, so a nine out of
(28:27):
ten neck issues have to be addressed into the lower face.
So you have to take that skin not behind the ear,
but up and towards the front of the ear. Hence
why a neck issue becomes a faced issue. It's a misnomer.
And then what happens then is if you're hollow, which
you were at that point, and you pull, you're just
(28:49):
tight hollow, you're not youthful looking, and then you need
to replenish the airs that are a little hollow.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
And no one is getting filler here, so I mean right.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
That, but it's the cheapest, most glorious filler in the world.
It's your own body. And the last thing actually interesting
that we added, which was sort of the last second thing.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Well, so we had a conversation.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Once I wrapped my head around that, and I said, okay,
I don't want to do anything else for ten years,
like this is it?
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Look at my face? What else would you do?
Speaker 2 (29:22):
And at that point you said, I wouldn't put you
under for this, but since you're already going to be under,
let me do a little bit more on your upper list.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
What about your lower eyelid?
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Well, at that point you didn't think I needed it,
got it, And so I said, okay, I'm going under.
I trust you, like, let's do it. I do not
want to have anything else done for ten years. So
that was the plan and we were I was wrapping
my head around it. We had that was like a
three month before the surgery. So two weeks before the surgery,
I had my final prey off right and it had
(29:54):
been right after my birthday and I boozed it up
and I had had a night and I I came
in and I was really puffy under my eyes and
you were like, what is that.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
I've never seen that on you. That is crazy. And
I said, oh, that happens, you know, only when I drink.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
And you were like, if that happens when you drink
or eat something salty that's only going to get worse,
and I'm doing everything else.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
We should add that on.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
And again I was ambivalent, but I was like, Okay,
I trust you and I'm doing everything else and I
don't want to do you know, I don't want to
regret it.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
And honestly that was the best. Like that I think
makes the most difference.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
So this discussion, and one of the reasons why I'm
happy that you're on, shows the normal process that should
be taken between a patient and a surgeon. Despite our
longevity of relationship. You'd think you'd come in I'd be like,
lexis you need ABCD, You'd had surgery with me before,
We're like, sure, let's sign up. That's farthest from how
(31:01):
this went. This went me telling you what I will
or won't do. You sitting there going I don't know,
you sitting with it, thinking about it, looking at it,
taking your time coming back adding subtracting, did this is
your face? And every one of our surgeries has gone
that way, and what it shows you is a very
healthy relationship. So when you hear eight procedures, the eight
procedures are now Tommy tuck, breast lift, and implant and
(31:26):
then facial rejuvenation. If you want the damn thing to
look wow, you look great. You can't leave one area
of the face untouched. It just doesn't look normal. It's
like going into a house remodeling the whole house, the kitchen,
the living room, yet the powder room you just don't touch.
It's a nineteen eighties powder room and a twenty twenty
(31:46):
four house. Like you walk into powder and you're like,
whoa did you guys run out of money? What is this?
So we're lifting your neck. We have to add a
little strength to your chin. We're going to add a
little volume to your mid face where it's hollow, and
when you recruit the skin upwards, it creates folding and
actually makes your lower eelid issue worse because now you're
(32:10):
recruiting a little bit of snugness underneath the eyelids. So
our fourth and final surgery was a facelift. You can
call them mini lift, you can call it a lunchtime lift,
you can call it a Rabond Lasky lift, and call
what the hell you want. It's a deep plane face lift,
skin and muscle, a chin implant, and a lower bleft
(32:30):
with some fat added. So that was the completion to
the top half, which we had already done, and we
took a little more skin out of your lower eyelids
because your skin is thin and it tends to settle.
So in totality, during the time that we've known each other,
you've had four surges and eight procedures. When I think
about our journey together, I see it as two parts.
One is the doing of the surgeries, and the other
is the psychology of doing other surgeries. Because passic surgery,
(32:54):
unlike a gallbladder or hysterectemy or breast well, breast cancer
has so much of an identity defines you. Your gallbladder
doesn't define you. So I want to talk about the
second half of this because people approach plastic surgery in
two ways. I have patients, i'd say half of them
that are like super hush hush, I don't want anyone
to know. You can't use my photos, don't tell my friends,
(33:16):
don't tell my husband, and it's like okay. And they
approach it as if they've done something egregious or shameful,
like they rob the bank or I don't know, they
have to do prostitution or something in order to make
ends meet. Where's the other half and the half like you?
