Question: I’m interested in upper eyelid surgery to correct slightly hooded eyes. I am 27 years old, and can only take 11 days off. Will I be able to hide my surgery when I go back to work?

Dr. A’s Answer: This depends on the surgeon’s technique, skill level, and a bit of luck. The usual recovery for my patients is that the upper eyelids themselves swell and get purplish for a few days. The sutures are removed at 5 days at which point the swelling and bruising are nearly gone. What remains at that point generally is easily taken care of with a little makeup. You won’t be perfect, but the healing issues at 5 days are typically not noticed by the general public. There will be a pink line where the incision was. Unfortunately, you can’t really do much about that except put makeup on it. As a young person, that pink line will probably be more easily noticed and you will need to cover it with makeup until it resolves. This can take several months. Very rarely, a person may get a true black eye and that may take two weeks to go away. Avoiding a black eye is mostly accomplished by being very careful with the initial injection of local anesthetic (which is always used even if you have general anesthesia) and using special equipment to do the surgery that seals the blood vessels as you go.