Cosmetic Surgery

The voters are likely to get what they deserve The two conventions we just witnessed did not reflect well on us, the voters. The parades of old friends and family members of the presidential candidates, not to mention the pseudo-psychological analyses of the candidates' personalities by the news media, reinforced the notion that we see the electoral process as little more than a televised soap opera. Perhaps that is true. It is a sad commentary on us that a candidate with the stature of Al Gore finds it necessary to apologize for talking "too much substance and policy" and for not being "the most exciting politician.

People thinking about cosmetic surgery face a daunting array of questions: Is this right for me? Can I afford it? How do I find a doctor qualified in the procedure I want - and how do I even decide what I want? Experts recommend thinking carefully and researching thoroughly before moving ahead. When selecting a surgeon, it can be helpful to seek out others who had the same procedure. Great-looking friends who had face-lifts may be able to recommend good surgeons. Make sure that you are comfortable with the doctor and his or her staff, and that all your questions are being answered.

As she lay on the operating table, Tippen Correra, 58, took some deep breaths to relax in preparation for her face-lift. She had swallowed a Valium given by the nurse earlier. Her surgeon, Zaki Ftaiha, was injecting a four-inch needle of local anesthesia along her right jaw. The five shots of lidocaine briefly smarted. "I'm going to test you now," said Ftaiha, as he lightly traced his scalpel along her neck and face in his office operating room on North Presidential Boulevard in Bala Cynwyd.

Two words explain the current explosion in cosmetic surgery: baby boomers. Experts say a number of factors are responsible for the dramatic and continuing rise in a range of pricey procedures. All the major reasons are somehow related to the generation born between 1946 and 1964: The economy has been healthy for an extraordinary stretch, and boomers are at the peak of their earning power. Boomers have long raised the notion of looking and feeling fit to an art form, from exercise regimens to diet pills.

Tippen Correra looked in the mirror in the cosmetic surgeon's waiting room in Bala Cynwyd. She gazed at the heaviness under her chin, the detested jowls that had been forming since her 50th birthday. She examined the wrinkles over her lip and the recent droopiness of her upper eyelids. They made her eyes seem small. "I feel young, but my face looks really old," she said, turning away from the mirror. "I feel that I have a lot of energy, but I'm really starting to age. " It was Correra's last look at that particular face before her face-lift.

Christopher Reitano was 44 and quite chipper most of the time, but he was always getting sympathy from people he met. "Do you have a cold? How are your allergies?" they would ask. Reitano was getting awfully self-conscious. "Basically, my eyes were baggy, especially on the upper eyelids. It was starting to get aggravating," said Reitano, who lives in Voorhees and is an international service manager for Siemens, the global electronics firm. "I decided to do something about it. " What Reitano did nearly four years ago is what a lot of baby-boom men are doing these days - heading for the plastic surgeon.

Carmen DiMario, a West Chester plastic surgeon who pleaded guilty to income-tax evasion and defrauding insurance companies for 10 nose operations, was sentenced to five months in prison yesterday and ordered to pay more than $45,000 in fines and restitution. In May, the 49-year-old doctor admitted that between 1991 and 1995, he sent letters to health-insurance companies falsely saying that a patient needed nose surgery due to an accident. The work was really done for cosmetic purposes that were not covered by the insurance.

Apparently, the cold cucumber masks and alpha-hydroxy lotion haven't worked. So first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton is considering plastic surgery to freshen her tired face, the New York Post has reported. Hillary was spied - in dark glasses and a navy-blue pantsuit - sneaking into a top Manhattan plastic surgeon's office recently. She reportedly had an hourlong consultation. She's considering an eyelift to get rid of the bags and crow's feet, and a chin tuck, to remove the pinch of loose skin from her jawline, sources said.

The firefighters could hardly believe that she had gotten out alive, let alone that she had carried one, and possibly more, of her pups to safety. When her home, a ramshackle wooden bungalow in Hainesport, Burlington County, began to burn on the snowy morning of Jan. 8, it went up fast. The two-alarm blaze, which started when a kerosene heater tipped over, killed her 79-year-old owner, 17 other dogs and an opossum. Even during the chaos outside, the mutt that escaped caught everyone's eye. Tufts of burned fur hung from her body, and her normally floppy ears stood out like wings.