THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 28, 1994 TAG: 9408250015
SECTION: HAMPTON ROADS WOMAN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 201 lines
THE OPERATING ROOM is still, all attention focused on Elizabeth Woodcock's right eye. With painstaking precision, Dr. Martin Carney slowly withdraws his tiny tweezers from the dime-sized incision in her lower eyelid. Clutched in the pincers is the prize: a pea-sized dollop of yellow fat.
He places it carefully atop the blue sheet on Woodcock's chest, where it joins the others that have been removed from her left eye.
To Woodcock, a Newport News resident, each tiny drop of fat represents one more year being erased from her face. One less person who will be able to guess her true age - 52.
Call it vanity. Call it conceit. Call it cheating. Doesn't matter.
More women are turning to the knife, the laser and the skill of a cosmetic surgeon to give them the nose they've dreamed of, the thin thighs they crave or the smooth eyes time has wrinkled.
Surveys show that cosmetic surgery no longer carries the stigma of vanity and excess it once did, and a recent national poll revealed that 55 percent of Americans think plastic surgery is an acceptable way to maintain looks. A majority predicted it's likely to become as commonplace as dyeing your hair. And nearly a quarter of the 500 women polled by Redbook magazine said they'd have plastic surgery if they could afford it.
These days, more can afford it.
Unlike most medical costs, the price of cosmetic surgery has remained relatively stable in the past decade; reined in, medical economists say, by traditional market forces that often don't apply to other medical procedures.
Because cosmetic surgery is rarely covered by health insurance, it is one of the few procedures patients pay for themselves. Because consumers are aware of the cost of the procedure, they put pressure on the industry to control prices.
Additionally, the fact that most cosmetic surgery procedures are performed in the surgeon's office, usually with the assistance of a nurse anesthetist, instead of in a hospital, has also kept prices stable.
How stable?
When Woodcock had her upper and lower eyelids tucked and her forehead tightened, it cost about $4,600, less than $12 a day in a year's time.
This is not your mother's face lift (which cost about $4,100 for the surgeon's time).
``Stereotypically, historically, there was this image that cosmetic plastic surgery was for a limited slice of the population; that's not true anymore and hasn't been true for years,'' says Dr. Darrick Antell, a board-certified plastic surgeon in New York City.
``The average plastic surgery patient has an income of about $30,000 a year. We're seeing more and more people who just save up and decide this is something they want to do to improve the quality of their life.''
That's Woodcock. A government employee with a husband who works at the Newport News Naval Shipyard, she is not, by any stretch of the imagination, wealthy. To pay for this surgery, she saved a bit from each paycheck for a year.
``This is something I do for myself,'' she says. BEFORE THE SURGERY
On the morning before her surgery, dressed in a bright blue jumpsuit, her black curly hair pulled back in a bow, this grandmother of six looks years younger than her chronological age. Even her doctor was fooled.
``Forty-five?'' Woodcock laughs when a reporter tells her that's how old her doctor said she is. ``Isn't that sweet,'' she says in a thick Southern drawl.
Woodcock isn't ashamed of her age. She knows she looks terrific for any woman her age - or younger. She's slim with taut muscles from daily workouts and clear skin from a healthy diet.
``I don't smoke, drink or eat things that aren't good for me. I take care of myself.''
But . . .
``See these bags,'' she points one well-manicured finger at the slight puffiness under her wide, sable brown eyes. ``Three months ago these appeared and they never went away.''
Is it vanity that drives her to put herself under the knife?
``Vanity? Certainly it is. And we all need a healthy dose or we'll look terrible. A healthy dose of vanity is nothing to be ashamed of, heavens no.
``I've been vain all my life, from the age of 10. And all along I decided not to get old. If it's there and affordable, do it.''
Her husband supports her: He even took the day off from work to take her to the surgery, wait for her and bring her home.
``He's not surprised. He knows me.'' THE SURGERY
One morning in May, two nurses, a nurse anesthetist, a reporter and a photographer are jammed into a small operating room at The Carney Center. Plus the doctor, Newport News plastic surgeon Martin Carney.
Carney prides himself on using the latest procedures, the newest techniques. For this day's surgery , he uses two of them: an endoscope, a thin glass tube with a tiny camera at the end that allows him to see inside Woodcock's scalp, and a laser, which replaces a scalpel for cutting.
Woodcock looks clownish, with the purple magic marker lines Carney has drawn around her eyes and on her forehead. He uses those marks as a guide during the surgery.
She's relaxed, drifting between a state of sleep and awakeness, all carefully controlled by the drip of drugs into her arm through the IV.
