Three Months After Eyelid Surgery

Last week I hit the three month recovery mark for my upper blepharoplasty, or eyelid surgery.  This was significant to me as my surgeon said that it would take about three months for everything to completely heal up as well as for the swelling to go away.  I had a couple of tiny spots on my incisions that weren't quite healed at my three week follow up visit, along with one spot that seemed a little thicker than the rest of the incision, which Dr. Durairaj said was scar tissue.  He seemed confident that it would disappear, but reassured me that he could take care of it if need be.

Except for taking progress pictures at the one and two month marks (I wrote a reminder on my calendar to do this; otherwise, I totally would have forgotten), I pretty much moved on with life and didn't think about how my eyelids were coming along.  I did buy some eye shadow and had fun playing with makeup; it was great to actually see it on my eyelids instead of having it disappear, but I also realized that I'm not very adept with the application process so there were times when I looked like a pre-teen experimenting with her mother's makeup for the first time:

Two month progress picture...and a little heavy-handed with the eye shadow.

Three month progress picture...getting better with the eye shadow application, but I'm looking forward to seeing my niece in a couple of months - she'll show me how to do this properly, I'm sure.

While I didn't doubt my surgeon's assurances that I'd heal completely, there were times when I wondered if I would be the exception to the norm, or if it would take a lot longer.  However, as I discovered last week when I realized it had been three months since the surgery, my incisions have healed and are pretty much invisible.  And that scar tissue spot?  Smoothed out!  Everything did what it was supposed to do, and I feel like the old me again:

No more squinchy eyes!  

Along with having eyelids that no longer cover most of my eyelashes, they are also firmer to the touch, which I probably only noticed because I wear contacts - there's not as much skin to pull up when I put my contacts in.

Having this surgery was something that I'd wanted for quite a while; it took me a long time to build up the courage to have a consultation and then schedule the operation as I don't go into any kind of surgical procedure lightly.  I didn't have any desire to take 20 years off of my face; I didn't want to not look like myself - I just wanted to recognize myself in the mirror once more.  And now I do.