John Q. Owsley, MD, FACS

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A Celebrity Testimonial to Dr. Owsley's Skills and Professionalism

Excerpts from Trying to Get to Heaven, by Dixie Carter

Sometimes the adjustment to the over-forty years requires coming to terms with what's past and irretrievable, with where you are and what you are. Sometimes it's necessary to take a deep breath and do a few things that you hadn't expected to be on the program. Like having your face lifted.

When I came home from the first screening of the pilot episode of Designing Women, I sat down with mother and without preamble said, "Gina, I'm going to have a face-lift."

She didn't smile, nor did she respond in any way for a long moment; she just looked at me intently and finally she said, "Why?"

I said, "Gina, I am enough older than any of the other three lovely actresses on this show that if it does turn out to be my first big success, after all these years of performing, I don't think I can bear to be identified as 'the older one,' and that is surely what is going to happen, because I have just seen myself on the screen with them."

Now she did not hesitate in her response. She lifted her chin and took my hand, "All right, my dahling, would you like me to go with you to meet some of these types of doctahs?" And then she smiled, my Gina.

So off we went, Gina and I, both of us nervous, but only me showing it. What an education. What an assortment of advantage takers. Still etched in memory is the surgeon who had a mirrored coffee table in his office. He told me to lean over and look down at my reflection. "This is how you're going to look six months from now," he assured me with a grim little smile. I found the interviews frightening and very demoralizing; every time I left another office, I felt older and uglier. Without exception what I was asking to be done — cleaning up my jawline and double chin — was dismissed as not nearly all it was going to take to make me presentable.

Gina and I would drive home after these interviews with me in or close to tears. I felt ever more helpless, undecided, and unprepared, never having dreamed that I would in a million years consider plastic surgery, a term I had always heard uttered in a low voice and with a certain tone. Woefully unknowledgeable, I would swing back and forth between going no bones about it for the most expensive doctor and giving up on the whole thing. The latter turned out to be not a possibility because by now Gina had the bit in her teeth and giving up was not her lexicon. Her little girl needed a certain thing done and it was going to get done, and done properly. She kept insisting that we had to have more information. She was right, but where are we going to get it? Not from the doctors we'd seen so far, who wanted only to discuss how much better they were than all the others.

Having pretty much given up on finding a surgeon in Los Angeles — which I had assumed was the logical place to start looking, home of the movie stars and all — I was about to the point of going to New York and nosing around, no pun intended, and then a miracle happened. A friend of mine told me about a doctor up in San Francisco he thought I should meet. This particular surgeon had originated something called the SMAS technique, whereby the muscles of the neck and chin are lifted and reattached, so that they do all the supporting, then the skin (with what you wanted to get rid of gone) is softly laid back in place and reattached separately, thus relieving the poor skin of the responsibility of keeping all that tired flesh pulled up, looking ever so tight and unnatural while it's doing it, and unable to keep it up for long anyway. I had not heard of SMAS (Superficial Musculoaponeurotic System), but the concept made sense, and the recommender's judgment I trusted and appreciated, so I decided to go — by myself, since Gina's health wouldn't allow for the round-trip in one day. I went to San Francisco, sat down across the desk from Dr. John Quincy Owsley, and here begins my tale of a very happy and successful experience with what I now call aesthetic surgery.

I am going to give you a profile of what to look for in an aesthetic surgeon, based upon this one gentleman and my experience with him. This is my only frame of reference, but at the risk of immodesty, I say take a look at me, and I believe you'll agree that some pretty fine tailoring has gone on, especially when you consider that I am now past the three to seven years after which you are supposed to need it done again.

Dr. Owsley greeted me quietly and respectfully. I wasn't made to wait a long time so that I'd be impressed with just how busy and in demand he was. He asked me what I wanted to change. He passed a hand mirror across his desk and asked me to look at myself and describe as exactly as I could what I wanted to look like after surgery. Every time he asked a question, he actually stopped talking and let me answer. And he listened to me. He came around behind my chair and adjusted the skin on my face a tiny bit this way and that as I looked at myself to show me what was possible, what he thought I wanted, and to make sure that we were both talking about the same goal.

When he had established our agreement on the desired result, he resumed his seat and proceeded quietly and unhurriedly to explain the technique he would employ, the one he had in fact originated. He told me that this procedure involved lifting and repositioning the layer of muscle and connective tissue, lying just beneath the fatty layer in the skin, that extends from the temple region down through the cheek and neck to the collarbone. The skin would be lifted along with it. This layer of connective tissue contains and interconnects all the muscles that move the skin to make facial expressions. With aging this tissue and skin sag down together. He told me that the SMAS face-lift should last at least five years, but he didn't make promises. (He did not tell me until I knew him better that the embarrassment he had experienced at having to tell patients, as he had to when he started practicing, that they could expect to need to redo in three to five years had goaded him to figure out a face-lift that would last longer.)

After a while I began to feel heartened and secure. No question had been brushed aside as silly or unimportant. The business of this meeting, as Dr. Owsley conducted it, was for me to assess the information he gave me and then make a decision. What a difference! When I got up to leave, he gave me some material to take home and read. He knew that I wanted to have my face ready for the new fall television season, but he did not urge me to make a quick decision, as others had done, or hustle me to make the appointment for surgery right then on my way out of the office.

I got back on the plane, went home, and reviewed the consultation with my family. The next day I called for an appointment, flew back as soon as the doctor could schedule me, and got my face lifted. During the interim I had two marvelous conversations with patients of his who had offered to talk with "pre-ops" about their own experience.

Here are some things to watch out for when you're looking for "your" surgeon.

• If the doctor you're meeting doesn't seem to have plenty of time to talk to you, it's not a good sign.
• If the doctor does not encourage your questions and answer them fully and to your satisfaction, stop asking questions and conclude your meeting.
• If the doctor says anything derogatory about another plastic surgeon, start putting on your gloves.
• If the doctor wants to do all the talking and doesn't encourage you to talk, he can't be finding out all he needs to know; at your earliest opportunity make a break for it. (You wouldn't want to wind up looking like him instead of you.)
• Keep looking until you know you have met the right surgeon for you.

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If you've been looking for a cosmetic surgeon who is extremely skilled and has the personal warmth and patience to really answer your questions and concerns, then you'll be glad that you found Dr. John Owsley. Please feel free to contact Dr. Owsley to set up a private consultation.

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