Carney is careful to point out the subtlety of this surgery. ``There won't be such an obvious improvement,'' he says, his hands lifting the skin around her eyes.
To remove the faint frown lines on her forehead, he goes in under the scalp and weakens, by about 75 percent, the muscle that controls the eyebrows. Woodcock will still be able to animate her forehead, he says, but not as much. And while the improvement won't be so obvious a few weeks after the surgery, 10 years from now her brow will still be smooth and unfurrowed.
``This is a lifetime procedure,'' he says.
Six months ago, he would have made an ear-to-ear incision for this operation; now, he carefully guides his tool, called an elevator, through an opening in her scalp, moving it up, down and around to loosen the scalp from the skull.
He watches what he's doing on the television screen across from him, where the blunt instrument he uses to loosen the skull appears enormous, and the veins and muscle of the skull and scalp appear as giant roadways.
A small black dot is visible on the screen: a blood vessel that Carney is careful to avoid.
He slides a pair of fine tweezers in and carefully uses the pincers to scrape away at the muscle. On the screen, it looks like a sharp-toothed fish nipping at the fiber. He stops when he sees the yellow fat behind the muscle, then carefully withdraws from inside her scalp and, using another tiny pair of tweezers and some hair-thin thread, begins suturing the openings high in her hairline.
When it's time to do her eyelids, Carney drips numbing drops into Woodcock's eyes, then slips a metal protector over each eyeball to protect her eyes from the laser flash.
Everyone in the operating room puts on protective glasses, too. Carney makes the first incision in the left eyelid. There's a tiny red light at the point of the laser, a small puff of smoke, and the eyelid is opened without any bleeding. That's the advantage of the laser over the scalpel, Carney explains as he continues to enlarge the opening: no bleeding means no bruising.
He spends about 15 minutes painstakingly picking tiny bits of yellow fat from her eyelids, then uses tweezers and very thin sutures to stitch her up. The lower lids take a bit longer because there's more fat to scrape out.
By 10:30 a.m., 2 1/2 hours after he started the surgery, he's finished and the nurses wheel a still-unconscious Woodcock out of the operating room. TWO MONTHS LATER
Elizabeth Woodcock looks smashing. Fantastic. Terrific. The accolades just keep coming.
Dressed in a short white skirt, a long-sleeved, deep-cut peplum jacket, her coal black hair thick and curly around her smooth, porcelain-white face, she looks 35, if she's a day. No, maybe 32.
Which is about how old she feels.
``I feel different,'' she admits over lunch as she picks at a salad. ``Twice I've been told I look like Liz Taylor. It's great to look in the mirror and not see those bags. There's a more uplifted appearance. It takes away the tired look.''
Even though the bags were not that noticeable before the surgery, their absence is more noticeable after the surgery.
People at work have noticed the difference. One day, walking down the hall, another woman, a much younger woman, came up to her, put her hands on either side of her face and said, ``That beautiful face,'' without even knowing why.
That face didn't come without its discomforts. Woodcock did have some significant bruising under her eyes for weeks after the surgery and terrible headaches for days following the operation. She still has some numbness over her right eyebrow.
``I'm still satisfied with the end result,'' she says. ``It was definitely worth it. This, too, shall pass.''
But her husband hasn't said one word about her new eyes. ``I should ask him, `Do you think it's worth it? How do you like it?' '' Woodcock muses.
Then she strokes her neck, where some faint rippling can be seen.
``I've already started saving for this,'' she says, her hand smoothing the skin. ``Why have this face and these eyes and this neck?'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff color photos by BILL TIERNAN
THE CONSULTATION
Elizabeth Woodcock waits in The Carney Center in Newport News before
having plastic surgery to tuck her upper and lower eyelids, and
tighten her forehead.
PHOTO DOCUMENTATION
Before entering the operating room for surgery, Dr. Martin Carney
takes a photograph of Woodcock, who is a 52-year-old Newport News
grandmother of six.
DRAWING THE LINE
Woodcock listens as Carney explains how he will perform the surgery.
The lines on her face, drawn with a felt tip pin, will be used as
guides during the surgery.
SURGERY
Scrub nurse Sandy Morris, left, and Carney wear protective glasses
during the procedure, which uses a laser instead of a scalpel to
prevent bleeding, and thus, bruising.
TA-DA
Woodcock looks smashing, and the accolades just keep coming. ``I
feel different,'' she says. ``It's great to look in the mirror and
not see those bags ... It takes away the tired look.''
Graphic
MOST COMMON PROCEDURES
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB