When plastic and cosmetic surgeons are also plastic surgery patients, do they tell surgeons they need some movie star’s famous face and need to get up from the operating table looking like, say, a mature Brad Pitt or a middle aged Britney Spears?

Or, in hopes of looking even better and undergoing more enhancements, do they rush to audition for “The Swan” or “Extreme Makeover?”

Well, nobody knows the doctors’ reactions to hospital food but CosmeticSurgery.com staff asked a handful of cosmetic and plastic surgeons – who were also plastic surgery patients – why they had a particular procedure and how the surgery made a difference.

Elliot W. Jacobs, M.D. in New York City, specializes in chest sculpting for men, among other procedures, and is the designated surgeon who pared down the flabby chest of the 23-year-old man selected as finalist on MTV’s “I Want Arnold’s Chest” program. Dr. Jacobs knows about men’s flabby chests, (known medically as gynecomastia) because he himself has suffered from that condition as well some other pudginess.

“I was teased and shamed as a kid about my breasts and naturally did not want to take off my shirt or go to the gym,” says Dr. Jacobs. “Later, I had my love handles and some other overweight areas taken off by liposuction. It’s paid me back daily, because every time I look in the mirror and see a trim waistline, it gives me a natural high that puts a big, wide grin on my face.”

Consequently, Dr. Jacobs has crusaded for many years, speaking about gynecomastia. He wants more guys to know they are not freaks if they have a flabby chest or even some pointy, jiggly things that look like a 13-year-old girl in the full throes of puberty. He emphasizes over and over it is a medical condition that can be corrected by a trained surgeon. info@plasticsurgeonnewyork.com

Rick Noodleman, M.D., medical director at Age Defying Dermatology in Silicon Valley, California started losing his hair as a teenager.

“Right about the time my acne cleared up, my hair started falling out,” quips Dr. Noodleman.

Because his dad also had a chrome dome, the doctor knew he had inherited a set of genes programmed to cast the hair from his head as fast as water spilling over Niagara. So instead of joining the Bald Headed Men of America or Bald R Us (whose motto is “No plugs, rugs or drugs!”) Dr. Noodleman decided to have hair transplants done. In that procedure, tiny infant, downy hairs are plucked from the back of the patient’s head and replanted atop the pate.

“All the men in my family were bald so I had broken the family curse,” he says.

Dr. Noodleman additionally underwent Thermage, a nonsurgical process that tightened the skin on his forehead and on the fleshy part of his neck under the chin. That worked so well, and made the doctor looked so refreshed, he had Sculptura injected into those craggy folds that run between the corner of the nose and the edge of the mouth.

When Susan Schooler, now a physician’s assistant with Bergman Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery in Des Moines, Iowa, was a little girl, her father teased her about a bump on her nose. So she learned early to dislike her schnozz. Then, when she was fully grown (five-foot-two and 100 pounds), she found herself shopping for bathing suits in the little girl’s department because she did not have enough chest to fill the tops of garments in the women’s section.

So she had a nose job (rhinoplasty) to remove the bump and, eventually, breast augmentation. While her actual age is 45, most patients think she is about 35, Dr. Schooler says.

She says the implants and more womanly look make her feel like she has a new car she wants to show off.

Jacqueline Cheng, M.D., a plastic surgeon at the Center for Facial Rejuvenation in Los Gatos, California, knew that many patients of Asian backgrounds ask for double eyelid surgery (Asian blepharoplasty) which reduces the puffiness found in their upper eyelids. The procedure makes the healed eye look brighter and gives it a more open look while retaining the shape of a natural Asian eye. So Dr. Chen knew full well what it was like to be put under general anesthesia and awaken in the heavy fog of a drug hangover with a bruised, swollen and stitched face that resembles something carried away from combat.

“I know it’s the most natural thing in the world to awaken from surgery feeling sick, see yourself in the mirror and think, ‘Oh my god! What have I done? Why, oh why, did I do this?’” says Dr. Chen.

Because she is herself a surgeon, she stopped herself from calling her own surgeon “every hour” just after the operation to ask about the terrible way she looked immediately post-op.

Oh, yeah, the hospital food. How did the patient-doctors like it?

They’re not saying. Diplomacy, you know. Like, they have to work there.

Suffice it to say, nobody is ordering take out.

© 2005 HealthNewsDigest.com