Confessions of a Park Avenue Plastic Surgeon

by Cap Lesesne

  Realizing I’d probably seen more than was intended, I moved forward a few steps and tapped lightly on the patio door.

  She still didn’t turn, deeply engrossed in what she was looking at. Either that or she was deaf.

  This time I tried clearing my throat.

  She spoke without taking her eyes from the binoculars.

  “Now you have just got to be Cap,” she said in a husky, drawn-out Southern twang. “Anne told me y’all’d be stayin’ here. Don’t stand there. Whyn’tcha come on out here to the garden?”

  She was so preoccupied by whatever she was looking at beyond the grounds, she seemed not to care that I saw her in her negligee (or perhaps she wanted me to see her in her negligee). She still had binoculars pressed to her face.

  I stood there for a few seconds, not quite knowing what to do, and unable to see for myself what she was staring at.

  “Cap, honey, I’m Vera,” she said, and stuck out her hand while continuing to stare through the binoculars. She was from a small town in Louisiana, she said. She said she was married and then mentioned her husband’s name. I recognized it as the chairman/ CEO of one of the fifty largest companies in the world.

  “You know why I love this house so much?” she asked from behind her binoculars.

  “No,” I said.

  “Because it’s right near the United States embassy.”

  “All right.”

  “Do you know what every United States embassy has?” Her gaze was fixed on the big, blocky building a couple hundred yards from us.

  “What’s that?”

  “Marines. Young marines.”

  “Okay.”

  “And do you know what United States marines do every single morning?” she asked.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “Calisthenics,” she said.

  She watched for several more seconds, then let down the binoculars and sighed.

  Back in New York, Tanya buzzed me to say that the personal assistant of someone famous was on the line and they would not speak to her, only to me. “Who is it?” I asked.

  “She won’t say.”

  I picked up. “Dr. Lesesne speaking.”

  “Good morning, Doctor. I’m the personal assistant for” – she paused – “Jane Smith.”

  That’s the best fake name they could come up with? I thought. Either Jane Smith’s assistant is new, or Jane Smith isn’t all that famous.

  “Ms. Smith is interested in having plastic surgery done, as well as her male friend,” the assistant said, “and she understands that you do work on people of color.”

  “Yes, I do. What color is Jane Smith?”

  “Black. The man friend is white.”

  “I’d be happy to set up an appointment.”

  “Ms. Smith is very recognizable.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I can stay late to see her after hours, or we can schedule something for the weekend. And her friend.”

  The assistant said that after hours was better, and could Ms. Smith come by at seven or eight that night? She was in town for a performance but had the evening off.

  I told the assistant I’d be in my office alone, and that I’d keep the door open and the light off in the entryway, so no one could see anything. The assistant seemed pleased by that bit of cloak-and-dagger.

  I was hoping Jane Smith really was high-profile – but not because I needed a celebrity fix. If she was famous, and she’d found her way to me, then it meant some people out there had stopped taking my negative press seriously. That would be one small victory to help get me out of my crabby mood.

  A little after seven that night, I was doing paperwork out at Tanya’s desk when the door opened and in walked … Jane Smith. And her male friend.

  She was famous all right – one of America’s most renowned and influential singers. In the flesh she looked exactly as she did on TV, and her gestures and manner were as bold as they were when she performed – which was highly unusual since, I have found, the private persona of public figures, especially entertainers, is often so different from the public one.

  Jane Smith was definitely someone for whom there could be no effective disguise. Her hairdo, in particular, was instantly recognizable. If she did not want to be noticed, especially in New York City, then she would have to have a car shuttle her everywhere. I could see a black town car – not a limo – double-parked outside my office.

  After introductions and handshakes, the three of us sat down in my office, and Jane said she wanted a little lipo.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. Looking at her size 4 curves, I could see nothing to remove. “I really don’t think there’s anything for me to do.”

