I'm a plastic surgeon and I just had eyelid surgery [David Levens, MD, Coral Springs]

Dr. Levens (00:00):
Hi, I'm Dr. David J. Levens. I'm a board certified plastic surgeon in Coral Springs, Florida.

Eva Sheie (00:06):
You just had surgery yourself. You had eyelid surgery. Can you tell us what that was like and maybe give us what didn't you know about eyelid surgery before you did it yourself?

Dr. Levens (00:18):
Well, this is an interesting story because I decided I wanted to do it five years ago. And it was actually, it's funny because my daughter, who's now 35, this is many years ago, but I've always, I had very puffy lower eyelids, a little heaviness in my uppers, kind of the way I look, and I wear glasses all the time. I used to try to conceal it. So my daughter, out of the mouths of babe said, dad, your eyes are so puffy. And this is probably 20 years ago. So I've thought about it, and then five years ago, four years ago, I said, I'm going to do this. So I went to an oculoplastic surgeon. I decided that, not that I don't think plastic surgeons should do it, but oculoplastic surgeons are ophthalmologists that specialize in surgery of the eyelids, and I think you do like hundreds of them, you're probably going to get the best results.

Dr. Levens (01:12):
So I went to one and I was about to do it. I gave the deposit, and it's been five years and I'm okay and everything, but my mom, who was 89 years old with some dementia and lung cancer who had a facelift and eyelids 20 years before, she passed. So I decided to forego that and my money was refunded. And then I've decided again recently, and I met a very nice young woman, oculoplastic surgeon, whose father's an oculoplastic surgeon who've had some patients in common, and I've seen her work, really nice work. And that's it. I decided to do it. And it was three weeks ago yesterday. We were talking about this before, I think I'm a good patient, so I try not to torture the doctor too much, even though I'm a doctor and she knows I do the surgery, but I let her do her thing.

Dr. Levens (02:12):
I don't tell her what to do. I don't tell my doctors what to do. I try to be a good boy. I want them to be that way to me. And I was saying that when I have patients that I'm examining for their eyes and they look and they say, you should get yours done. So I'm getting mine done, and I told my patients a lot of my patients, and it went very well. It was an outpatient surgery, two hours local with sedation. It's been three weeks. The beginning, it's tight and itchy and a lot of drops and compresses. Really not much pain. I took a pain pill the first night, but what I was saying is that you sometimes really want to rub your eyes and you can't really rub your eyes right away. So I still have some bruising and I'm not using drops anymore, and it's been good. But I didn't answer your question, you said. Yeah, that's about it. Yeah, it hasn't been bad at all. The funny thing, I had a patient the other day that one of my first patients operating after two weeks off, I told a few patients and she said, oh, they look good and everything. She said, can you see to do her surgery? I said, yes, I can see just fine.

Eva Sheie (03:27):
I think your patients probably share your sense of humor a bit.

Dr. Levens (03:31):
Yeah, yeah. I hope so.

Eva Sheie (03:35):
If part of your charm.

Dr. Levens (03:37):
Oh, thank you.

Eva Sheie (03:38):
Can you show us your before photos? Can you put them on the screen?

Dr. Levens (03:41):
Oh, sure. Of course. Yeah.

Eva Sheie (03:42):
Is there anything you want us to know about it?

Dr. Levens (03:45):
Well, that's the first view, and then there's the smiling view, and then there's the eyes shut view and there's the looking up view. That's why you feel so

Eva Sheie (03:55):
It was this puff, this puffiness that you were trying to

Dr. Levens (03:58):
Oh, yeah, that puffiness down the bottom there. Yeah, for sure. I mean, right now I still have a little bit of black and blue, but I've been offered to put some makeup on, but I didn't do that.

Eva Sheie (04:12):
No, you just tell everyone you got in a fight.

Dr. Levens (04:14):
I get more sympathy this way. People say like, you should see the other guy type of thing.

Eva Sheie (04:18):
Yeah, exactly. Way more fun. Way more fun.

Dr. Levens (04:21):
Yeah.

Eva Sheie (04:22):
Yeah. Well, you look great. Thank you for telling us about your own surgery.

Dr. Levens (04:26):
Oh, you're welcome.

Eva Sheie (04:28):
Okay, so before we wrap it up, where can we find you?

Dr. Levens (04:31):
My office is at 1725 University Drive, suite 300, Coral Springs, Florida 33071. My phone number is (954) 752-1020. And then DrLevens@drLevens.com is My email. Website is DrLevens.com. I do have three Instagram pages, one with at Dr David J Levens. One is Plastic Surgery Talks and one is Levens Med Spa.

Eva Sheie (05:05):
On this podcast, we bring you directly to the doctors who are, where before meets after. Links to our guest's website and contact info are in your show notes. Follow us on Instagram @wherebeforemeetsafter. If you're a board certified plastic surgeon and would like to be a guest or a sponsor of the show, go to wherebeforemeetsafter.com for more information. Where Before Meets After is a production of The Axis, the podcast agency for aesthetics, theaxis.io.