Plastiv

0

Plastic/17″/mike1st/mark2nd

By JASON BOOTH

Staff reporter

Dr. Grant Stevens is hard at work mastering nature.

On this Friday afternoon, the Marina del Rey-based plastic surgeon is busy meeting both old and new patients, advising them on how to improve their appearance through the use of caustic chemicals, lasers and scalpels.

In a city where youth and good looks are cherished, there is no shortage of willing customers. On an average day, Stevens will deal with around 50 patients. He usually gets into the office around 7 a.m. and works at least 12 hours.

But Stevens, whose tanned, almost wrinkle-free face belies his 45 years, isn’t complaining. “I like the creativity of this work,” he says. “My background is in the arts.” (An avid painter when at home, Stevens says he considers the work he performs on each patient a work of art.)

Today there is a 67-year-old man seeking his second facelift. He also inquires about receiving a chemical peel, a process that involves coating a patient’s face with a mild acid to burn away the top layer of skin and along with it the lines, blemishes and scars that come with age.

As the patient holds a mirror, Stevens uses his hands to simulate the facelift, pulling the patient’s skin taut and running his fingers along imaginary incision lines.

“What we’ll do is make the cut behind your ear,” he says to the man, who has a wife many years his junior. “With women, we can pull the skin into the ear. But we would never want to put your beard into the ear.”

Like many doctors in this line of work, Stevens tries to put patients at ease through both humor and a willingness to explain each procedure sometimes down to the smallest detail.

When one woman expresses concern about losing a beauty mark during a facelift, he says, “Your beauty mark will probably be back where it was in your high school yearbook.”

He points out that both he and his staff have undergone most of the procedures they are offering. He also likes to tell them that he has given facelifts to his mother and wife.

Not all the patients are seeking to improve on what nature has given them. Sharon, an executive assistant for an aerospace company, is getting a replacement for her right breast, which was lost to cancer.

To that end, the doctor injects saline solution into a sack implanted beneath the skin of the woman’s chest. As he injects more fluid, the skin stretches, recreating the dimensions of her lost breast. The procedure will continue at regular intervals over the next several weeks until the skin has expanded enough to allow a new breast to be constructed.

The process is uncomfortable, so Stevens tries to keep the atmosphere light, cracking jokes about how she will have to buy a larger bra and praising her on how well her surgery scars are healing.

“He really knows how to make a woman feel good about herself, especially when she is in a situation like this,” the patient says.

Among the last patients of the day is James, a 54-year-old lawyer who has undergone a series of cosmetic procedures for several years.

“You’ve lost a lot of weight. That liposuction really worked out well for you,” Stevens chides. “I remember when you were fat and ugly and a lot older-looking.”

James makes no bones about his motivation for undergoing a nose job, hair transplant and liposuction. “It’s kind of a jungle out there. Whatever edge you can get, you have to take when you are single,” he says.

It’s also an advantage in his profession. “Regrettably, juries judge a lot of cases by the appearance of the litigator that is trying them,” he adds.

Actually, James is in the office on this day to get stitches removed from a head wound suffered on the ski slopes a week earlier. But Stevens quickly talks the lawyer into receiving a few “botox” injections in his forehead.

A derivative of the botulism toxin sometimes found in spoiled food, botox paralyzes facial muscles for up to three months. By paralyzing select muscles, age lines on the forehead and around the eyes can be neutralized. “A few shots will take five years off your life, so to speak,” the doctor promises.

When the lawyer asks if the process is safe, Stevens reveals that he regularly subjects himself to botox injections.

To which the lawyer replies: “I thought you looked a little younger than the last time I saw you.”

No posts to display