A WOMAN who bagged herself a free facelift after winning a competition has revealed that she nearly died during the procedure, which was watched by hundreds of people.
Leslie, 52, is now happy with her new look, but had a scary experience on the operating table.
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Last year, the mum spotted a social media post by Dr. Mike Nayak, asking for a model to take part in a masterclass.
The advert revealed that the model would get a facelift entirely for free, but that the procedure would be watched by 500 medical students.
“I had been following Dr. Nayak on Instagram for about three years before this,'” she told People.
“His work is phenomenal.“
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Leslie, from Indiana, revealed that the advert appealed to her because she herself works in the medical field, and liked the idea that she would be helping people.
Around the time that the brunette beauty saw the post, she felt that her face looked “tired” and like it was “sagging and drooping”.
“I thought, maybe one day I could do a facelift,” she said.
She sent pictures of her face off, and after a few rounds of interviews, got the call to say that she had won the competition.
In September 2024, she jetted off to Turkey for the procedure, which hundreds of students from all over the world were present for.
During the surgery, Dr Nayak wore a camera, so that students could watch a livestream of the procedure.
He also narrated each step of the facelift, and answered questions to students as he went.
Explaining the changes made to Leslie’s face, the doctor revealed via an Instagram post that he had given her a “preservation deep plane extended facelift, a deep neck lift, a brow lift, a lower blepharoplasty, a fat transfer, age-appropriate lip filler, and a lower eyelid TCA peel”.
Speaking to People, he added: “I did a brow lift for her because [her expression] looked sad,’ he added to People.
“I removed the fat bags from behind her eyelids. We used fat from her belly to build the dark circles out, to build the tear trough hollows out,’ he explained about the darkness around her eyes.
What are the risks of getting surgery abroad?
IT’S important to do your research if you’re thinking about having cosmetic surgery abroad.
It can cost less than in the UK, but you need to weigh up potential savings against the potential risks.
Safety standards in different countries may not be as high.
No surgery is risk-free. Complications can happen after surgery in the UK or abroad.
If you have complications after an operation in the UK, the surgeon is responsible for providing follow-up treatment.
Overseas clinics may not provide follow-up treatment, or they may not provide it to the same standard as in the UK.
Also, they may not have a healthcare professional in the UK you can visit if you have any problems.
Source: NHS
“Then I usually laser the overlying skin of the lower lids to treat wrinkles, but they didn’t have a laser that I liked, so I did it with a trichloroacetic acid peel instead.”
However, the surgery was far from plain sailing.
Taking to Instagram, Dr Nayak revealed that the mum had started bleeding profusely during the procedure.
“While the surgery went extremely well, it was very challenging. For reasons unknown, Leslie was very prone to bleeding both during the entire procedure as well as for the first few days afterward,” he said.
“For those unfamiliar, operating in a bleeding surgical field is like trying to stay safe while driving through dense fog or heavy rain.
“Thankfully, at this point in my career, I no longer find things like that quite as stressful as I once did – even with over 500 people watching.”
However, the surgery thankfully ended successfully, and Leslie said that she has received lots of positive comments about her new look.
“You don’t look tired, you look refreshed,” but I still look like me. That’s what I wanted to make sure of — I would still look like me”, she said.
“I wasn’t really trying to look younger.”