Villar Plastic Surgery

08/16/2025

I was in surgery when one of the nurses said her child was struck in the face by a dog leash that snapped. I don't attend the E.R. because of a law (HB 221) that makes it a criminal offense to bill the patient ($10,000 fine, loss of license, and or criminal charges). I no longer am required to cover the Emergency Room, but I still love the challenge. Every patient is different.

Therefore, if I am available, I see the emergency patients at the office. I take care of the families of nurses, police, firefighters, veterans, and my patients who appreciate my skills. it is still fun and rewarding.

05/13/2025

ELIANA MARGARITA MARK VILLAR I say her name every Mother’s Day. I can’t believe it has been so many years when I wrote this.
My mother died today. I feel guilty that I did not call or see her enough. She was so proud of me but I am not sure she knew how proud I was of her. She and my father scrimped and saved to put me through college and medical school. They came to all my high school football and lacrosse games, but she missed many of my college games. Decades later she revealed that she could not afford clothing suitable to attend. She never complained. In fact she went to night school for eight years to become a teacher.

She graduated the same year I graduated from medical school. We were so proud of each other!

Her first job was second graders in New York City. On the first day she stayed late to work on the next days plan. A security guard found her. “”Are you crazy, you could get hurt here” and escorted her out to safety. Her class was uncontrollable due to a little chunky bully. She grabbed him by the shirt and pinned him up against the wall, told him to cut the crap, then led him back to his seat. Order was restored. From then on the class viewed her as leader of the gang. We often joked, “do that today and you’d be doing time in prison.”
On the streets of New York, as a teenager, she blackened the eye of a bully that beat up her little brother. The boy’s father came to her apartment with the bruised bully in tow. “Look what your daughter did to my son”, he screamed at her father. Grandpa’s eyes bulged, and a large vein on his forehead engorged, as he looked at the young man and replied, ”If a little girl did that to my son, I would be embarrassed to let anyone know.” The man left, slapping his son in the back of the head.
She was a tomboy, jumping across rooftops, latching on to vehicles on roller skates, and protecting her little brother and sister. Yet she was beautiful and innocent looking.
When harassed, she would approach an Irish police officer in a perfect Irish brogue in a defenseless tone, “that boy is bothering me sir“. End of bothersome boy.

Mom spoke French, Spanish, and English flawlessly. She took me to Spain by ship when I was 8 years old. We zigzagged from Gibraltar to Madrid then stayed with grandpa on my father’s side, in a small town, Santander. Dad came up for a week and they went to Paris while I continued at the Hacienda. It was a grand 4-month adventure for a boy of 8 shared with a mother who inspired me to dream big and share her thirst for knowledge. She encouraged, “find something you love, and strive to be the best at it.”
At 35 I was a general surgeon, trauma surgeon, and plastic surgeon. Mom called, “When are you going to get a job, already?” But mom you told me to find something I love and be the best at it. She laughed, ‘I must have forgotten the other important secret of life, GET A JOB.”
A few months ago, I wrote an article about how my mother and father sacrificed and inspired me to be the man I am today in Around Town Magazine. Father was 93 and mom 88. On a Monday when the magazine arrived, I FED-EXed a few copies over night to my parents in New York. That night I got a call from dad. “ Your mother is babbling incoherently and stumbling around the house”. Put her on the phone I insisted. She did not know who I am, and her speech was impaired. I hung up and called the Long Island Fire Department to pick her up and get her to the hospital for a possible stroke. I thought, all these years I never told them how much they inspired me. My character, my integrity, my thirst to absorb the world around me, the genetic gifts they bestowed on me and the opportunities to make maximum use of them, the ability to wake up every morning eager to go to work because I love what I do, the opportunity to make a living by helping my fellow man instead of taking, all I owe to them. Now mom would never know, because I procrastinated.
My mother was hospitalized near death. Fortunately she was diagnosed with carbon monoxide poisoning and recovered. She got to read the article. I wept with relief.
My parents always told us they loved us and I have always done the same for my children and grandchildren. It is too late after death.
My father said he does not know if there is a God, but if there is He is a God of mercy. Live your life by treating others the way you would have others treat you. If there is a God he will let you in. If there is no God, you will have lived a noble life.
Mom, Dad, and I lived as givers not takers. We are at peace either way.
Dad is 94 this December. I love you dad.
Mom and dad wanted to be cremated without fanfare. Mom will be cremated but there is an ancient belief according to John Wayne.
“If someone remembers your name, you are immortal”
ELIANA MARGARITA VILLAR MARK
We will remember your name

