With one day left of the India trip, I broke the news to my daughter. Her reply was a notably cool “You know what I think.”

And I do. Obviously.

She thinks that face lifts, any type of cosmetic procedure really, just plays into the patriarchy by creating an artificial and largely unattainable scale of beauty.

She’s not wrong.

But it also isn’t very helpful when you’re staring at your face in the mirror wondering where your own face has disappeared to over the last ten years and, let’s face it, also wondering when you turned into your mother. The latter is especially damning if you didn’t like your mother very much. I didn’t. Not at all.

So I did my research. Sort of. And decided I’d go ahead anyway, planned procedure for just three days after my return from the trip. Rather foolishly, I thought that it would give me less time to panic, which it did, but totally ignored the impact of jet lag.

General anaesthesia plus jet lag make for an especially miserable recovery time.

I also ignored one basic fact: what you see in the mirror is not what other people see and part of that is an over-familiarity that leads you to ignore certain parts. I don’t see my eyes particularly even though I’m regularly told how unusual a colour they are. I don’t really see the uneven patch of colour on my nose where my glasses lie and the sun catches in the Summer. I don’t see the looser bits of my jaw and cheek that soften the lines and my chin, making my face more oval than round in shape.

Part of the problem is an oversensitivity to certain things, usually things that remind you of people you don’t like (think angry mothers, unhappy grandmothers etc)

I do see the damn marionette lines that stretch from the edges of my mouth down to my chin. I see the frown lines between my eyebrows but have chosen to be okay with them. And the lines around my eyes I can rationalise as a life full of fun and laughter.

So four days post-operation and I look like a demented Frankenstein chipmunk, My face is swollen and stapled to the back of my head and though some of this will settle down when the stitches are removed, it is clear that whatever it delivers finally, this facelift will not resolve much of the visual conflict I literally faced. It will leave me with something different. Still not ‘my’ face.

My eyes are still there though the lines underneath are stretched thinner even though the surgeon didn’t touch them directly, as are the lines between my eyebrows. I still have a patch on my nose that’s a slightly different colour to the rest of my skin and the lines from my nose to mouth are softened but basically unchanged.

But my face isn’t the usual oval shape at the moment. It’s a sort of chipmunk heart shape with a pointier chin and narrower cheeks. My marionette lines are maybe half the size (yes, I compared the before and after photos with forensic obsession) but they’re still there. It turns out that when you really search up what can be changed with surgery, these lines are amongst the least and last to change.

Maybe when the stitches are out and the swelling goes down somewhat then my face will return to a more oval shape. I’m certainly hoping that the rolls (let’s pretend they’re wrinkles) running down the side of my face disappears,

My daughter was right.

Let’s face it, we all knew that she was from the very beginning.