Nevada Woman (March/April 2006)

BETTER THAN BOTOX

Nearly 3 million women and men in the United Stated kissed their wrinkles goodbye in 2004 with a few BOTOX® Cosmetic injections between the brows; that’s 280 percent more people than in 2000. Clearly, Americans are more concerned than ever with looking their best. While BOTOX® Cosmetic is a great temporary fix for those forehead and brow lines, taking the plunge with a more long-lasting solution to wrinkles was surprisingly easy and a relatively pain free way to look great for one woman.

“I know it doesn’t sound true, but for me, a forehead/brow lift didn’t hurt as much as BOTOX®,” explains 49-year-old Lynn of Las Vegas. Though she’s a registered nurse for Dr. George Alexander, one of Las Vegas’ premier plastic surgeons, she isn’t making that statement as a member of Alexander’s staff: she makes it as his patient.

After five years of BOTOX® Cosmetic injections, Lynn had had enough. “I didn’t like doing BOTOX® all the time,” she says, explaining that when it comes to needles, “I’m a big wimp.” After seeing herself in photos taken after her BOTOX® Cosmetic had worn off, she realized that unless she opted for a forehead/brow lift, she’d be getting BOTOX® Cosmetic injections for years. “I couldn’t even see my upper eyelid area; it was actually pushing down on my eyelashes,” she says. “I had to lift that skin to put on eyeliner or makeup.”

A forehead/brow lift won’t stop the aging process, but the surgery does smooth the forehead, raise the upper brow and minimizes the frown lines that result from aging. “The procedure is most commonly performed on people in the 40 to 60 age range,” says Alexander, not that even people in their 30s with deep facial furrows and other signs of aging have opted for this procedure. When you go to a consultation, a surgeon uses certain parameters to determine if you are a good candidate. He’ll evaluate your face, skin and the underlying muscle and bone structure-then evaluate if you have realistic expectations.

“The worst thing about the procedure is that you have some really bad hair days,” Lynn says, laughing about the antibiotic ointment that got into her hair after surgery. But it was a small trade-off for great results, which she saw immediately. “Right away I could see that my brow was higher,” she says. “And I was back to work after a week.”

Months later, she’s still raving about the procedure. Patients notice the difference and those who don’t know that Lynn’s had the procedure, compliment her on her new haircut or think she looks rested from a vacation. Although she didn’t tell her family she’d had the procedure, they noticed a change. “I have a sister who is 13 years younger than I. People always thought I was her mom,” she says, “My sister-in-law said, ‘Wow, you two look like twins,’ when I saw them after the surgery.”

Those are the precise responses she wanted. “It was exactly what I had hoped for,” she says. “I would do this surgery 10 times over doing BOTOX® again.”

Read the full article in Nevada Woman (March/April 2006) here.