  In fact, she looked about twenty years younger than what I thought her real age was, and if she’d had any work done, it was astoundingly good. (Before a consultation, a patient will fill out a form that asks, among other things, for their age. Some respondents lie; many leave it blank. Because Ms. Smith had come in under a veil of secrecy, I was not going to make her fill out the form. I later found out she was fifty-eight.)

  She shrugged at my response, almost relieved, possibly pleased and complimented. Her partner wanted his eyes done; that, I said, I could do. I told him I would need some photos. I would guarantee their secrecy, I assured them. I did this kind of thing all the time.

  Jane smiled.

  “One reason I have to be so secretive,” she said, as if I actually deserved an explanation, which of course I didn’t, “is I’m married. My husband lives in Florida and John here” – she took his hand – “is my friend in New York.”

  I told them not to worry. I opened my scheduling book, set up an appointment, gave John the relevant presurgery details, and told them how much the eyelid job would cost.

  “I want to pay in cash,” said Jane.

  I waved my hand. “Cash, check, whatever –”

  “No, no, no, not a check!” she said, and more than a flash of uneasiness crossed her eyes, as if she knew that someday, inevitably, she would slip up and get busted by her husband.

  And probably the tabloids.

  Two weeks later, the boyfriend came in for his eye job. Routine, went well.

  Three months later, I received a handwritten note from his incredibly famous girlfriend. Two tickets were inside.

  “Doctor, please come to my show at the Garden,” it read. It was signed with her real name. Then it said, “P.S. Like your work. Someday, I may even need it … someday.”

  Given Jane Smith’s appetite for deep cover, I assumed it was not a referral from her but rather just a coincidence that I soon got a couple more high-profile patients from the pop music world. A rock star of a metallic nature came in with his girlfriend or wife (it was unclear). She said that one of her trainers had recommended me. She wanted bigger implants than the large ones she already had.

  He sported more tattoos and jewelry than anyone else who’d ever set foot in my office, probably more than any six people who’d ever set foot there. Behind the facade, though, he turned out to be as businesslike as a Harvard MBA. Well-spoken, focused, driven. He was a great lesson to me to not make assumptions based on what people look like.

  Some luminaries in the entertainment business, you think initially, you’d love to operate on. They’re younger. You know you can obtain a great result. Because of their visibility, they may help to promote your practice big-time. At first blush, the ideal patient.

  Then you have your second thought, which is: Maybe this wouldn’t be such a great idea, after all.

  B.J. was a drummer for an extremely well-known rock group. Like any man in his late forties, B.J. did not like seeing a wattle in his neck.

  “I can’t believe I’m getting old like my dad,” he told me. “I gotta look younger. We’ve got a tour coming up. What can you do?”

  I told him it would be easy to liposuction his neck, though I might also have to pull the skin a bit (I’d hide the scars around the earlobes). Although his hair was short
er than it had been in his younger days, I saw no problem.

  B.J. left my office having already scheduled an OR date that would leave him enough time to recover before the start of the tour.

  At the end of the day, I started to make notes in his chart and review his medical history. He’d been frank. Now, it dawned on me that maybe he was a greater risk than I’d realized; a much greater risk. In his past, he had done more than simple recreational drugs. Because of that, he might have some underlying cardiac issues that are not always detected on routine EKGs or stress tests. Cocaine, which he’d used extensively, is notorious for causing arrhythmias.

  My thought began to change from anticipated delight to anticipated dread. Instead of people thinking, Jeez, B.J. went to Dr. Lesesne and he looks great, now I imagined them thinking, Jeez, B.J. went to Dr. Lesesne and had cardiac arrest and died in his office. I could see fans of B.J. and his band stalking me.

  When I left my office that night, I was not at all excited to do B.J.’s surgery. But how would I tell him? After mulling it over during the night, I thought the best tactic was to be direct.

  I called him the next day. “I don’t think I’m the surgeon for you. I have fears about doing your surgery that I can’t shake.”

