Delia Atenea never considered going under the knife — she’d always been slender, fit and confident in her own skin.
But three pregnancies, including two sets of twins, took a toll on her body, leaving her with stretched skin that hung from her belly.
Then a friend mentioned Dr. Ryan Neinstein. Atenea scrolled through his social media — and her idea of plastic surgery was turned on its head. Instead of the usual “add-on” procedures like BBLs and boob jobs, she discovered a way to undo what carrying five children had left behind.
“My main concerns were my gut area and my breasts,” Atenea said. “When I saw that it was possible to not have this 34DD chest, I was like ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so on board. Take it off.’”
That’s how Atenea found herself signing up for a $75,000 “plastic surgery vacation” — a luxury package offered by Neinstein’s Manhattan surgery center that attracts clients from around the world and carries a three-month wait just to get a consultation for the VIP service.
“There are amazing surgeons in every corner of the globe, but people today want more than that,” Neinstein said. “We call it the pink glove experience.”
The surgery stay-cation
In the weeks leading up to her procedure, Atenea was riding an emotional roller coaster — equal parts excited and apprehensive, and especially nervous about the anesthesia
But the moment she touched down in New York from San Antonio, “it was like everything had just faded away.”
Like all of Neinstein’s out-of-town patients — who make up roughly 40% of his business — Atenea was greeted at the airport by a chauffeur and whisked straight to the Plaza Hotel, the glamorous base camp for her recovery.
She spent the night in her suite, then crossed the street in her pajamas early the next morning for her procedure at Neinstein’s office overlooking Central Park.
“The minute I walked into the operating room, my worship music playlist was blasting,” said Atenea, a full-time fashion content creator (@mommalovesfashionblog).
As she drifted off to sleep, Neinstein stood beside her, holding her hand — a ritual in his clinic that he says isn’t just symbolic, but delivers measurable benefits.
“We see it in their vitals,” he explained. “Patients come in and their blood pressure is up, but when the surgeon holds their hand it comes back down. You go into surgery and you come out a lot safer.”
Later that evening, Atenea woke up in a recovery suite after a tummy tuck and 360-degree liposuction. She also had a breast reduction and lift without implants, with fat from her abdomen grafted to reshape her chest instead.
Then it was back across the street to the Plaza, not home to five kids and chaos, but onto the next phase of her plush “vacation.”
The ‘pink glove’ experience
The morning after surgery, Neinstein was at Atenea’s bedside. He makes these house calls with all his patients, checking in and explaining how the operation went.
He says this kind of house call has largely fallen out of fashion in the modern healthcare space.
“Medicine probably has the worst customer experience of any business in the world,” he said. “You’re put in a room naked with a stranger and then later you’re given a bill, and you don’t even know what happened.”
Patients, he has found, want to talk to their surgeon after major surgery.
“They feel safer and more comfortable. It creates a real therapeutic relationship and not just a transactional one,” Neinstein explained. “I don’t want medicine to be done to you. I want medicine to be done for you.”
During her recovery, Atenea had nurses on call 24 hours a day at the Plaza.
“The nurses were there around the clock,” Atenea said. “If I woke up in the middle of the night and had to pee, they were there to take me to the restroom. They were there to bathe me. They were there to walk with me every single day.”
In the first days after surgery, Atenea and her nurse walked laps around the Plaza’s gold-trimmed halls. On Day 4, she ventured out into Manhattan.
“My nurse took me outside to the fountain,” Atenea said, “then to do a lap at Bergdorf’s in my pajamas.”
The nurses also monitored her vitals, changed her dressings and kept her on schedule with pain medication.
Recovering at home from her so-called “mommy makeover,” Aetna said, would have been “extremely difficult.”
“With all my kids, I can’t even imagine,” she said. “You’re so weak, you can’t do anything on your own.”
Neinstein says this is one of the biggest draws to his program. People don’t want to recover from a major operation at home with nothing more than an aftercare pamphlet.
“They’ll probably be fine, but there’s a lot of moving parts, there’s a lot of things to do, and they’re scared because it’s intimidating,” he explained. “It can be a very challenging thing to do on your own.”
Nurses can also arrange for patients to get hyperbaric oxygen treatments, as well as lymphatic drainage massages right from their suites.
An added bonus: On-site recovery enables Neinstein to take bigger swings in the operating room — which he said delivers better results.
“I think surgeons who send people home probably do less because they want it to be as easy and as safe as possible because no one’s with them during recovery,” he explained. “It’s kind of got to be set it and forget it, versus something that’s a little more active in recovery.”
It doesn’t hurt that Neinstein’s patients get some pampering during their stay at the Plaza as well.
After each procedure, a private chef delivers ready-made, personalized anti-inflammatory meals designed to promote faster healing. Patients can also order room service to satisfy their cravings.
“This was really important because you have these drains hanging from your body, so the more massages you get, the better and faster you’re going to drain,” Atenea said.
Clients can also book hair stylists or manicurists to stop by, and even have their rooms customized with flower arrangements.
The reveal
A few days into recovery, a nurse asked if Atenea was ready to see her stomach, once sagging with loose skin.
Peeling back the bandages, she found that “everything was gone.”
“I had a flat abdomen,” Atenea said. “I looked amazing and I felt it.”
On the fifth day of her recovery, Atenea said goodbye to her nurses, confident she was ready to finish healing on her own. But if she had questions, help was only a call away.
Two weeks after her mommy makeover, Atenea flew back to San Antonio.
“It took one month for me to feel normal again,” she said.
Now three years post-op, Atenea said the plastic surgery vacation changed her life.
“I’ve always been a confident person, but now I’m even more confident than I was before,” she explained.
“You know how after you’ve been eating healthy for a few days and then you go into a dressing room and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, everything fits amazing?’ That’s how you feel, but forever.”
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