After working at the hospital for a few months, I finally got to film a surgery. The procedure was a face lift and breast lift done at the doctor's operating room, not at the hospital. They lifted the breast first by cutting kind of a triangle under the breasts, then removing the triangle of skin and pulling the sides of the triangle together and stitching it up in an upside down T shape onthe underside of the breast. Then they restitched the nipple to the newly formed breast. While filming the breast lift I kind of forgot that it was an actual person being worked on. You zoom in and focus on the details and forget the big picture.
Next was the face/brow lift which was the main event. An incision was made from ear to ear along the hair line then the flap of skin was flipped up over the nose so the doctor could remove the muscles above the nose that wrinkle your brow. Next the skin was flipped back into place, trimmed then sewn back into place. Then incisions where made below the ear so the doctor could pull the cheeks and neck back.Filming this surgery you could not forget that it was a person being operated on because the eyes where open and blankly staring up at nothing. The whole time I kept thinking about how much the patient would be hurting the next day and wondering if it would really be worth the pain and suffering.
It was an amazing experience to be right there in the operating room and seeing the doctor at work. I was impressed at how well the scars where hidden although I am sure there will be some visual signs of the procedure once the scars heal. If people got to see what I saw I think there would be a lot less plastic surgery going on. At the end you could definitely see an improvement, but I am not sure if the results would be worth all the pain.
