Man, 70, receives facelift after retiring to bring “magic” into his life. See photos before and after (exclusively)

Gary enters a new phase in his life with a whole new look.

The 70-year-old pensioner, who lives in Kansas, knew that when he officially opened his working life, he wanted a new start with his appearance after being dissatisfied with how he aged. In short, he wanted to look in the mirror and love what he saw.

“I was just looking for a little magic in my life and didn’t try to go into this period of my life kind of fear,” Gary tells People. “It was like,” Oh God, I look so old. “So I thought if I could turn it around it would just be a more exciting time for me.”

Gary spent up to a year investigating who would be the right plastic surgeon to help him turn his appearance. He scrubbed the internet, read the patient’s reviews and finally landed on Dr. Mike Nayak from Nayak plastic surgery. Gary says St. Louis, Mo.-based doctors “checked each box” on their list of wishes and needs.

“Everything they said it was good for a plastic surgeon to do, he was right there,” Gary says of Dr. Nayak.

After a year at Dr. Nayak’s waiting list was Gary ready for his operation in March. He tells people that when he entered his consultation he had an idea of ​​what he wanted, but he worked with the doctor to make sure their visions were in line. In the end, Gary got a deep flat facelift, deep neck, forehead lift, lower blephaplasty with fat transport and a nasal plastic.

Dr. Nayak tells people that Gary’s main focus was his neck, but it is rare to just get a neck lift because the entire skin on the face and head is connected, which means you generally pick up everything at once.

“The neck runs into the lower face, flows into the forehead, so we did everything,” says Dr. Nayak and adds that he did not make a laser set (a joint finishing even skin tone and further rejuvenates the skin), because Gary was not interested. Instead, his skin kept the natural look for his age.

“There is a certain place of age, you can see that it traveled three inches,” says Dr. Nayak about Gary’s face. “You can use it almost like a marker and see how far things moved on him because he did not have laser rediscovered.”

Gary’s nose was a topic of discussion between him and the doctor – and became a huge knit point with social media comments as well. Dr. Nayak parts that Gary told him he had lived with his nose for 70 years and that was “enough”, he wanted to fix it. However, the plastic surgeon did not want to change it too much.

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“His nose is bigger, and I kept it that way. He wouldn’t have been the guy to swing for the fence and turn out this little little nose on a 70-year-old guy who is 6 meters long, it would not fit,” says Dr. Nayak. But lots of comments on Gary’s post on social media on Dr. Nayak’s side noted that his nose was still great. Both men have defended the result.

“It’s not dripping and crooked anymore, and I can say it because I have a dripping crooked nose,” says Dr. Nayak to People. “It’s a proud, masculine, suitable nose on his frame.”

After his five procedures with Dr. Nayak says Gary that his recovery was quite simple. He experienced no complications and was able to return home as planned after the necessary ten days in St. Louis. He admits that he looked a “small beat up” immediately after the operation, but he cured correctly according to the schedule.

In general, intense plastic surgery like this one takes a few months to heal, although Dr. Nayak has told people that everyone is a little different, and some people will bounce back faster than others. For Gary, he left the house after a month, even though he says he was still a little swollen.

“Two months later no one could really tell a lot. I still had a lot of swelling, most of me was really in my upper face and around my eyes. Then only gradually during the months it would disappear,” he says after about five months after the operation. “I’m still healing, so I’m really happy with what it looks like, but I think it will continue to improve for probably a year.”

After several years of sitting at virtual meetings and did not like what his face looked like, Gary says that he no longer fears something like the zoom call he had with people. He even jokes that several women commented on Dr. Nayak’s post about him, which he was very flattered.

“I liked some of the women’s comments about what I look like, and I was, ‘whoa, really? Thanks,'” he says with a little redness. Dr. Nayak adds that as soon as he began to share Gary’s story on his social media, the comments went crazy with people who said how good he looked.

But for Gary, everything comes back to his renewed sense of trust. And when it comes to the magic he was looking for?

He says, “I absolutely found the magic.”