When LeAnn Hawks decided to join the wave of people documenting their facelift journeys on TikTok, she made one rule for herself: no glamorizing, no filters, and no hiding the hard parts. At 45, she felt her face no longer matched how she saw herself—and if she was going to document the transformation, she wanted to show the full truth, even the parts most people avoid posting.
In July, Hawks traveled from Arizona to Tijuana, Mexico, where she underwent a deep plane face and neck lift, upper and lower blepharoplasty, a tail brow lift, and fat transfer to her face and lips. The six-and-a-half-hour surgery was performed by Dr. Israel Espino. She expected swelling and bruising—standard warnings for any major cosmetic procedure—but nothing prepared her for the shock of those first post-op hours.
About a month later, she finally posted the photo taken in her hospital bed. In the TikTok clip, she nervously admits she isn’t sure she can show the picture. She then reveals the unfiltered selfie: severely swollen eyes, thick bruising, grayish skin, and long incision lines stretching across her jaw and neck. TikTok users reacted instantly.
One viewer wrote, “No because I would’ve thought my face was about to fall off.” Another added, “The gasp I gasped.”
Hawks says she felt the same panic. Despite researching facelifts online for weeks, nothing she saw came close to the reality she experienced.
“‘What the hell have I done?’ That’s all I could think,” she tells PEOPLE. “This is my face. This isn’t like a tummy tuck where I can cover it.”
But rather than retreating offline, the shock motivated her to be even more transparent.
“I wanted people to see the ugly, horrible side of it,” she explains. “I didn’t want people thinking something was wrong with them. This level of swelling really is normal for some.”
The first week, she says, was the most emotionally overwhelming. She remembers “panicking” as she watched the swelling shift daily. By day nine, she began to recognize hints of her old self.
“I was like, ‘Okay… she’s still in there.’”
Hawks’ decision to get surgery followed a major weight loss that she felt dramatically aged her face.
“It almost felt like overnight my face just melted off,” she recalls. Years of sun exposure only worsened the issue. As a travel nurse living in Hawaii, she spent long hours at the beach—and never wore sunscreen.
“I didn’t use sunscreen a day in my life,” she admits.
Now several months into recovery, Hawks says the hardest part is behind her. She still has numbness along her hairline and around parts of her face, but the bruising has faded, her swelling is nearly gone, and the compression wrap is off. Her focus now is long-term skin health.
“I’m heavy-duty on skincare and sunscreen,” she says. “I’m doing everything I can to protect my investment.”
Her unfiltered honesty has turned her into a trusted voice on TikTok—someone willing to reveal the side of cosmetic surgery most people never show.
