Most people would look at 48-year-old Indya Rydman and think she looks years younger than what's on her driver's license. However, when she looked in the mirror, she saw something else. "I see the gradual sagging," Rydman said, fussing at the reflection looking back at her.
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"You see, she has a lot of looseness under here and we're just going touch up a little bit around the eyes," said Dr. Franklin Rose as he examined Rydman a week before her surgery.
"I'm actually doing this for myself because when I look in the mirror, I see what I want to fix," Rydman said.
With a job in public relations, Rydman said, "My smile and my face is the first thing people see so it's the most important part of my body."
What they both saw were the effects of weight gained and lost while having kids, along with a genetic predisposition to hooded eyelids and the effects of gravity around Rydman's jaw. Until now she had gone the non-surgical route with fillers to achieve the look of her younger days. Wanting a more permanent solution, she turned to Dr. Rose at his Houston-based Utopia Plastic Surgery and Medical Spa and his three-layer stem cell enhanced facelift.
"So the three layers are gently defatting, sometimes grafting with stem cell enhanced fat that we're doing for her and then, of course, tightening up," said Dr. Rose.
The goal is to create a more natural looking facelift.
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"We've all seen facelifts of yesteryear where the patients are just pulled so tightly, it looks like kind of a wind tunnel. It doesn't look pretty," said Dr. Rose.
The newer facelifts he's doing on his patients use smaller incisions and plump stem cells from a patient's own fat, all making for a less painful and much shorter recovery. With incisions above and below her eyes, below her chin, in her hairline and in front and behind her ears, it's the safe and natural filler found in Rydman's own body that is the key to the rejuvenation.
Back at work in 10 days, Dr. Rose saw Rydman less than three weeks after her facelift.
"I love the results. They're very natural and soft and I'm really excited. This facelift is supposed to last 15 to 20 years," Rydman said.
Good candidates for the three-layer facelift can range in age from the early 30's to those in their 80's, depending on a patient's skin. As for price, the procedure rings up around $15,000.
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