03/10/2025

My friend from Aspen. Here for two days

12/28/2024

A MACGYVER FACELIFT MADE MY DAY

A HEALTHY 50 yr old woman presented for a facelift complaining of an accentuated roll when she looked slightly down. No previous surgery. Thin and excellent health.

Examination revealed a horseshoe dense crease from one cheek, under the chin, and into the opposite cheek. It was densely adhered to the underlying muscle. Very unusual!

There was an asymmetrical roll of fat, worse on the left than the right. This was tethered to a dense crease in her neck just above the thyroid.

On an otherwise thin neck and face, these two points of fixation caused a dramatic bunching up of the skin and fat in a downward gaze.

This was an interesting challenge with a high chance of disappointment FOR PATIENT AND SURGEON.. We would have to MacGyver this one, and my only hope was that her young elastic skin would be forgiving to my improvisation.

Cosmetic and reconstructive surgery are essentially engineering problems, of form and function.

It became obvious that we had to release the points of fixation. Under the chin was a simple excision and release. But the cheeks were over branches of the submandibular nerve and an excision scar could not be hidden. If the entire horse shoe fixation was excised, it would contract and worsen the deformity. It had to be broken up.

The face had been injected with Marcaine with epinephrine and TXA (tranexamic acid) prior to prepping and draping. This allows time for vasoconstriction of the blood vessels due to the epinephrine. TXA counters the bodies release of natural blood clotting dissolvers (fibrinolytics). This diminishes bleeding and bruising.

To release the cheek adhesions without incisions, we used an 18 gauge needle. The skin is punctured and the needle tip is swung back and forth as a knife cutting the attaching fibers from the muscle fascia with a crunchy sound.

After dealing with the horse shoe fixations, we started the face lift. The skin and subcutaneous fat was lifted off the muscle fascia of the cheeks and neck.

The redundant fat was scissor dissected to an appropriate thickness, then the remaining fat is sucked off the muscle fascia with a flat spatula lipo cannula facing down only, to avoid dimpling of the skin.

It was noticed that there was an unusual amount of fat under the platysma muscle accounting for the majority of the roll deformity. A thin harvester cannula was used to remove and sculpture the neck under the muscle. Removing too much fat under the muscle in the midline can be a disaster!

The neck adhesions had been removed when the neck was dissected across the midline removing the deep creases as well. Deep neck creases are improved by releasing their dense attachments to the Platysma.

The neck muscle was then pulled laterally with absorbable sutures to optimize the neck angle. A SMAS plication was then performed with permanent sutures to pull back the jowls at the muscle level, and this was extended down securing the neck.

Every facelift is different, and you have to think on your feet to draw from experience and intuition. After all surgeries there are the variation and unpredictability of the patient’s healing genetics. Great surgery can heal badly, and bad surgery can heal miraculously? That is why I wake up every day, excited to get to work in the never ending quest for “a better way”

The excess skin was then marked, trimmed and sutured. Care is taken not to pull it upward creating an oriental deformity of the eyelids. Jokingly called the BOCA face-lift.

Tiny 7 French drains are placed bilaterally with bulb suction. This creates negative pressure in the wound, sucking the tissues together, and decreasing the chance of bleeding. If bleeding occurs, it is sucked out.

If a patient calls at night complaining of pain on medications, I go to their home to check them. Facelifts should not hurt, so they probably have a hematoma (blood pooling under the skin). This should be addressed immediately.

