He Thought His Face Looked Like It Was ‘Melting’ with Age. He Got This Popular Cosmetic Procedure to Address It (Exclusive)

Charles turned to the plastic surgeons at L&P Aesthetics for a facial rejuvenation

NEED TO KNOW

• Charles opted for a facelift to address his “angry”-looking appearance
• He turned to plastic surgeons Dr. David Lieberman and Dr. Sachin Parikh of L&P Aesthetics in the Bay Area
• The doctors explain to PEOPLE what all Charles had done for his procedure, while he shares his feelings on the experience

Charles’ plastic surgery journey actually began with his wife.

The Bay Area, Calif., resident tells PEOPLE that after his wife had a facial rejuvenation procedure a few years ago, it made him a little more open to the idea of getting facial plastic surgery of his own to address his concerns with how he was aging.

“Over the last few years, my face felt like it was melting,” Charles shares with PEOPLE. “My eyes were squinty and closed. I would walk by the mirror, I looked there and said, ‘Who is that? And why is that guy so angry?’ I just had this really heavy, angry look. When I looked at myself, I said, ‘I don’t feel this way.’ That disconnect just bothered me more and more over time.”

Thanks to his wife’s positive experience at L&P Aesthetics in the Bay Area, Charles turned to plastic surgeons Dr. David Lieberman and Dr. Sachin Parikh for a facelift. Charles and his wife did extensive research into plastic surgeons before her procedure, which he says involved looking at countless before-and-after photos of their patients.

“We went through hundreds of pictures of their patients to see what is their sort of aesthetic,” he says. “Because each of these surgeons has their own aesthetic. The feeling I got looking at the pictures of people is that they looked like better versions of themselves. That’s what I wanted, so I had confidence.”

And with that, Charles called the doctors for his own consultation and set the surgery for February of this year. They tell PEOPLE that when figuring out what a prospective patient might get done, they like to view it as a collaborative process.

“I think determining a surgical plan is really a conversation,” Dr. Lieberman explains. “It is really important to us that whatever plan you choose is something that really resonates with the patient. Everything has to fit not just with what you, the surgeon, feels like is going to look good, but also with what the patient is going to feel empowered by.”

For Charles, the decision was made to do a facelift and neck lift, brow lift, fat grafting and otoplasty (ear reshaping).

Dr. Lieberman says that Charles had what their practice calls their “signature” facelift, which is their own technique for a deep plane facelift. He explains that as medical professionals, the procedure “evolves in your hand” over the years, allowing Dr. Parikh and him to adapt it to make it their own.

For Charles’ brow lift, Dr. Parikh says they did what is called a “direct brow lift,” meaning the incisions were made just above Charles’ brows to camouflage any scarring. This part of the procedure, he says, can really change the appearance of the face because it affects the eyes so much.

“The eyes are the window to the soul; it is how we all primarily communicate human to human,” Dr. Parikh says.

In Charles’ original vision for his appearance, his ears weren’t a concern. However, the doctors asked him if he might like to have those tweaked as well. This instantly brought back childhood memories of being teased over how his ears looked.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that would have been handy back when I was 10,’” he tells PEOPLE of the otoplasty. “As I’ve gotten older, my ears have gotten bigger, so they’ve gotten more pronounced too.”

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The procedure took about six and a half to seven hours, and Charles has virtually no recollection of the day, thanks to being under anesthesia. He and his wife stayed in a hotel nearby rather than going straight home right after, and Charles says that his head was wrapped up immediately following the surgery. But even with some swelling and bandages, he noticed one thing right away when he looked in the mirror.

“When I opened up and opened my eyes, the mirror in the hotel room was right in front of me, and I looked. And the first thing I noticed is that my eyes are back. I’ve got my eyes,” he says.

The first few days, though, were tough. He dealt with a lot of tightness around his face and some discomfort, which made it hard to sleep. For the most part, he tried to just take it easy until his sutures started coming out and the swelling started to go down.

“I was sitting up in the chair mostly or sitting in up bed slurping down soups that I’d made in preparation for recovery. I love to cook,” he says of what the first few days of recovery looked like. “The first three days were just a blur. Although I got my best all-time score on Klondike Solitaire in that zoned-out mode. I don’t know how I did it, but I’ll probably never do it again.”

Dr. Parikh says that they like to prep all their patients with as much information as possible ahead of surgery, especially breaking down what recovery will look like. He says typically with a facelift, you can be out in public again in 10 to 20 days, and they told Charles it would be probably 10-14 days for him. Then for full results to settle, it’s a few more months, though every patient is different.

“Part of what we do here is we really take that preoperative consultation and thought process seriously,” Dr. Parikh says of how they work with the patients. “The result of your surgery is only as good as the prep beforehand. The education, the quality of the consult and the team that we try to build behind us to navigate or help that patient journey through surgery.”

Charles, who is retired, was back in the pottery studio two weeks after surgery, saying he felt like he looked “passable.” At the three-month mark, he felt like his appearance had mostly settled, though he still dealt with a bit of tightness and numbness (which is common with these procedures).

Charles admits that as an analytical person, he weighed a lot of things before getting plastic surgery and even had moments of doubt after the fact.

“So there’s a question, is it really going to work out for me?” he says of what he asked himself along the way. “Particularly after the surgery, the first week is a hard week because your body has been insulted in the nastiest way.”

But having doctors who were incredibly on top of his care helped guide him through all the healing and erase some of those doubts.

“I feel like I look more like me now and I don’t feel like I look like someone else,” Charles says of his results. “I have had people come up to me and ask me, ‘Hey, have you been working out or something?’ It’s like that kind of thing, because I do think getting rid of the flabby neck and the saggy, grumpy-looking face brightens things, but I don’t think I look like a different person.”

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