Sometimes you just get that great phone call, like when Dr. Jeanniton of Brooklyn Face and Eye invited Webb On The Fly team to come and get the works in her townhouse office overlooking Prospect Park.
Dr. Jeanniton is a board certified oculofacial plastic surgeon trained in reconstructive surgery who has a holistic Zen-like approach to integrating beauty and wellness for her patients. Even if you eat right and exercise like I do, there are just certain things like melasma and turkey neck and bone loss or loss of facial volume that just won't budge with exercise and diet alone.
Dr. Jeanniton at Work on my RBF 2.0
You know, the French have this saying about women of a certain age “you have to choose between your face and your ass” - meaning that if you keep on enough weight to fill out your face you’ll end up carrying too much weight for your frame. Extra pounds, for me personally, can cause backaches and/or sore feet, in some cases, women can suffer elevated cholesterol or blood pressure with extra weight; in mid-life all of these factors are harder to mitigate. “You don’t have to choose between those two things anymore!” Dr. Jeanniton said with a warm laugh after listening patiently and compassionately to my supermodel driven beauty concerns.
Bone loss happens everywhere in the body including the face as we get older. I’ve seen a noticeable loss of volume on my cheekbones for a few years now. Dr. Jeanniton is a surgeon whose specialty is in all areas of the face, from a surface, shape and structure perspective, she got it that I am scared AF (excuse my French) to go under the knife for a cosmetic procedure. First, because I have kids and I’m not to trying any unnecessary risks like general anesthesia. Second, liquid lifts using botox and fillers are so advanced now why commit to an irreversible procedure or deal with the downtime associated with invasive surgery?
People ask me all the time, “How do you choose a cosmetic surgeon or dermatologist?” Easy - make sure they’re board certified which means all of their licenses and accreditations are up to date. Dollars to donuts every medical cosmetic practitioner uses everything in the candy shop on themselves - fillers peels botox - you name it the doc is doing it and so are the nurses in the office. So, if you like the way the physician and the staff look and you’d be comfortable walking out with the same aesthetics as the medical staff, you’re in the right place for you. Dr. Jeanniton, without a speck of makeup, has a flawless complexion. Her face looks super relaxed with excellent mobility around the eyes and forehead, which speaks to a practitioner who can deftly inject botox and place fillers for an undetectably natural effect. Don’t be embarrassed to ask your doctor what they do to their face - they can’t wait to share details about their handiwork. There should be no secrets in the doctor’s office. We had the talk. Then, we made a plan.
Team Face 2.0 Dr. Chaneve Jeanniton Marc Cornwall and Me.
Here’s what we decided to do. We injected just a touch of Juvederm Voluma in the area along the top of the cheekbones injecting the filler under the cheek muscle placing it against the bone. Dr. Jeanniton manually lifts the muscle before the injection to literally create a supporting structure for the muscle with the filler. It’s not the most comfortable procedure, I felt pinching poking and pressure, but it’s also a fairly quick process, around 15 minutes, which makes it doable. After I had two little red pinpricks on either cheek that would subside in a day. One side of my cheeks got a tick tack sized bruise that would last a week. The filler will last about 2 years making the treatment/downtime ratio a no brainer.
Baby Face Juvederm Voluma to pump up the cheekbones
Spot On Kybella Injection Sites
Like the humorist, Nora Ephron once said, “I hate my neck”. She hated her mid-life turkey neck, so much so, that this brilliant woman who wrote and directed hit movies like When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle used the above quote as the title of her final memoir. My neck is stringy between the chin and Adam’s apple and it makes posing for pictures, which, no small thing, is my livelihood, a pain in the ass. Kybella was Dr. Jeanniton’s prescribed treatment to tighten the skin on the slowly disappearing upward curve that is fast becoming a downward curve between my jaw and my neck. I have almost no fat there, but in a business where every millimeter counts, I went for the lift. Okay, I’m not going to lie it hurts. I run marathons and this procedure is up there pain management wise. See all those dots under my chin? Those are a map of the injection sites for the Kybella solution which is chemically engineered to melt fat. The skin under the chin and the area around the Adam’s apple are sensitive to begin with then stick it with a needle 20 - 50 times as required for the treatment, even with numbing cream applied beforehand it freaking hurts.
Oddly, when the procedure was finished I felt super relaxed in the same way I do after an epic workout. Immediately afterward, my chin felt hot to touch and had visibly swollen. “That’s the ‘bullfrog’ effect,” Dr. Jeanniton told me with a sympathetic smile. “A turtleneck’ she added was ‘advisable attire for the next 5-7 days.” I’m still slightly tender and a little swollen under my chin as I write this 2 weeks later, but it takes time for both change and beauty to unfold.
We finished off our day of treatments with a painless and totally refreshing medical grade chemical peel including trichloroacetic acid (TCA), retinoic acid, vitamin C to give us that medical grade glow-to-go without any flaking or peeling.
Smiling Faces My RBF Refreshed (but still swollen) post-treatment at Brooklyn Face and Eye.
I’ll be in touch on the update of my progress over the next few months as Dr. Jeanniton helps me address my complexion concerns of dull skin and melasma.
xx,
Credits
story x @veronicawebb photos x @cwxcreative
All services and products in this post paid for and sponsored by Brooklyn Face and Eye.