I Need a New Face

Wednesday, I had an appointment with my oculoplastic ophthalmologist. Say that fast three times! It was a followup visit to determine the progress of my Graves Eye Disease. I'm not sure how he made his determination because all he did was take some pictures of me, but he declared that I am in remission. Yay. Really, I mean YAY! But there's this niggling doubt that he just said that without a real basis.

Anyway, he started talking about the surgery, orbital decompression, and said he would also lower my top eyelids, reduce the swelling around the sides of my eyes, and remove the bags under my eyes too, but he needed a photo from ten years ago to see how to reconstruct my eyes. I reached for my phone and pulled up a picture and handed it to him. He looked at my phone then turned back to me with one raised eyebrow.

"This is Julia Roberts."

"Right."

"I need to see your eyes."

"As long as you need a picture to go by, couldn't you give me eyes like hers?"

The raised eyebrow again.

Apparently, my eyes are so disfigured now that he can't even imagine what I used to look like. I could give him a picture of anyone (except Julia Roberts) and he would never know it wasn't me. But when I got home, I dutifully started looking for a photo showing both eyes. I know I had one on facebook at one time, but when I dumped facebook, I think I dumped that photo too. I was hard-pressed to find a photo, but finally came up with two, one from about twelve years ago, and one from fifteen to twenty years ago.

So here's my public service announcement for this week. If you don't have a photo of your face looking into the camera, take one right now. You never know when a plastic surgeon is going to want to know what you are supposed to look like.