'I Had Buccal Fat Removal, I Deeply Regret It'

Ever since I was a little girl, I suffered from body dysmorphia.

From the age of 7, my grandmother would dress me up like a doll every day in case we had visitors. I felt like she wanted me to be perfect. She would pinch my nose to make it smaller, and she would tap my chin to prevent me from getting a double chin.

At a very young age, I felt like I needed to change my appearance.

As the years passed, this affected the way I saw myself. Throughout my twenties, I became fixated on wanting dimples on my face.

In 2010, when I was 27, my plastic surgeon told me about a procedure called dimpleplasty, whereby artificial dimples can be created in your cheeks. I did it straight away. The operation only took 30 minutes and it cost $4,500 at the time.

On the day, I was put on local anesthetic and the doctor cut a hole inside my cheek. Then he ran a surgical thread through it to pull the hole inwards, creating a dimple effect.

After the operation, my face was very puffed up for a month and a half, and I found it very hard to eat. The procedure wasn't painful, but the recovery was uncomfortable, and I felt that I looked like a chipmunk from all the swelling.

Two months after my operation, my dimples had already faded. So, within that same year, I did the same operation three to four times. The dimple on my left cheek always showed, but the one on my right cheek barely showed, and when it did, it never stayed. I felt frustrated and unhappy.

My doctor told me that he couldn't do dimpleplasty on my face again because my face was not meant for it.

He then suggested removing my buccal fat in the hopes that my dimples would become more visible. But he also told me that he didn't recommend it because buccal fat holds your cheeks up.

He said: "Pammy, you're going to have to get fillers all the time when you get older."

At the time, I was young, and I didn't care. I just wanted dimples, so I went ahead with the operation.

Going into it, the thought of removing fat from my cheeks made me very nervous. No one around me knew about buccal fat removal at the time, so I didn't know what I was going into.

On the day, my doctor put me on local anesthetic and he cut open my cheeks from the inside. The fat in my left cheek didn't take long to come out. When I saw it, it was shaped like a ball.

Although I didn't feel any pain, I felt the sensation of him cutting through my cheek and wiggling a little.

But the buccal fat in my right cheek took almost an hour to come out. The doctor was tugging the ball of fat out of my cheeks, and it was very painful. At that moment, I thought, "I'm never getting anything done to my face, ever."

I felt very anxious and was sweating.

When my doctor finally took the buccal fat out of my right cheek, I saw that it was much bigger than the one on my right cheek, which explained why the surgical dimples that I'd gotten never stayed.

After the operation, my cheeks were swollen and I was in excruciating pain, especially on the right side of my cheek. I remember taking a lot of painkillers and being in bed. It felt like I slept for four days straight.

During that time, I drank a lot of smoothies and had a lot of soup until I was able to eat solid food again, and I couldn't go out for roughly two months because my face was insanely big to the point where I couldn't hide it.

I felt that I looked like a chipmunk. At that time, my son was about two years old, so I just stayed home with him. Because I've suffered from body dysmorphic disorder since I was little, what I saw in the mirror made me sad.

I had all these thoughts like: "Are my cheeks going to go back to normal? Why did I do this? My face was fine before."

My son's father also told me: "What did you do? Why do you keep doing things like this?"

During that period, I cried a lot because I didn't look like myself. My eyes were smaller because my cheeks were so plump.

My mom also asked me: "Why do you keep doing these surgeries to your face? You're going to mess up your face in the future."

At one point, she didn't want to see me because she is against Botox and plastic surgery. So, when she saw me after my buccal fat operation, she began tearing up because my face was messed up. I did all of that because I wanted dimples.

After the swelling had gone down, I did a dimpleplasty operation one more time. Luckily, my dimples lasted, but the one on my left cheek still faded after six years.

By the time I finally had dimples that lasted for a while, I was already over the whole situation because it was such a long procedure that took a lot of waiting.

I wouldn't recommend anybody to get their buccal fat removed or to get dimpleplasty either, because I saw myself a couple of years after the operation and I looked older than I was, and my nasolabial folds were deeper.

My doctor had told me that I was always going to need face filler because my buccal fat held up my cheekbones. He was right. Six years after the procedure, I began to get fillers a few times a year to hold my cheekbones up, which cost me from $900 to $1,300.

I was also traumatized by my operation because the buccal fat on my right cheek took so long to be removed. I didn't like how I looked after, and I didn't like staying home for so long and not eating certain things. It was all time-consuming and mentally draining.

From what I have learned over the years, I feel like if somebody has a really round face and wants a contoured effect, buccal fat removal may work for them. But I wouldn't recommend it to someone who already has a small face, like me, because as you get older, your face will drop and you will need fillers.

There are many other options out there that don't have to include getting your buccal fat removed. Masseter Botox gives the same effect, and it's not as time-consuming and life-changing.

For someone who is considering a buccal fat procedure, I would advise them that if they have six months to recover and do not have any commitments or obligations that require them to be out and about, then they can go ahead with it.

But generally, I would not recommend it at all. You should never get rid of the fat pads on your cheeks.

With age, everything tends to sag, and you may end up spending more on fillers every six weeks just to achieve the lifted look that the buccal fat used to provide before it was removed.

Pamela Dandan is a YouTuber and an author. She has just finished her first novel on her struggles with body dysmorphia.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

As told to Newsweek associate editor, Carine Harb.

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