And the way I would do it is more embracing,
more proud, more like, wow, I won this Olympic gold medal,
(33:39):
like look at this, Look at what I was able
to afford or to earn or to give myself. And
I'm proud of it. I'm not shame of it, and
I'm not throwing in your face. But if someone asked
me like, oh my god, alexis you looks better yet, like, oh,
doctor Ron, you look so good. Oh my god, you
have no wrinkles. Oh that's because of botox. I have
(34:00):
hit turn of wrinkles, Like I'm that guy. And it
always it kind of irks me when patients are so secretive.
And I'll tell you why, because I feel I take
it almost personally, because I've built you this incredible statue
that you love, but then you're going to hide it
in a closet.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Well, I feel like it's an unfair expectation that you're
putting out into the world, and especially with social media
and young girls are just people all over. You look
at a picture of somebody and you're like, wow, they
look amazing, and it's like yeah, because they've done stuff
and that's okay, but be honest about it, because I
(34:43):
feel like it makes people feel bad about themselves as
if they don't look like that, and it's like why
I've done a few things.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
So totally agree. So we're going to talk about the
psychology of it, because I think you're an amazing walking
billboard for the benefits of plastics, not because you look good,
but because psychologically you feel good. Because remember, looking good
is kind of irrelevant. If you look stunning and you
are miserable, then you lost the game. Because the only
(35:13):
reason to do plastic surgery is because then you look good,
you feel good, you are happy, and you approach the
people you love with joy. You're not your sex, you
feel sexy, you want to take your clothes off, you
put on makeup, you go to work in your boss
lady like. It has to impact the quality of your
life otherwise it's just evacuum.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
I mean, look, I'm married to an amazing man.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
I gained a lot of weight. I lost a lot
of weight. Never he could have cared less. It was
nothing to do with him. I needed to do this
because I didn't feel good about myself in a way
that I couldn't fix.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
And look, it's a balance. I have a daughter.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
I don't want to seem like I'm totally focused on aesthetics,
but it was more about me feeling good in a
way that I couldn't achieve myself.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
And I think the reality is and this is where
the judgment comes in. So I think there's three categories
of people. When you say plastic surgery's just, and I
keep saying it because I think that's really the trigger here.
If I said somebody had their eyelids done, I don't
think many people would say anything and don't give a shit.
But if I say somebody who, by the time of
fifty has had eight procedures and four surgeries without knowing
(36:27):
anything about the person, without meeting them, without knowing them,
without seeing them, there's judgment being passed. So there's three
categories of way people judge. One group was like Mike,
my wife or whatever, like hell, yeah, good for her,
Like if she wants to and she can and she's
you know, and again nobody knows what you look like,
yet they're like good for her. There's a neutral group,
(36:47):
they're indifferent, and then there's the naysayers and the negative
she doesn't love herself. There must be something deeper going on.
She must look like a freak. I can't imagine. God,
how unhappy she isn't all that clearly, no one has
a clue because no one knows that person is individualized.
But you are a testament to You look super normal.
(37:08):
And that's not because I did the work, but like
if you walked into a supermarket, nobody we just posted
a picture of this lady who had had six facelifts.
I mean, she looks ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Well, the number one conversation I have with my girlfriends
is why I don't want to look weird. And it's like, well,
I don't think I look weird. Do you think I
look No, you look amazing. And it's like, okay, well,
then you know somebody who you see, who you can
tell has had plastic surgery, didn't have good plastic surgery
one hundred percent. If you can't tell somebody had great
(37:40):
plastic surgery, and if they look good, they probably had
plastic surgery.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
And they're fifty.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
And there's a saying to that. So you walk into
a party and you and your husband are walking around
and you look at it. There's one hundred people there
and then you leave going did you see those five
people's facelifts? They look awful, and in your mind you do.
It's called selection bias. This is something that's known in statistics.
Selection bias means you're biased to what you can select.