All patients are checked the next day to identify and nick problems in the bud.

In this case, I was amazed by the result. It was like hitting a baseball out of the park with your mom and dad watching! Euphoria.

Similar to the feeling I had when Trump won the election and saved America.

09/14/2024

FUELING A STEARMAN
The gas tank on a Stearman is located in the center section upper wing. It technically holds 46 gal but since the tank is angled on the ground I have not been able to fill it to max capacity. There is a spring loaded gas cap secured by an internal chain to keep it from falling in the cockpit. If that cap is not secured, the flow of air over it will suck the fuel out and spray the cockpit in flight. Bad! Same for oil cap on the left side. Oil will be sucked out in flight! Also bad. 4.6 gal capacity.

Young limber pilots climb up the front to fuel the tank. Step on the tire, then a foot hold on the landing gear, then a foot hold above the primer and crank support, then there is a walkway on top of the cowling. Limber legs and stretchy pants are required🙄🙄

Older stiff pilots with tight pants chose to fill the tank from the back. They stand in the front cockpit seat. They place the hose in, and fill the tank watching the red marker in a fuel gage under the tank. There is a cork float inside connected by a thin rod to the red marker. However, when the marker reaches full, the tank is not really full. So now you have to climb up on the side panels to be able to look in the filler hole. The side panel has a reinforcing plate where it is screwed to the next panel. You must step here to avoid damaging the side panel. But you can easily slip.

On long legs, I fill the tank to the very rim to maximize my safety margin. But with two hands on the fuel handle, balance is precarious and squeezing too hard on the handle can propel you backward.

This happened without consequence in Douglas Ga on the way up. Just fell into the seat.

But fueling up at Galesburg, I squeezed to hand and fell back on my windshield, shattering it! Oops🙄🙄🙄. I tried to tell everyone that it was a bird strike.

But these are all experienced Stearman pilots and restorers. They all looked at the shattered glass pattern. “ That bird had really big ass cheeks 😜” they said smiling knowingly.

No one had a spare window, so my plan was to remove the front one and put it in the back to get home. Marina pulled out the tool box and removed the screws and the back frame front and back. Dr Karpinsky had given us duct tape which was essential in saving the Apollo 13 astronauts.

She taped the broken window front and back so it could be removed with filling the cockpit with broken glass. We pulled the glass the used more tape to pick up micro shards in the dash board. These could blow into your eyes while flying.

As luck would have it, there was a glass shop in town. It was 3 pm. We took the front glass and asked if they could make a new one. Sure, one week. We need it tomorrow. “3 of our four employees are out tomorrow and we are backed up”, the lady explained. It was $ 75 for the glass.

I pulled out a hundred dollar bill. Please tell one of your guys he can have this if he comes in to make the window. We have to leave Sunday morning.

In New York she would have snatched the $100 and demanded two more. But in the Midwest most people are kind and honest. She took the $100 and said this will cover everything. I picked it up the morning at 9! Good people are everywhere around here. Marina invited her and her Peeps to the Airshow but they did not come due to previous plans. So we installed the windows.

I was gifted a wooden plank that goes across the cockpit to stand on, but my seat got in the way. So I was going to re engineer it when I got home

09/09/2024

So I stopped at Douglas GA to spend the night and visit Tom Reilly who was standing on the tarmack waiting. Tom trained me in aircraft restoration and signed off all my work.

we stopped by his hangar where he is doing work on a B-17. in the main hangar is the B-17 being built for the owner of NAPA auto parts. waiting for Marina to catch up in two hours.

09/09/2024

How cool is it to see your airplane on the arrivals and departure board at an airport! N52588. Lebanon TN. Came in at 6:30 Sunday . Airport was closed and surrounded by barbed wire. I imagined throwing my leather jacket over the wire and climbing over as temperatures hit 40.
I thought I was trapped for the night. Was waiting for Marina to arrive in the truck two hours behind me.

