Six weeks after my SMAS lift and my left cheek and earlobe are STILL numb. Is this nerve damage or does everyone get this?

The promised honest ledger begins, and it begins with the entry I didn't plan for. Lift was 10 March, SMAS with neck work, surgeon one from my autumn thread, and on the outside everything is going to plan. Jowls gone, neck behaving, bruising long finished.

But there's a numb region on the left, roughly from in front of the ear down over the jaw, and the earlobe itself feels like it belongs to somebody else. Not painful, just ABSENT. I put an earring in last week and felt nothing, which was so unsettling I took it straight back out. Right side is nearly normal already.

I knew to expect "some numbness" because everybody says that phrase, but nobody attaches a number of weeks to it. Six weeks feels long. My smile is symmetrical, my forehead moves, I've checked in the mirror more times than I'll admit. So is a numb patch this late a sign the nerve was actually damaged, or is this just the boring middle of normal? Follow-up is booked for late June and it feels a long way off.

Normal, and you're early. Mine took seven months to finish waking up, earlobe dead last, and I mean that both ways. The strangest part was the pins and needles phase around month four, which felt like something going wrong and was apparently the feeling coming back. Twenty-two months out now: everything present and correct except a coin-sized patch on the lobe that never fully reported for duty. I notice it about twice a year, when putting earrings in.

Adding the deep plane data point, since my ledger ran longer than Rosemary's. My whole cheek and the skin in front of the ear felt like a mask well past month three, and I'd braced for worse because I'd assumed the deeper operation meant more nerve danger. When I asked, my surgeon drew me the two systems: the nerves that move the face, which he was navigating around, and the small ones that feel, which get disturbed in any lift no matter the technique. The numbness I had was the second kind, and he was entirely unbothered by it.

Timeline for the pile: mask feeling faded around month five, itchy crawling sensations through the summer as patches switched back on, and by about month ten I'd stopped keeping track. Now, past a year and a half, the only leftover is an earlobe that feels slightly further away than the other one. Nobody warns you the lobes are last, but apparently the lobes are always last.

vivienne58 said:

is a numb patch this late a sign the nerve was actually damaged, or is this just the boring middle of normal?

January lift here, so we're nearly cohort-mates, and yes: numb jaw edge, numb lobe, left worse than right, the full set. What sent me spiralling was a woman in a group elsewhere who announced, with total confidence, that whatever feeling hasn't come back by MONTH THREE is gone for good. I hit month three two weeks ago and promptly spent an evening pressing my earlobe like a doorbell.

Reading Rosemary's seven months above has already lowered my blood pressure, but can someone qualified please rule on the three-month thing? Because it's repeated all over the internet like it's carved on a tablet somewhere.

The direct answers first. Vivienne, a numb patch over the jaw and earlobe at six weeks is expected after a facelift, not a sign of damage, and Cheryl, the three-month rule you have been quoted is simply wrong for sensation. It is a garbled version of a real figure that applies to something else, so let me separate the two systems, as Annelise's surgeon did.

Movement is carried by the facial nerve and its branches, most relevantly the frontal branch to the brow and the marginal mandibular branch to the lower lip. Temporary weakness of one of these after a facelift is uncommon, and when it happens it usually recovers within 3 to 4 months, which is where that figure belongs. Permanent injury is rare, around 0.1% or less, one in a thousand. Vivienne, your mirror checks have already told you the useful thing: a symmetrical smile and a moving forehead at six weeks mean this system is not your problem.

Feeling is a different story on a different clock. The numb territory you are all describing, the jaw edge, in front of the ear, the lobe, largely belongs to the great auricular nerve and to small skin branches that are unavoidably disturbed when the skin is lifted, in a SMAS and a deep-plane lift alike. Sensory nerves regrow at roughly a millimetre a day, so sensation returns over months, not weeks: commonly 6 to 12 months for the bulk of it, sometimes 18 for the last patch, and the earlobe genuinely is last because it is furthest along the regrowing supply. Rosemary's pins and needles were the classic sign of that regrowth, and her permanent coin-sized patch is the honest exception case: a minority keep a small numb area on the lobe indefinitely. I have set out the full arithmetic, haematoma rates included, in facelift risks and complications for anyone weighing these numbers before surgery rather than after.

Annelise's other point is worth keeping: the deep-plane dissection does run closer to the facial nerve branches in places, which is a reason to choose an experienced surgeon rather than a reason to fear the technique, and reviews have not shown it meaningfully riskier in the right hands. What none of this replaces is examination. Vivienne, your surgeon can map the patch at your June follow-up and compare it visit to visit, which is the proper measure of progress. And anyone whose face develops new weakness, a smile or brow that moves less than it did, should be calling their surgeon promptly rather than posting here.

Ledger update, as promised. Follow-up was Friday: surgeon traced the numb area with the blunt end of a pen and it has shrunk to maybe a third of what I drew for you all in April. He was pleased to the point of being slightly bored by it, which I've decided is the reaction you want from a surgeon.

The pins and needles arrived mid-May, right on Rosemary's schedule, and I can now feel an earring going in on the left, faintly, like news arriving from a distant country. Between that and the neck, month four of this ledger reads: no regrets, one absent-minded earlobe, and a standing thank you to this thread for talking me off the ceiling in April.