(38:07):
You go home, you tell your husband, God, I I'm
never going to get a facelift. Did you see those
five women? They look ridiculous? And then you say, five
out of five people who got face lifts look bizarre.
But the reality there was forty five people had face lifts.
Forty of them you didn't even know, and so you
(38:30):
should be doing five out of forty five look weird,
not five out of five. And it's exactly to your
point that if something's done subtly, so the recipe calls
for salt, there's a pinch and there's a spoonful, So
it's plastic surgery comes down to the degree of pulling,
the degree of augmenting, the degree of adding fat. It's all.
(38:53):
Every single tool is ideal, but it's just how much
of it.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
Look and leading up to it. We have lots of conversations.
You took a lot of time with me.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
I expressed my concerns about things I'd seen and why
I was nervous, and you talked me through why that
wouldn't happen with me because of the techniques that you
were using and really assured me. I never felt pressured.
I never felt like I had to do everything you
were recommending. It was just this is the way I
(39:22):
do things, and if you want me.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
To do it well. Because you come to me and
you say, hey, I want you to get me off
the hook. For not off the hook. You come to
your lawyer and you say, listen, I'm being sued for X,
Y and Z. You can't then go in there and
tell the lawyer how to defend you. You hired the guy,
and he or she has to use the knowledge and
skills that made them successful, that made you select them
(39:46):
to do the thing. And plastic surgery, it is collaborative.
It is what you want and what I want. But
I certainly am not going to do something that I
know is going to end poorly or not the way
you want because you're not able to see it. I'll
just opt out, but I have the obligation to have
to show you why you won't look that way. It
(40:07):
won't be it's not gonna be one of these, oh,
because I'm the master. And if you don't want a chance,
get the f out of my office. It's like, listen,
I can't do it because you'll be unhappy. And let
me show you thirty such examples and show you a
small and a medium and explain you why there is subtleties.
We should be able to make you bridge that gap
for you. And if you're educated as you are and
(40:28):
open minded, you should be teachable and you should learn
and say oh, okay, that makes sense. And then when
you go and interact with your friends, are you know,
you're the type of person that's like very proud in general.
You're not a sheepish type of individual. So if people
are like, oh my god, your neck looks so good,
I'm assuming you're like, oh, yeah, I had a face slift.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
I have my Like I mean, i'm too people, I
don't know that well.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Like when people hear my age and I mean they
see me, they're like, really, you're fifty two, and I say.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Yeah, I've had work done, like of course, I you know,
like I don't. I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
And that's what the if you ask me. The whole
crux of this entire podcast episode is the notion of
being proud of and embracing and enjoying and almost I
don't want to say broadcasting because it's not that, but
you know, you should be able to say, Like, again,
(41:30):
if your son won a gold medal and Peo were like,
oh my god, he's so great, He's like, oh yeah,
my son's a gold medalist, It's like I would brag.
I'd be like, hell yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
But when I say it, people are always like, wow,
I would never know, and I said yeah, because I
went to somebody really good.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
And there's a lot of Listen, ten percent of the
surgeons in this country are excellent. Ninety percent are okay
or average or whatnot. But there is a boatload of
skilled people that can deliver subtle and elegant results in
eyelids and noses, in breasts and stomach. So it's not
like I'm the only guy that does it. There are
(42:07):
people you can identify, you have to do more than
your routine homework. You can't go to them based on Instagram.
But the reality is this fear that if I do
a lot, I'll look weird is absolutely not true. This
notion that I can't tell anyone because I'm embarrassed, I
think is silly, and I think the truth of the
matter is that if as you as you get older,
(42:28):
you identify issues within your body, you're healthy, you have
a good relationship with your life partner, you're eating well,
everything is good. You're just like God, I can't get
rid of this goddamn blue skin on my stomach, or
holy shit, my breathing is terrible, or my god, my
lips have disappeared. Fix it. Just go fix it and
then check move on. It's not gonna make you happy,
(42:50):
but if you're unhappy, but it sure as hell gonna
make you enjoy your quality of life much more.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
I mean, after every single thing that I've done, I
felt amazing. I just felt I felt depressed going into
my first surgery because I just couldn't believe that I
couldn't you know, I'd always been a physical person where
I worked out and was in good shape, and I
(43:19):
just couldn't believe I couldn't get there. And it was
really bumming me out. At were thirty seven years old.
