Sizing us up

It was supposed to be a little joke but oh boy! these French. It took her a few moments to catch on. Then she forced a little laugh. Her job, it seemed, was to size up how nervous we were and to calm us down so we’d feel better and sleep better. So far, so good. But it did not appear that her job was to explain WHAT would happen the next day.

Later Nando remarked that Helene was "very well trained". She was kindly (in a French way), reassuring (idem), alert to OUR respective states of anxiety; in short, on a reconnaissance mission the night before the assault.

I asked her if she was Annick, the woman to whom I had spoken several times by phone, also brisk, confident, reassuring. No. She seemed surprised.

Medi-sins

Nando came back from France with the medications that both of us are supposed to take. He has one to take, I have three. Since the information is in French medicalese, I haven’t a clue what they actually DO, but they all appear to be for allergies, strangely enough. One of them is supposed to be taken for five days before the intervention. But Nando got back three days before, so I will be missing two days prior to the operation. Is this a bad start or what? All the medication is not to be taken with alcohol. No problem. I have lived in France and Italy for 15 years and still, if I drink a glass of wine a WEEK, that’s a lot. I do like to accompany great food with good wine, but if I had to choose between wine and mineral water at the table, I invariably opt for the latter.

Euphemistically nuts

Angela asked me today by email, "When do you go to the beauty clinic in France? Are you nervous about that?"

I replied, "It's a euphemism to call it a beauty clinic. It's a scalpel slash skin shop. The surgery is Dec. 4. Nando has suggested that we rest and sightsee around Provence until my checkup on Dec. 13, because, according to the doctor, "you probably don't want any business appointments before then".

She is the only one who knows so far. It's not that I am embarrassed; it’s that I don't want to worry my dad. I haven't told my sons because when I broached the subject in an abstract way a month ago:
- From Boston, Max's reaction was "You're nuts. You're not going to do THAT."
- From Los Angeles, Sacha's reaction was "You're nuts. If you do that, you have to do it in California."

Tilting tubes

I didn’t need to be prompted to ask questions of the second nurse. I needed to know when to pick up the test results, where to pick them up, how much they would cost, all that stuff. She didn’t have many of the answers, but telling me what she did know took all the time required for the blood sampling. "Is that it?" I was surprised. One tube only? When they had drawn blood for benchmark testing in France, I had lain there for four tubes’ worth and thought I would pass out by the fourth in spite of my horizontal position.

"Different countries do it different ways," explained the nurse. She was relieved that I hadn’t created any untoward problems. "We do all the tests with this one tube."

"Fine," I thought. Better for me. Hope the accuracy isn’t adversely affected. Driving back home, still feeling a bit queasy, I wondered how I would ever get the nerve to do a full-scale facelift if just one tube’s worth of blood threw me into absolute tilt.

Circles in Houston

"You look wonderful!" Jane announced when we met in the restaurant. I would have said the same thing of her. She is short and peppy, with one of those faces that could pass for late 30s to mid-50s (she is actually the latter). We hadn't seen each other since 1997, when we were both living in the south of France. I KNEW I'd aged since then, but it didn't look like she had. What was her secret? I wanted to know.

She shrugged. No secret formula. No special cream. And no sense of having beaten the clock. "A number of women in my circle in Houston have gotten facelifts," she said.  "That's the only real way to do it, if you are willing to take the risk."

My husband's advice

I had begun thinking about all this a few weeks before Mom died when Nando, my Italian husband (his full name is Fernando; "Nando" is his nickname), came back from a trip to the South of France in April, 2001. He had visited friends in Monte Carlo and couldn’t stop raving about a woman we both know, a woman a couple of years younger than I. He hadn’t seen her for about a year and was amazed by how rested and glowing she looked. Joan had confessed to him that she had recently gotten a facelift and she recommended it highly.

Nando was impressed by her honesty but didn’t want to press her for details at the time. It was more of a woman’s thing, he felt. He urged me to call Joan and find out more -- who, where, how much, how soon. "You should do it yesterday," he concluded.

So I decided to record my experience

When I was thinking about getting a facelift, I looked for books that would explain the experience so I would be prepared for what lay ahead. The books all seemed to fall into one of two categories: technical texts written by plastic surgeons, or breathless burbles about the wonders of a new face by famous, or almost famous (and in any case publicly-prominent) celebrities. Since I didn’t want the former and didn’t fit the latter, I decided to keep my own records of my adventure, thinking that other women might be as curious as I about what a facelift is REALLY like.

These entries won't take you through the process scalpel stroke by scalpel stroke. Nor will they supply a list of the best doctors in France and Italy whom you might want to consult. But it does help you understand what the effects of a facelift might be, and it suggests how you can identify the surgeon most appropriate for you. Plus, hopefully, it’s fun to read.