  Contrary to what one might think about someone with the star power of B.J., who has people constantly pampering him, he took the news intelligently. He asked appropriate questions. By the end of the phone call, he’d decided against doing the surgery altogether. He was deeply appreciative of my honesty and said he would be delighted to refer people to me (and he has).

  “Maybe I’m getting old, after all,” he said as we wrapped up the conversation. “But I got too many more gigs to drop dead just yet.”

  Soon after, a major record producer came in, a man who’d worked with virtually every big act in the music business. In his early sixties, he wasn’t sitting across from me because he feared someone might take his job. He simply wanted a “tune-up” – a face-lift – because he dealt with younger people all the time.

  “Nobody – let me repeat: nobody – can know,” he told me. “Not in my business.”

  When he brought in photos of himself at earlier ages, practically each one showed him arm in arm with the most famous pop and rock musicians of the twentieth century.

  I planned the surgery carefully with him and did a highly modified face-lift, using very short incisions. When he came in for his follow-up, he smiled. “Every now and then, Dr. Lesesne,” the producer said, relaxed as could be, “you just have to give yourself a tune-up.”

  For an instant I forgot that he was talking about himself. I thought he was offering me advice.

  He was right.

  Two weeks later, I left the city bound for Tokyo, Taipei, and Hong Kong. The National Palace Museum in Taipei beckoned. Leaving New York and immersing myself in Asian art took me completely away from the turmoil back home. It was just what the doctor needed. When I returned, I threw myself into my practice even more intensely.

  But the aftertaste of the whole Katie episode and the bad ending were still with me. My life seemed to have fewer people in it – fewer friends to socialize with, certainly fewer patients. I was down. I telephoned my friend Pat for dinner. She’s one of those great friends who’s wonderful except when you’re in trouble, in which case she gets really wonderful.

  Pat, sensing that I was low, unusual for me, invited a friend of hers named Phyllis to join us. I agreed, happy for company. The three of us dined at Demarchelier, on Eighty-sixth Street. In my distracted state, I barely noticed Phyllis, across the table.

  We three talked about random things, and I felt my mood lightening slightly, and then at one point Phyllis smiled. Suddenly – as if the mood angel were watching over me, deciding that I’d brooded quite long enough – I realized that Phyllis was gorgeous.

  Not handsome. Not attractive. Not pretty.

  Drop-dead gorgeous.

  Then I further realized who she was.

  Miss America.

  When da Vinci devised his theory of facial balance and perfection (the face dividing equally into forehead, middle third, and lower third), he could easily have had Phyllis George in mind. The shape of her eyes slanted up, slightly. Her upper eyelids had a little fullness, which I could tell was natural, something she’d always had. Unlike the typical fifty-year-old, she had no bags under her eyes. Her bone structure was incredible. She had great skin, with her trademark dimples. Her jawline was smooth.

  Later, she would tell me she was taken aback by me, unfamiliar as she was with the phenomenon of a man ignoring her.

  I perked up, as if out of a months-long stupor.

  “This is very bizarre,” I told her, “but we met once before, ten years ago, in this very restaurant, Demarchelier, only when it was downtown.”

  She looked at me foggily.

  “We had the same real estate broker,” I continued with renewed energy now, “and we looked at the same apartment that day. I never forgot you.” I’m sure she thought I was making it up, since I had pretty much ignored her from the start of the evening. “I can tell you the length of your hair that day ten years ago, the dress you wore, the color of your lipstick, everything about you from the first moment I saw you.”

  She looked at me. “If there ever was a line to knock a girl over,” she said, “man, you delivered it.” But I could tell she still didn’t quite buy it.

  “You wore a blue sequined top,” I said. “A black skirt. Pearl earrings. Pearl necklace. Your hair was shoulder length. Your lipstick was deep red.”

  Phyllis looked at me, speechless and blushing.

