Surgeons Having Surgery
When doctors become patients, who do they trust to hold the scalpel?
I’ve been tracking (and quietly cheering) the wave of transparency among plastic surgeons who’ve recently elected to have work done on their own faces.
Perhaps the most famous example is London-based facial plastic surgeon Dominic Bray, who, last December, at age 50, had a deep plane extended facelift, deep neck lift, brow lift, upper and lower blepharoplasty, and more with Mike Nayak, MD.
Dr. Bray candidly shared his motivations, his facelift-surgeon criteria, his experience with the hemostatic net, his healing journey (including setbacks, like a corneal abrasion), and the recovery tricks he picked up along the way. You can follow his entire journey on the grids of Drs. Bray and Nayak.
Dr. Bray also has an IG highlight called “I did it too,” which includes all of the stories he captured around the time of his surgery.
Last November, Philadelphia facial plastic surgeon Sinehan Bayrak, MD, had an upper blepharoplasty with her friend and colleague Renata Khelemsky, MD, in New York City. Dr. Bayrak’s day-one post-op reel reveals her freshly sutured eyelids and details how she cared for them. In it, she says the hardest part of the process was not being able to wear contacts, but that her eyeglasses actually served as excellent camouflage during recovery, distracting people from what was going on behind the lens.
Two months later, she offered a close-up of her healing lids and shared the exact products she was using on her upper bleph scars. The SKINUVA scar gel she mentions (with silicone and growth factors) is a favorite among plastic surgeons, perhaps because it was created by one of their own: oculoplastic surgeon Christopher Zoumalan, MD, in Beverly Hills.
New York City plastic surgeon Anna Steve, MD, who specializes in modest breast augmentations, also had an upper bleph. In late 2024, Dr. Steve and her surgeon, Andrew Timberlake, MD, shared her results on Instagram. (ICYMI: Dr. Timberlake was the subject of my very first Voice of Aesthetics column, which you can read here.)
More recently, Louisville plastic surgeon Brad Calobrace, MD, had a deep plane face and neck lift and an upper and lower blepharoplasty with his former fellow, Alex Pong, MD. He documented the process from pre-op through two weeks post-op. At 63, Dr. Calobrace now looks roughly half his age, don’t you think?
