"Who Was Your Surgeon?"

Right up there with How much? is Who was your surgeon? These two questions dominate the plastic surgery conversation on social. Anytime someone posts about having a procedure—a facelift, in particular—inquiring minds want to know the surgeon’s name and their going rate. And increasingly: How did you afford them?

I get it: The name offers a jumping-off point if the price is right. But a name in the comment section of a stranger’s Instagram post reveals nothing of what went into finding, vetting, and selecting that surgeon. It’s a very personal process and the why tends to be more meaningful than the who.

When I see someone disclose their surgeon’s name, I want to learn all about the why. What was it that tipped the scales in a particular doctor’s favor?

When Carla Wright, RN, a facelift recovery specialist in Virginia and the founder of Restore Recovery Care, posted about her own surgery—a lower blepharoplasty with lower eyelid fat grafting and a temporal brow lift—I got curious about her process. As a plastic surgery insider with over 23 years of experience, Carla knows the landscape and has relationships with a number of renowned surgeons. (As some of you know, Carla routinely cares for Dr. Chance’s facelift patients in nearby Charlottesville.)

Ultimately, Carla chose to have surgery with Garrett Locketz, MD, a double board-certified facial plastic surgeon in Denver. By all accounts, Dr. Locketz is a thoughtful, ethical, down-to-earth guy, who checks all the boxes for training, experience, safety, reputation, aesthetic, bedside manner, and so forth. He also has great taste in cardigans. Suffice it to say, he’d be on my short list too, but I still wanted to know what it was about him that really clinched it for Carla.

Ahead, Carla shares what led her to Dr. Locketz, how she handles the post-op blues, and exactly how much we can expect to pay for recovery care.