It was like, is this the best it's going to be?
And I mean, you changed my life, Like, I felt
so much better about myself. Yeah, in a way that
I didn't even think was possible anymore.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
And the beauty of that is that then trickles into
your interpersonal relationships. You know how many people I've taken
care of through the years, and then you talk to
them and you're like, how are things with your husband amazing? Really? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (43:49):
I was.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
He's a great guy, but I was. I felt embarrassed.
I never wanted you know, I'd always run out after
the shower and I'd make sure the lights were off,
and there's all these shenanigans that they would do. I
would never take photos because I hated my neck or
all those things. And every person I've operated on, every
person twenty years, has a story about what they were
doing to circumvent the thing they dislike. In other words,
(44:12):
it was on their minds so much that they had
created I jut my jaw out, I wear my hair down.
There's a mechanism in place to circumvent the thing. And
when they have the surgery and it's done well, the
liberation of that whatever was that obstacle is so profound.
To wear your hair and a high ponytail as a
(44:34):
young girl because your ears were prominent. It's so liberating
and so small that it's unbelievable. And hence the reason
why I love plastic surgery, because nothing anyone can do
can liberate you of such a massive burden.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Well, and I think as moms, you know, although it's
for everyone, every woman, you know, there's a hesitancy like, oh,
I need to do this for like it's so much
money to sure put you know, and it was, you know,
it wasn't insignificant, and I'm incredibly fortunate, but it was
still a big chunk. But I think it's really like
(45:12):
there's this saying I'm blanking on his name, but the guy,
the Oracle of Omaha always says you should treat your
body like if you bought any car you wanted and
you had that same car for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
And that's kind of how I think about it.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
It's like, this is my body for the rest of
my life, Like I should treat myself as well as
I can within my parameter.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
One hundred percent. And the last thing I'll I'll leave
it with is this idea that being a mom and
you know, if a plane is if you're in an
airplane and you're about to take off, they do their
introductory video. The first thing they tell you is, if
this plane, god forbid, were to crash and we're going down,
an oxygen mask we're to deploy. Put the oxygen mask
(45:58):
on yourself first, not your life one. You don't put
the oxygen masks on your son or your daughter. You
put it on your face first. Because once you're down,
the rest is over. And so when you are a mom,
particularly more so than fathers, you are the helm of
this entire universe, the ethos of your family. And when
you are down and depressed and don't love yourself and whatever,
(46:20):
as much as you think you're being selfless, that energy,
that depression, that whatnot, it permeates throughout the relationship of
your kids and everything. So you taking care of yourself
is actually selfless. And that's where the whole idea of
put the oxygen on, because when you're breathing, you can
now take care of everybody else. So thank you so
much for coming on our episode. I think everybody who
(46:42):
listens is always so grateful that someone would go put
themselves out there, get on the rate on a podcast
or a video and share their most intimate stories. But
for those people who are struggling and their mile two
of this marathon and you just crossed the finish line,
it's very rewarding and very encouraging to be able to
(47:03):
look on the JumboTron and be like, I can see
the finish line. I can make it the rest of
this race. So we're grateful that you came on the show,
and we look forward to your next surgery.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Well, and I mean thank you. You've been welcome, you
have changed my life, and you've been a really good friend.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
You're very welcome. It's been a true pleasure. All Right, guys,
that wraps up yet another fabulous episode of plastic Surgery Uncensored.
As always, I'm going to ask you two things. I
do it every end of every show. Number One, if
you love our show, go write something nice. I mean,
in the world of negativity, if you have nothing nice
to say, well don't write anything. But if you have
something nice to say, go write nice things. There's tons
(47:43):
of people here that are helping put this production together
and it makes everyone feel good. And the second is,
you have no idea who you love or know is
about to have plastic surgery. So send them our link
so they can become educated, because if you find out
after the fact, it's too late for them to get
the information that you think they need to know. So
disseminated to everyone you know and love, and we'll see
(48:05):
you next week. And yet another episode of plastic surgery
Uncensored
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.