A small tail dragger (airplane with the third wheel in the tail). was doing touch and goes. The pilot saw me taxying around and asked if I needed help. Yes, I am imprisoned here. He said park and I will help you out after we put our plane in the hangar across the field.

A Jeep with open rail doors pulls up. Father and son. Father drops the kid off to help me and drives off to close the hangar.

Was that you landing that taildragger, I asked suspiciously. Yes sir he said. Those were great three point landings. How old are you? The frizzy red haired munchkin said 13. How long have you been flying? Three years, he said with a grin from ear to ear, radiating pride and satisfaction.

Dad came and dropped me off at Out Back Steak House to wait for Marina and the dog to pick me up In about two hours.

The next day I told the lady at the FBO that I was almost a prisoner at the airport last night. She said there is an escape gate I never would have found. And you are lucky ,we closed the runway at 6 for repairs but forgot to put out the marker. I came in about 6:30. I topped off with 29.8 gallons 100LL, two quarts of oil and fully charged navigation equipment.

Marina trailered a four wheeler, toolbox, clothing, coolers, spare parts, and a ladder 1200 miles with the dog. Only guy at Galesburg with his own pit crew (ground crew in aviation)!

09/04/2024

This battery pack saved my ass. ForeFlight is an amazing navigational app that I have on my iPad. I did all my flight planning on it. I ordered charts as a back up, but they did arrive on time. so ff I went with ForeFlight it tells me when aircraft are too close, when restricted areas are active with military operations, exactly where I am and the direction I am going, my track and direction, and all airports I can divert to. it has 3D pictures of all the airports.

so I am heading up to Douglas Georgia and about half way I notice my battery life is down to nine! this means that if this iPad shuts down, I am lost. no headings, no airports to divert to, no control tower frequencies! lost in space. there were no airports in sight. if you see an airport, you can set your transponder to emergency and fly over the airport. they have a light gun that can signal you when to land. but I was nowhere near an airport I could see. I took a note pad out and wrote down my direction of flight (heading) then the frequencies of Douglas. then a few nearby airports as power went to five!

as the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention, I recalled that the GoPro camera on my helmet was attached to a large axillary battery pack. I pulled the wire from the camera and plugged it into the iPad. the power slowly went up and hovered at thirteen. I would turn the iPad off and fly ten minutes on heading then check my progress and shut down again. this went on for 1.25 hours as power rose to 24. when I reached Douglas, I circled to check the grass and landed. the airport was desolate and my mentor Tom Reilly was out of town.

it is very difficult for one person to fill the plane with self serve gas. you put in your credit card and chose more gas than you need, 40 in my case. then you ground the plane with a long cable from a spring loaded spool. then you have to have to pull the gas hose from its spool with a ratcheting sound. Then you have to carefully put the hose through the wires and lay it on the wing without scratching anything. then you climb into the front cockpit an open the gas cap on top of the upper wing. then you pull up the nozzle and stick it in the hole. then you climb up on the top of the seat back so you can look in the hole to fill to the very top. then everything in reverse order. a pain in the ass at my age.

as I am anticipating this nightmare, a black RV pulls up. Chris Rou, an old friend pulls up and helps me fuel the plane. at the other airports except one, I received help. my mother used to say, it is better to be lucky, than to be good.

when I laid over in peach tree aerodrome, downloaded Foreflight on my phone for backup. but had this on battery pack too. Power consumption is high because iPad is on full brightness to see the map in the cockpit due to glare.

09/04/2024

Some thoughts on fog. Bad s**t! I used to fly my Stearman to Rockport Maine to attend film school work shops for about ten years before a tornado in Wilma destroyed our hangar and plane. Up there I encountered fog banks. You could see fog roll in from the sea. It had a flat top and you could fly over it and it had a well defined front wall. You were wise to carry plenty of extra fuel in case you had to divert if it rolled over your airport.

On my first encounter, I came to rock port and the weather report was broken clouds. I had a primitive GPS with a centered needle that marked your course but no maps. As I flew over the airport, it was sunny above and a fog bank below. As I circled above, I searched for alternate airports. This was my first trip to Maine. Suddenly I saw a small hole in the clouds and the numbe 14 was below. Today it is 13 Due to shifts in magnetic North.