  After dinner I walked Phyllis and Pat outside. I had to go back to the office. They got in a cab. Just before it drove away, Phyllis rolled down her window.

  “What’s your name again?” she asked.

  In a Zone

  My office was really humming again. Tuesdays and Fridays, as always, were my major surgery days (face-lifts, implants, more extensive lipos). Wednesday mornings I would do small procedures: little biopsies, moles, smaller lipos, fat grafts, and wrinkle removal with collagen, Restylane, Botox, and fat. My other office hours were spent preparing for surgeries – going over photographs, making notes, creating a plan. When I wasn’t operating or preparing for surgery, I met with consults and involved myself in the nonsurgical end of the practice.

  I was lucky to have such a proficient staff. Giselle, my OR nurse, was responsible for preparing the operating room for the procedures, cleaning the surgical instruments, and wheeling the patients into the OR (I always prepped them for surgery). Lisa or Bob, my treasured anesthesiologists, were in charge of anesthesia and light sedation, and maintaining the crash cart, which included a defibrillator. To date, we have never had to use it, but it is always checked and ready to go. Stella and four other private-duty nurses were called on to help patients recover from major surgery (face-lift, breast reduction, abdominal surgery, multiple procedures) by staying with them for at least twenty-four hours postprocedure. For those who don’t care about cost, the nurses may stay longer. The nurses monitor the patient’s vital signs, check bleeding, hold ice packs, and adjust dressings.

  Tanya, my office manager in the Park Avenue office, and Denise, up in Westchester, handled all initial inquiries from prospective patients. Many of them had questions about my background, experience, where I’d graduated from, what my specialties were, etc. For patients already scheduled, one of the office managers would call them about a week before their operation to give instructions (for instance, no aspirin or vitamin E within seven days of the operation, because it promotes bleeding; no food or drink within eight hours before surgery; keep taking any heart medicines, stop taking certain antidepressives; etc.) and to tell them what to bring on the day of their procedure (loose clothing, hat or scarf, sunglasses). The patient was reminded to have someone to pick her up afterward. If the patients were especially nervous, I would speak to them. It’s the doctor’s job to calm pre-op fe
ars and allay worries about problems that could develop. Patients usually wanted to speak only with me if they had intimate questions they’d been too embarrassed to ask (e.g., When can we start having sex again, and what positions are forbidden for now? Is it okay to take Viagra within days of a face-lift?).

  I continued my work as an attending surgeon at Manhattan Eye, Ear & Throat Hospital. I was teaching a course at Cornell, in nerve anatomy.

  This was how I liked it. Busy.

  Phyllis George and I became friends (not romantically). We often dined together, and I enjoyed her company immensely. Across my twenty years in private practice, I’d developed a special weakness for women from Texas – Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Lubbock, Laredo. Each of them was elegant, genial, attractive, smart, sensationally feminine; at least, those in my practice are. It was no surprise to me that Phyllis was from Denton, Texas.

  Phyllis invited me to the Kentucky Derby, which she’d told me so much about. Since she’d once been Kentucky’s first lady, married to then-governor John Y. Brown, I couldn’t think of a better person to experience the event with.

  We flew out of New York on a private jet, and other friends of hers joined us. On the tarmac, I fell immediately into conversation with an Austrian gentleman named Helmut, who, it turned out, was married to Susan Lucci, the longtime star of All My Children. As his beautifully put-together soap-star wife approached in a gorgeous hat, I called out, “Guten morgen, Frau Lucci!” She was taken aback by the greeting, but Helmut beamed. Then Phyllis and Ivana Trump approached, both also in spectacular hats and dressed to kill – Phyllis in a light blue Escada suit, Ivana in a light gray Chanel with a broad collar.

  Ivana was immediately likable – funny, smart, great legs. It wasn’t long before our conversation turned to her ex-husband, then to marriage. “You know, I really don’t need to marry again,” said Ivana. “All I need is a cute guy.”