You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know — Vol. 1
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I never had particularly heavy eyelids. That was never my thing. But somewhere in the last five years I started noticing something in photographs, my eyes looked smaller. Tired. Was I squinting, in EVERY picture?
I never mentioned it to my doctor. Never seriously considered doing anything about it. I filed it away in the same place I file most of the things that change after the birthdays start with a five.
It’s just part of getting older.
Or so I thought.
And honestly, even if someone had told me ahead of time, I am not sure it would have changed much. I liked sitting in the sun, I still do. I worked the night shifts that needed working, drank the cocktails that helped relieve some of the stresses of everyday life, ate the unhealthy foods at the barbecues without guilt, and even paid to lay in a tanning bed in the middle of winter when the weather was freezing and I desperately needed some vitamin D, knowing full well it was not the healthy thing to do; because sometimes that’s just what was needed at the time.
I lived the life I wanted to live and I have remarkably little regret about any of it.
What I did not have was information. Not about prevention. Not about solutions. Just honest information about what was possible that nobody thought to share.
Until a girlfriend did.
The Makeup Tutorial Rabbit Hole
I did what most women do. I started searching.
Not for surgery. Not for doctors. I was not even thinking in that direction. I was searching for ways to work with what I had — makeup tutorials, techniques, tricks for making hooded eyes look more open and awake. And there are plenty of them out there. Countless YouTube videos and Pinterest boards and Instagram reels all promising that the right eyeliner angle or the perfect eyeshadow placement would fix everything.
Some of them helped. A little. Temporarily. Until the humidity hit or the day got long or I caught myself in a mirror at the wrong angle and thought, yikes! I am spending a lot of time and energy managing something rather than addressing it.
But address it how? With what? That thought never went anywhere because my mind simply did not have a destination for it. Surgery felt extreme. Expensive. Vain even, and I have never been particularly comfortable with that word attached to something I wanted for myself.
So, I kept watching the tutorials. Kept trying the techniques. Kept filing it away under just part of getting older.
And then came girls’ weekend at Bev’s cottage.
The Conversation That Changed Everything
You know how it goes. The bags are dropped at the door. The first drink is poured. The particular exhale that only happens when you are finally somewhere safe with your people settles over the room.
And somewhere in that first real conversation, the kind that only happens when you are away from your regular life and the walls come down a little, one of my girlfriends mentioned it almost casually. Almost as a side note. She had just had her hooded eyelids corrected. A procedure called blepharoplasty.
And her insurance had covered it.
I put my drink down.
Covered it. As in her health insurance. As in not a cosmetic procedure she paid thousands for out of pocket but a medically necessary surgery that her insurance company recognized and approved, wtf?
Because here is what I did not know, what most women do not know, and what I want every single person reading this to know right now:
If your hooded or drooping eyelids are affecting your field of vision, the procedure to correct them is frequently covered by insurance as a medically necessary surgery — not a cosmetic one.
Read that again if you need to.
If your eyelids are heavy enough that they impair your ability to see clearly, affecting your peripheral vision, causing you to tilt your head back to see properly, making driving or reading more difficult, this crosses from cosmetic territory into medical territory. And medical territory means your insurance may cover it. I had zero idea my field of vision was even getting any smaller, and that, my friends, is what you call an a-ha moment!
I never knew that. My doctor never mentioned it. The makeup tutorials certainly never brought it up.
A girlfriend told me at a cottage on a Friday night, before the spinach dip was even out of the cooler!
And it changed everything.
What the Process Actually Looks Like — Step by Step
I want to walk you through this practically because when I first heard about it I had so many questions and not enough answers.
Step one — Call an optometrist. You do not need a referral. You do not need to explain yourself extensively. Simply call and say you are looking to have surgery for your hooded eyes. I was told on that very first phone call — “we know exactly what you are looking for.” That alone was reassuring, this was not their first rodeo.
Step two — The visual field test. Simple, painless, and relatively quick. You sit in front of a screen and a series of light blips appear from different directions. You tell the doctor the moment each light enters your field of vision. He then stands behind you, gently holds your brow upward to open your field of vision, and runs the entire test again measuring the difference in your response times between your natural resting position and your lifted position. Mine showed a twenty five percent difference, 25 percent! I had no idea.
Step three — Surgical consultation. The optometrist refers you directly to a surgeon who performs the blepharoplasty. My appointment was scheduled within a couple of weeks. By the time I arrived I had done my research and I knew this was something I wanted to move forward with.
Step four — Insurance verification. After your assessment with the surgeon, they provide you with specific code numbers. Call your insurance company directly with those codes to ask if this service would be covered, I called the same day I left the office. I was told on that phone call that my procedure would be covered. I received a letter in the mail confirming it shortly after.
Step five — Surgery day. The surgery was scheduled within a few weeks of my consultation. Mine was scheduled conveniently during a period of time I already had off, timing yours around existing plans or obligations is absolutely worth considering. With the suggested ice treatments and sleeping upright, a week is more than enough time, although some people still have some discoloration for a few weeks.
Surgery Day — What Actually Happens
The morning of surgery I took some Tylenol and a prescription painkiller, which is to be taken 1-2 hours prior to your procedure, however, in all honesty I would never describe anything about this process as painful. Not once.
I had someone drop me off. I did not see any reason to make it a bigger production than it needed to be. I was told the surgery would take one to two hours. Mine took fifty three minutes. When I came to about an hour later, I called Jay myself to let him know I was ready to be picked up.