My instructor, Wild Bill Voorhes who trained pilots in WWII taught me how to cut the engine and go into a steep spiraling dive in case you ever need to break through a small hole in the clouds. I dove down and landed. The real fog was a mile out and thes densely packed clouds preceded it. I have seen this in the Hampton from a boat on Long Island, but never in Florida.

But I encountered a deadlier version in the mountains . I was flying north in clear weather an encounter a thin bank of clouds ahead at 35 hundred feet it was hazy below so I climbed over ir at 4500 ft and it was clear ahead with broen clouds, but then solid overcast ahead with the sun above. The temptation is to fly over it, but the danger is that you cannot get back down over your destination which was reporting minimal VFR. So I found a hole and spiraled down into the haze. No big deal. We call that scud running in Florida (low cloud ceiling with haze) just watch out for towers.

As I flew threw the haze at 2500 feet, it became denser and denser until I hit Zero viabilit. This is terminal in a Stearman. We have no instruments with artificial horizon. I made a 180 degree turn hoping not to lose spatial orientation and broke back out! I allowed the Adrenalin rush to subside and searched for the nearest airport in Foreflight (a miraculous new flight map technology). I circled the airport to see if they had a clear and well cut grass apron to land on and three pointed her in at 70 mph. This allows for a very short landing. The technique used in carrier landings. I fueled up just as the haze and fog rolled in. I met a guy who came over and gifted me a drinking cup with US Navy printed on it which he manufactures. In the FBO, (fixed base operator that service and fuel aircraft) we watched the weather reports and the locals said this stuff burns off by 1 o’clock . So I went to the pilots lounge and plopped down in a recliner and the kid at the counter brought me a free coke. I slept for three hours and woke up to sunlight.

I learned a valuable lesson when I flew my Stearman to St Croix 2 weeks after I got my license with Clyde Dawson in his Waco UPF7. When you do something incredibly stupid and die, they say “what a fool, what an idiot, he should have known better”. But if you survive, they say, “what a great adventurer”.

This was not stupid, but is was a learning experience I am happy to have responded to correctly and survived. Lesson learned, fog bad! And sneaky.

08/13/2024

BRAVO

06/25/2024

Many years ago, I posted that girls finding a male competitor at a competition should take a knee and just say NO at a time when you could get cancelled or fired for speaking truth. I spoke for those who dare not, or could not because I could, having helped transgender patients. Never the less , a trans person from Ft Lauderdale told me to take down my post by Monday or he would have Channel 5 News and protestors out in front of my office!

I responded, "Please do, I would love to meet all of you".

I explained that when I consult a trans patient, realities are explained. "You are a female brain trapped in a male body. I can feminize and disguise your male body, but I cannot change it to a female body. It would be unfair and unconscionable to compete against women and girls in athletics. "

Monday I awaited with anticipation. Coffee and donuts awaited a civil conversation. I put time aside for a healthy exchange of questions and answers.`

No one showed up. I learned the cancel culture club have no stomach for debate. I did not have the voice to reach the masses, but every little bit counts.

Now we have a more powerful sound bite. "STAND UP". and we have the only company in America standing up for women! You can vote with your pocket book. Buy from XX XY athletic wear to stand up for women. Only girls and parents can stand up to this insanity. Your coach, principle, NCAA, politicians and universities will punish and threaten you, but you hold all the power. without women, there is no women sports. No money no power for schools, collages, NCAA, Olympics, etc.

Just say NO, by saying STAND UP.
I am buying a shirt for each of my 7 grand daughters and a cap for myself.

06/25/2024

https://youtu.be/te-5FOS034g?si=NIi0lrdXuEgTYvU1

Order my book 'For Love of Country: Leave the Democrat Party Behind' by Tulsi Gabbard here: https://amzn.to/3P0mxfxFor those who prefer to listen, I'm thrill...