Have you ever stared into your own reflection and seen a stranger looking back?

For Shellie, it wasn’t a one-time thing. It happened in photographs, in mirrors, in a quick glance in the rearview. “I feel like every time I see a photograph of myself, I look very tired and very sad and very depressed, and I’m not that way at all,” she says. She wasn’t tired. She wasn’t sad. But her face, softened and pulled down by time, had quietly stopped telling the truth about who she was.

Shellie describes the feeling plainly: saggy, melty, heavy through the lower face in a way she never liked.

So she started looking, the way most patients do now, through her phone. She found Dr. Kevin Sadati on social media and kept coming back to his before-and-after photos. “Every time I saw his after shots and his posts on Instagram, I thought he was the one for me,” she remembers. “I never hesitated at all, seeing his before and after photos. They were all beautiful.” What she was searching for wasn’t just a procedure. It was to feel more refreshed, happier, and more youthful, on the outside, in a way that finally matched who she already was inside.

A Plan Built Around Her, Not a Procedure

At Dr. Sadati’s Newport Beach clinic, Shellie’s consultation led to a comprehensive plan: a preservation deep plane facelift, an endoscopic brow lift, and laser resurfacing, three procedures working in concert rather than one isolated fix. The preservation deep plane technique is a refinement of traditional deep plane facelifting. Instead of pulling the skin tight, Dr. Sadati releases the deep ligaments that anchor the SMAS and lifts the underlying structure of the face vertically, restoring the cheeks, jawline, and neck from the foundation up while preserving blood supply and the skin’s natural drape. The brow lift opened her eyes and softened her forehead; the laser resurfacing renewed her skin’s surface and texture. Performed under local anesthesia with twilight sedation rather than general anesthesia, it is a gentler, more physiologic approach to facelift surgery.

Shellie remembers the first night honestly: a moderate headache, a lingering fog of sedation. “Once the anesthesia was out of my body, it was a beautiful recovery,” she says. “It’s night and day.”

The Real Recovery: More Tightness Than Pain

The early days after a preservation deep plane facelift, brow lift, and laser resurfacing can look intense. Swelling, bruising, and dressings make the first day after surgery seem like the patient are in significant pain. In reality, most patients, Shellie included, report discomfort that is far more manageable than the photos suggest. What she felt was tightness and soreness, not sharp pain. “For some people it looks scary, but it’s not painful,” she says. “People think laser is like burning, like burn victims. No, it’s not.” The first two weeks asked for patience and careful aftercare. From there, the improvement came steadily, month by month, with her skin quality continuing to refine long after the laser had finished healing.

Months later, the swelling had fully settled, and the results spoke for themselves. Shellie looked natural and rested, not pulled, not overdone, simply herself again, only ten to fifteen years lighter. Because the rejuvenation came from repositioning the face’s deeper structures rather than tightening skin alone, the results were built to last for years, not months.

Today, Shellie speaks about her results with a clarity that goes beyond appearance. “My neck is tighter, my jowls have disappeared, I have more definition in my cheekbones, I feel my eyes are brighter, my eyebrows have been raised, wrinkles in my forehead have disappeared,” she says. “I just feel overall my results are more refined and more defined.” She turned 60 a month after recording her testimonial, and she says she looks at her own photos now and sees someone at least ten years younger. But the change she describes most is the one no photograph can measure. “I don’t want to sound conceited, but I feel more out of my shell to come up to strangers and talk to strangers,” she says. “I felt like I had such a good summer because I felt younger and refreshed. I feel like it’s had an emotional impact on me.”

Shellie’s transformation reflects exactly what the preservation deep plane facelift was designed to do: rejuvenate without erasing. Dr. Kevin Sadati is a board-certified facial plastic surgeon and ENT specialist with more than 22 years of experience and over 5,000 facelifts and neck lifts performed, recognized as one of the top facelift doctors in the country and a pioneer of the preservation deep plane technique in Southern California. Patients travel from across the country in search of the best deep plane facelift in the USA, drawn by results like Shellie’s: soft, age-appropriate, and unmistakably natural. At his Newport Beach practice, every facelift surgery is built around the same principle that shaped Shellie’s plan: protect the structures that make a face uniquely someone’s own, while lifting it back to where time had let it fall.

Shellie's Preservation Deep Plane Facelift Journey with Dr. Sadati

“The results are beautiful. I feel so refreshed, I feel younger, I love it. I am very happy with my results.”

Shellie

Traditional Deep Plane Facelift

How a preservation deep plane facelift, endoscopic brow lift, and laser resurfacing gave Shellie back the face that matched how she felt inside.

"I had so much more confidence"

Shellie’s story is, in the end, a simple one: a woman who didn’t recognize her own tired reflection, and a procedure that gave it back to her, brighter, tighter, and entirely her own. If her journey feels familiar, a private consultation with Dr. Kevin Sadati is the place to start your own second chapter.

“I look at the photos now, and I feel like I look at least 10 years younger… I had so much more confidence. I feel like it’s had an emotional impact on me… I’d like to thank Dr. Sadati and his staff for giving me a second chapter on my life, for making me look as young on the outside as I feel on the inside.” — Shellie, Preservation Facelift Patient

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Take the first step toward your transformation with Dr. Kevin Sadati, one of Orange County’s most trusted facial plastic surgeons. Schedule your private consultation today and discover how his expertise can help you achieve your aesthetic goals.

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