My natural nose had these traits.
- A mild hump - A relatively slightly drooping tip (not severe; because of the crooked bone, from one side it could even look like a reasonably straight line), so it gave a slightly masculine impression - A wide nasal bridge, a short nose, and the nose looked a bit spread out from the front - A crooked nasal bone (a university hospital told me when I was young, because of rhinitis, to have surgery when I got older) - Thin skin - I have both structural rhinitis and allergic rhinitis
I always thought my bridge was low because my face looked flat from the front, but I went to consultations at about two places, and both said my bridge was already high enough, so they told me not to raise the bridge much at all (or not to raise it) and to correct the crooked bone and wide bridge with tip surgery and osteotomy!
What I ended up having at the final hospital I chose was: - Functional surgery x3 (osteotomy of the nasal bridge to correct the crooked bone + correction of the wide bridge, nasal valve, and deviated septum) - Cosmetic surgery (tip cartilage) - For scar-tissue prevention or recovery, they drew fat from my thigh, extracted stem cells, and put them into my nose, and the remaining fat was also injected into my forehead and under my eyes as a service
Wow... they did the functional surgery with no implant, using ear cartilage, and did not raise the bridge! (They said the hump was not severe anyway, so it could have been left alone... but since they performed osteotomy and brought it together, I’m going to ask how they refined it when the splint comes off ;;)
What was my biggest complex was that because of the wide nasal bone, my face looked flat from the front, and the nasal bone was a bit crooked! The slightly drooping tip did not stress me out that much. My biggest goal was to improve the front view and make it look a bit slimmer.
It’s only day 5, so I can’t really comment on the shape yet. Once the splint comes off and things settle a bit, I’ll leave another review with photos + the hospital name. What’s visible externally right now is a slightly refined tip line and no uneven nostrils side effect? My acquaintances said that with the splint on, my image seemed a little more put together. The tip angle did not go up a lot. Maybe it feels more refined..? Measuring with an angle app, it definitely did go up. If it was 90 degrees before, maybe around 100 degrees? But I’m also thinking about how much it may go down as the swelling goes away.
<1 week before surgery to day 1 (surgery day)>
Starting a week before, I cut back on heavy drinking, and since I wouldn’t be able to exercise for a month, I exercised as much as I wanted and got my body condition up a lot! I think you need to build up stamina for recovery to go faster..
Surgery day was Friday, and I took a day off and went as soon as the hospital opened. It was a one-doctor clinic with one doctor and one nurse aide... I was so scared of an anesthesia accident that I was honestly terrified until the moment I lay down on the operating table.
Here they do light sedation plus local anesthesia, and they said you can even wake up naturally in the middle of the surgery... They also said that if the patient is scared, they may give more medicine and put you back under depending on the dose and your physical condition. But I begged them to keep the sedation as short as possible and use as little medication as possible, and to let me wake up in the middle of the surgery... I even wanted to be conscious during surgery, lol. And they said it’s actually easier and better for the surgery when the patient is awake and calm rather than under deep sedation.
Even the moment the medication went in, I said, "Please, please do not put me into a deep sleep ㅠㅠㅠ" and then passed out, and I suddenly came to in the middle of the surgery! And at that moment, they said they were starting the osteotomy, so while they were going "bang bang bang" on both sides of the bone, I woke up and the whole thing went on while we were chatting... "Doctor, are you breaking my bones?" "It doesn’t hurt as much as I expected. Local anesthesia is amazing.." I said things like that and chatted through the whole surgery, haha.. The osteotomy still felt kind of like getting a wisdom tooth pulled? But the ear cartilage harvest, insertion, and stitching honestly felt like nothing at all..
Because I was under the medication a bit and it didn’t hurt much overall, I think it was a relief that I woke up in the middle rather than sleeping through it..! The doctor said that because I was awake and calm, the surgery went really smoothly. At the end, they told me to take a breath, and I thought, wow, I can breathe so well, and then they put cotton in my nose and finished up.
I walked into the recovery room on my own two feet.. -> Since I had been awake the whole time, I just wanted to go home, so I asked if I could lie down for about 15 minutes and then leave, and went home -> Maybe because the anesthesia was still lingering, I slept in the car the whole way home.. Even after arriving, I slept..
