Cosmetic Surgery Blog

As a kid, I spent my summers on the beach at the Jersey Shore. We would go down the shore (no one from New Jersey says they are going to the beach, we all say we’re going down the shore) full time the day after school ended and go back home the day before school started, and I spent a large part of almost every day on the beach.

This was back before sunscreen was invented. This was the age of the ads with the little Coppertone girl and her dog pulling her panties down in back to show her tan line. This was when the conventional wisdom was to purposely get a sunburn early in the season so that you spent the rest of the summer tanning.

After this misspent youth, the only reason I do not resemble an old baseball glove now is genetics. I have olive skin and got lucky in the gene sweepstakes in that I don’t have too many wrinkles. Then again, I also have spent the last few years either staying out of the sun or using large amounts of sunscreen with big SPF factors.

But there are still a lot of people out there who think that tanning is a good idea. Get this through your heads, folks: Tanned skin is damaged skin. The leading cause of old-looking skin is sun exposure. Sun exposure leads to wrinkles, pigmentation problems, dryness, and loss of elasticity. What is pretty about that? Yet people still go to tanning salons to get a “healthier” look.

The first thing any good plastic surgeon or dermatologist will tell you after you have had any cosmetic procedure is to stay out of the sun so that you don’t undo all that costly work. (The second thing they might tell you is that if you had stayed out of the sun or used sunscreen regularly you might not have needed that costly work in the first place.)

And wrinkles and old-looking skin (and cataracts and a depressed immune system, while I am on the subject) aren’t the worst of part of excessive sun exposure. Wrinkles may not be on anyone’s wish list, but no one ever died of them. Excessive sun exposure causes skin cancer, and skin cancer kills.

May is Melanoma/Skin Cancer Detection and Prevention Month. It is a good time to examine your skin and check for moles, spots, and odd patches. This is like doing a regular breast self-examination and is just as important. The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) gives excellent instructions on how to perform a skin self-examination at http://www.aad.org/public/exams/self.html. Do this regularly and get to know the spots on your body (everyone has a few and most are harmless).

So what should you look for? Check for changes in spots or new ones. Check every spot and freckle on your body and think “ABCD”.

A - Is the spot asymmetrical? Is it round, or is one half unlike the other half?
B- Check the border of the spot. Is the border irregular or scalloped?
C – Look at the color. Look for spots that are not all one color and have different shades of brown, tan, white, or red in them.
D – Diameter is important, too. Look for any spots that are wider than a pencil eraser.

If you have any moles, freckles, birthmarks, or other spots that are suspicious, see your regular doctor or a dermatologist.

The AAD also sponsors free skin cancer screening around the country during the month of May. Go to http://www.aad.org/public/exams/screenings/index.html to find one near you.

And remember to wear a hat and put on sunscreen if you are going to be out of doors. OK?

This just in: If you love to use lip gloss, it might not be a good idea when you are out in the sun. Clear lip glosses that do not contain any sunscreen may be acting like a magnifying glass on your lips, magnifying the sun’s rays and allowing more of them to penetrate into the skin. This can lead to a type of skin cancer called squamous cell cancer, which is usually not too aggressive but can be when it happens on the lips. Less seriously, too much sun on your lips causes actinic keratoses, which are ugly freckles and scaly spots. Not what you call kissable.

So either switch over to lip glosses that have at least a 15 SPF or put on a lip balm with an SPF of 30 under your lip gloss. Or switch to plain old-fashioned opaque lipstick. Revlon’s Fire and Ice, anyone?  

Stephanie Kuleba was 18, a senior at West Boca High School in Boca Raton, FL, was already accepted to college, and was already thinking ahead to attending medical school and being a doctor. “Was” is a sad word here. Stephanie died after having breast augmentation surgery in the office of a Boca Raton plastic surgeon.

A lot is being made of the fact that Stephanie was having breast surgery. A lot is being made of the fact that she was a blonde young woman, in a well-to-do town, who was already beautiful, and was the head cheerleader at her high school.

Those facts are neither here nor there. Stephanie died because of an inherited condition called malignant hyperthermia (MH) that made using gas anesthesia very dangerous for her. She had never had any anesthesia in the past and there was absolutely no way for her, her parents, or her plastic surgeon to predict that having gas anesthesia was dangerous for her.

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Mae West once said, “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.” For many things, this is not true. For example, it is not true for breasts.

Although many women long to have larger breasts and undergo breast augmentation to get them, there are also many women who got a bit too much in that department. For them, too much of a good thing is a problem.

Overly large breasts can lead to unwanted attention, which can be embarrassing or worse for a girl in her teens whose breasts get too big. Other young people may make fun of her, boys crack bad jokes about her, and she may get even worse attention from strangers. She may avoid wearing anything that is not baggy and start to hunch over to hide her bosom. Take part in sports and have her breasts bounce about? Forget that. Her self-esteem can plummet severely.

I speak as one who understands that embarrassment. I developed very early and was the first girl in my class to get a training bra: First by a whole year! I still remember some of the dumb jokes I got. I hunched over a lot. Although I’m not so large that I need reduction, I can certainly relate. (I am also not out of proportion. I carry some extra weight around both top and bottom, so imagine an hourglass, ummmm, one with a lot of sand.)

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We asked you what your biggest was when you consider having plastic surgery. We gave you the choices of pain, possible complications, costs, down time, “all of the above,” and the ever popular “other.”

Far and away, your top two considerations are possible complications (with 40%) and “all of the above” (with 31%). A whopping 71% of the people who responded to the poll picked those.

Anyone who goes into any cosmetic surgery and does not consider the risk of complications is foolish. It is a stereotype to think of the people who get cosmetic surgery as vain and empty-headed. None of us are that. However, based on recent statistics, plastic surgery seems to be a rather safe venture.

But does this mean we are scared of complications? No. It means that we realize that cosmetic surgery is surgery and that we are intelligent enough to understand that things can go wrong. We understand that having a nose job or breast implants, like all surgery, carries risks and that we are giving those risks the consideration they require. Even minimally invasive procedures like Botox injections have some risk.

Even the people who did not pick complications or “all of the above” made very practical choices. A combined 19% picked costs and down time as concerns when they consider plastic surgery. Only someone with money to burn doesn’t worry about costs in this day and age. And no one with half a brain would not think about being out of commission from work, family, and other constraints before committing to the 3 to 4 weeks you need to recover from an abdominoplasty (tummy tuck), to give one of the longer recovery times.

The other good news is that 217 people took part in the poll. We are glad to see you coming here and taking part! Please let us know if you have any good ideas for poll questions.

Next week I will be having surgery to repair a hernia. Due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, this is the third calendar year in a row that I will be having abdominal surgery. I had a total hysterectomy in 2006. A hernia developed along the internal incision from that surgery and I had it repaired laparoscopically October 2007. The hernia has recurred, so I get to have it repaired again. What joy. (As you read this, understand that each time you see the word “hernia,” I am actually thinking “@#$%&* hernia.”)

But by now, I am an old hand at getting ready for surgery. As hobbies go, getting ready for surgery sucks, but what can I say? Although this is a blog about cosmetic surgery, surgery is surgery, and I figured I would pass along a few tips on getting ready.

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