That is the kind of surgery this is.
There are no bandages. My eyes were swollen and there were stitches running from one corner of each eye to the other which I will be honest looked pretty gnarly. But there was no pain. Just a slight tugging sensation from the skin tightening, nothing more than that.
Post Op Care — What Actually Helped
Post op instructions are straightforward: apply ice fifteen to twenty minutes of every hour during waking hours for the first two days. I did this pretty religiously. Nobody is setting an alarm in the middle of the night, just during the hours you are awake and moving around.
One thing worth taking seriously — sleep in a recliner or with your head significantly elevated for the first several days. This keeps swelling down and reduces bruising considerably.
Here is something your doctor will likely explain that I found genuinely useful to know ahead of time as well, many people experience redness and bruising UNDER their eyes after this surgery even though the procedure only involves the upper eyelid. The reason is simply gravity. The blood and bruising migrate downward naturally. Knowing that ahead of time means you will not be alarmed if/when it happens. I personally had almost none — I credit the recliner and the consistent icing.
The frozen peas nobody tells you about. I tried to be prepared for aftercare. But every ice pack in our freezer was either too large or too stiff to be useful for this particular purpose. I cannot tell you how relieved I was to find a bag of frozen peas. They conform perfectly to your face. They stay cold longer than you expect. They cost almost nothing and became my absolute staple.
There is one hazard — if you fall asleep with them on your face, they do get mushy. And once you refreeze mushy peas, they are simply no longer peas. Jay sweetly offered to go to the store for “more peas”, and just like a fresh new bag of frozen peas arrived, along with brownie points for the hubby.
For longer rest periods a good cooling eye mask, https://amzn.to/4ek3Waf, is gentler on the skin and wonderful for extended wear. But for that focused icing every hour? Frozen peas. Every time.
Sunglasses are non negotiable. Plan ahead on this one — and think carefully about what you actually need. I wanted/needed to keep my sunglasses on in public without taking them off to read anything. If you use/need readers, look for sunglasses with readers built in, I recommend ones with thicker sides, https://amzn.to/4egaYO9, these are absolutely worth having on hand before your surgery. I also discovered they make sunglasses that can go right over your glasses, https://amzn.to/43HHH90, I had no idea such a thing existed and again this covers the sides nicely so you are not self-conscious. Either way — have them ready before surgery day, not after.
Days One Through Four — Because Real Life Does Not Stop
Here is what my recovery actually looked like, and I share this specifically for the woman thinking she cannot do this, she cannot be down, and she surely cannot be seen.
The first day after surgery Jay and I went to lunch at an outdoor restaurant on the water. Springtime and good weather in Wisconsin do not last long and I was not going to let swollen eyelids keep me from either. Sunglasses on. Nobody looked twice.
The second day we went to a movie. Sunglasses on until the lights went down. That same evening Sean and Heather had a fire. Sunglasses on until it got dark. These are people who know me and love me so showing them my Mrs. Frankenstein look once the sun went down required zero explanation and generated significant entertainment value.
By day three I was out to breakfast with my in laws and had friends over for cards on our deck in seventy five degree Wisconsin perfection. Cards on the deck. Day three. Post surgery.
Day four is today, uneventful with the exception of working on this blog post. Even I need a chill day every now and again.
Day five— tomorrow — I go in at eight AM to have my stitches removed. My neighbors tell me I look like I am wearing pink eyeshadow. My eyelids are puffy. There is no redness anywhere else. There was never any real pain.
And when I look in the mirror right now, stitches in, pink eyeshadow puffiness and all — I can already see something that has been quietly missing for the last few years.
My eyelids.
Even through all of it, I’m just glad they’re back.
This Is Just Vol. 1
If you have been watching makeup tutorials and trying every trick and filing it away under just part of getting older, seriously, make the call to an optometrist or ask to have this assessment done with your annual eye exam. This is nothing new for them, just us!
There is so much more where this came from. Things I have learned, been told, stumbled onto, or discovered the hard way that I wish someone had handed me years ago. If you have something like that — a hidden gem of information that changed something for you — drop it in the comments. Let us build this list together.
You don’t know what you don’t know.
Until a girlfriend tells you.
And now I just did.
— Nikki
New here? Start from the beginning — there is a whole neighborhood waiting to meet you.
Bev’s Legendary Spinach Dip and Mom’s Beer Bread
Because no girls weekend story is complete without the food.
I should tell you that for years I assumed Bev’s spinach dip was some treasured family secret passed down through generations. The kind of recipe she would eventually share only with her closest people under sworn confidentiality.
Turns out it is on the back of a Knorr packet.
I respect it more, not less.
Bev’s Spinach Dip Follow the recipe on the back of one Knorr Vegetable Recipe Mix packet. Serve with bread, crackers, or vegetables. Accept all compliments graciously and reveal nothing.
Mom’s Beer Bread Three ingredients. One wooden spoon. Zero regrets. Definitely not keto friendly.
3 cups self rising flour ½ cup sugar 1 can or bottle of beer — room temperature, and this part genuinely matters
Mix gently with a wooden spoon until just combined. Do not overmix. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake at 375 degrees. Start checking with a toothpick at fifty minutes as it sometimes needs a little longer.
Outstanding toasted with butter the next morning — if there is any left.
Authentic Vibe Living 