Opinion
 

Surgery craze glosses over harsh reality

by Lynn Meyer

Maybe, when it comes down to it, I'm to blame. Or at the very least, people like me are to blame. The ones who tremble at pictures of Michael Jackson and Pamela Lee, who switched off The Swan in disgust and have remained blissfully oblivious to shows such as I Want a Famous Face and Extreme Makeover.

Hearing the phrase "plastic surgery" is more likely to illicit a giggle than anything else, but there is a side to plastic surgery that television does not show, and it is not funny. I'm not talking about the swelling -- Fox and MTV parade the discolored after-surgery zombies and flash the gore of gutting up someone's insides. These images are promptly followed by a happy ending starring a healthy, beaming (and usually a bit delusional) modern-day Cinderella. What they don't show are cases in which the zombie never rises from the table, never blooms from bloody mess to beauty.

Possible complications in cosmetic surgery include abnormal heart rhythm, airway obstruction, blood clots, brain damage, heart attack, malignant hyperthermia, nerve damage, stroke, temporary paralysis and death. Still sound sexy?

Admittedly, a patient's chances of dying during cosmetic surgery are only 1 in 90,000 according to the National Safety Council. However, unlike most medical procedures, plastic surgery is not becoming safer. A recent survey performed by plastic surgeon Frederick M. Grazer and anesthesiologist Rudolph H. de Jong found that the death rate from liposuctions from 1994 to 1998 was 20 times higher than elective surgery as a whole. A patient's chances of dying during liposuction are now actually estimated to be 1 in 5,000. As liposuction leaves the operating room and moves into storefront clinics, more endings are taking place in the cemetery rather than in the Prince's Palace.

It's one thing to wince at the misshapen face of Michael Jackson, but another to know a 13-year-old boy made motherless by a blood clot brought on by liposuction It is not enough to tune out Extreme Makeover and scoff at the Botox bonanza. It's time to stop accepting that "some people want to look like Barbie and that's OK." It is time to seriously reconsider what beauty is, and for that matter, how important our time here on earth is compared to how we look in it.

Meyer, a columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at dccampus@mail.uh.edu.