Kerry Berlet, 51, started to feel like she looked “horrible” when she noticed her face at rest. She then turned to her husband, and New York-based plastic surgeon, Dr. Anthony Berlet, looking for the solution: a facelift.
In a conversation with PEOPLE, Dr. Berlet revealed that he had previously performed surgeries on his family members, including his wife, mother, sister, and twin brother. However, he said that deciding to do the facelift still felt like a significant moment.
“I don’t know if I was ready for it,” Dr. Berlet told the magazine. “I’ve done facelifts on my mother, on my sister. I have a twin brother, and I did his eyes, so it wasn’t completely unnatural to be working on a family member.
“I was talking to somebody [recently], and I was thinking, ‘I don’t think I really measured the consequences of it not going well.’ I don’t know if that was my ego or what. She had no question it was going be me.”
Kerry Berlet, who interviews her husband’s patients on her podcast, Once Upon a Surgery, put herself on his schedule, her husband jokingly told the outlet.
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The plastic surgeon performed a facelift and a lip lift on Kerry to “address the elongation in her philtrum,” reports PEOPLE. During the process, he was cautious not to change Kerry’s hairline and to make sure it hid the scars as well. Dr. Berlet revealed that owing to his wife’s fair skin tone, her scars were easy to hide.
The surgery was performed while Kerry was awake on Valium — fully aware but in a sedated haze. This allowed Kerry to slightly adjust her head position during the procedure, giving Dr. Berlet more range of motion.
Kerry’s surgery went as planned, Dr. Berlet revealed.
As part of her recovery, Kerry said she would massage her bruises to improve circulation. She also used coconut oil on her lips, iced green tea baths, and underwent red light therapy.
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Kerry also opened up about the most challenging part of her recovery process: sleeping upright, despite being a stomach sleeper. She revealed that when she slept with her face down once during her recovery, she was left “completely swollen.”
“As the day goes on, as you’re recovering, and I think you look better and better because as you’re upright. I used one of those airplane neck pillows and that helped. But I’m stomach sleeping now, I’m just dealing with it,” Kerry said.
Kerry’s husband, Dr. Berlet, believes that she looks “almost runway-ready” almost two and a half weeks after the process. “She looks amazing,” he said.
Dr. Berlet told PEOPLE that he is “proud” of the cosmetic work he did on his wife. Despite his initial concerns that Kerry would be a “different woman,” he feels that his wife now looks “ridiculously good.”
