Last November, Virginia Day flew from London to Nashville to try to save her breasts. It was, she hoped, the final stop on a nightmarish ride that began in 1996, when, at age 33, she visited a well-known London breast surgeon. He fitted her with soybean oil–filled implants, which were supposed to allow for clear mammogram readings, and at first she was happy enough with the results. Four years later, however, the implants were recalled. Day visited the surgeon to have them removed, only to discover that they had already ruptured. After fishing out the exploded bags through incisions around her nipples, her doctor replaced them with an early French silicone model. And that’s when things really got bad: Scar tissue encapsulated the new implants, distorting their shape; the implants themselves began to amble around Day’s chest; and the skin over them turned crepey and puckered. The pain was crippling. She had three more corrective surgeries before the second implants were also recalled, early last year. “I went back to my original surgeon, and he basically told me I was being silly and sent me away,” says Day (not her real name). So she started researching breast doctors, and her homework led her, finally, to the Nashville office of G. Patrick Maxwell.
With two decades of experience under his belt, Maxwell has developed a reputation as a gifted revisionist: a plastic surgeon who excels at correcting the misbegotten work of his errant colleagues. And in this age of quick-and-dirty cosmetic procedures, the revisionist market is booming. Wendy Lewis, a New York–based cosmetic surgery consultant who advises patients on everything from botched hair transplants to permanent makeup, sees several societal forces behind the trend. “All over the world you have doctors trying to get into this business with minimal training,” she says. “A surgeon from Peru will rent a hotel suite in New York, and a woman he knows will invite all her girlfriends. Suddenly you have a crew of new Lisa Rinnas. I know a dermatologist in Texas who is draining facial abscesses in American patients who had crossed the border for surgery. And in the U.S., managed care is putting a squeeze on doctors, leading them to chase cash-paying elective procedures.”
Robert M. Schwarcz is a New York–based cosmetic surgeon who trained under Los Angeles lid-lift king Norman Shorr. A specialist in salvaging bungled facelifts and eye jobs, Schwarcz treats many patients who have been taken in by the false promise of fast and painless surgery. “Cheap lifts like the Quicklift, the Lifestyle Lift, thread lifts—these well-marketed little fixes do a big disservice,” he says. “The doctors don’t do complete dissections, they ignore the neck, and they leave scars.” Among the range of complications he sees: wind-tunnel faces that result from pulling deep muscle and skin too hard in one direction; so-called pixie ears, plastered to jawlines because of overaggressive skin removal; hollowed-out eyes from excising too much fat; lids that won’t close due to muscle damage; and salivary gland dysfunction. Occasionally patients even arrive with subcutaneous hemorrhages that have turned toxic. “Often there’s an immense sense of guilt, like, Why did I do this to myself?” says Schwarcz. “You need to walk patients through that part of the process.”