I could taste food more than I expected, so I ate porridge well.. Blood kept coming out, so I had gauze under my nose. My body felt pretty tired, and because I often had nasal congestion even before, breathing through my mouth was not that hard. But at night, maybe because my nose was swelling, it felt really stuffy, and when I slept, I would unconsciously breathe through my nose, gasp, and wake up over and over.. The ear where they took the cartilage hurt like crazy ㅠㅠ It was so sore... I kept waking up and drinking water.. The next day, I couldn’t wait for them to take the cotton out...
<Day 2>
The swelling started to come up gradually.. No bruising X, just a little under the eyes? It didn’t spread badly The swelling from the osteotomy around the splint was quite noticeable. (The hospital told me to feel it lightly, so I did, and I could feel that the area between the eyebrows and both sides of the bridge was softly swollen.) The glabella area was also swollen, and maybe because of the taping, it felt a bit like my eyes, nose, and mouth were all being pulled together..? My eyes were not smaller, but there was a feeling that the area between the brows was being drawn inward.. My ear was less sore than it had been the night before.
As expected, I went as soon as the hospital opened, had the cotton removed from my nose, and checked that I could breathe well. They disinfected it and I went home. Other people say that right after the cotton comes out, they can breathe for a moment and then the mucous membrane swells again and blocks them, but whatever magic the doctor used, I stayed open the whole time... Instead, starting on day 2, mucus and blood kept trickling out, and that clotted up, so the inside of my nose felt damp and that was the hard part..? I slept unbelievably comfortably... I slept all day.. Maybe because my body was trying to recover, I kept eating, sleeping, and sleeping even more, over and over. That day I tested a gentle 20-minute walk, and when I was lying down it was fine, but when I walked, a little blood came out, so I decided to rest deeply until day 2
They said from today I could wash everything except my ears and nose, so I showered! I wore a mask and used those dyeing ear caps? for my ears, and showered. A little water getting into the ear was unavoidable, so they said to pat it dry and dry it well, so I dried it thoroughly with cool air from a hair dryer.
<Day 3> - The day the swelling peaked the most.. The eye-shift phenomenon was the worst, and when I looked in the mirror I immediately thought, wow, I’m swollen.. But even then, it just felt like my eyes were a little hard to open? my cheeks were plump? The hardest part was trying not to laugh when I saw my own face. Walking around at home while watching TV for about an hour made the severe swelling go down quickly... I hit 10,000 steps at home.. There were no special issues, but starting this day I began to feel heaviness in the osteotomy area and soreness at the incision area. Since I stayed awake late at night, the medicine wore off, so I took some Tylenol and slept ㅠㅠ
<Day 4> - I woke up with swelling similar to day 3, went on a lunch walk of about 4 km round-trip to buy saline, and then rested at home in the air conditioning... From this point on, the blood that had flowed out and the foreign material in the middle of my nose started to bother me like crazy... (Honestly, the really bad stuff I lightly removed with a sterilized cotton swab ㅠㅠ but the hospital said absolutely not to do that, so now I’m holding back...) The incision area was sore and pulling, the osteotomy area still felt heavy, the blood was now less like flowing blood and more like clotted blood mixed with mucus... and it would just run out when I was active.. In the evening I also walked about 4 km. Stairs or slopes made the nose feel a bit unstable, so I walked on flat ground with a track. The walk helped control the swelling that day. Cold compresses for the eyes in the middle of the day. No particular nasal congestion that day either! I really wanted the crusts and dried blood inside my nose to die... Honestly, I did touch a little of the stuff making my nose tip feel stuffy with my fingers ㅠㅠ
<Day 5> - No eye swelling when I woke up, and it feels like the swelling is starting to go down! There is one small bruise under the eye, but it has neither spread nor gotten smaller. No mucus, no blood.. When I wear a mask, mucus comes out, but indoors my nose feels dry except for that.. The crusts in my nose... the dried blood for real.. ㅠㅠ I’m planning to beg them to clean it up when the splint comes off the day after tomorrow... The tip looks swollen and puffy compared to before surgery, but with the swelling right now, I can’t judge anything at all, so I’m just going to focus on reducing the swelling for now!
I’ll check things again after the splint comes off and up to the 2-week mark, then come back with another update! Since this was my first surgery, I was so nervous and scared, and when I posted, everyone here cheered me on and told me it would go well, so so far I feel like I’m recovering without much pain.. I had so many questions right after nose surgery, so I’m writing this as my own bit of big data and leaving a post too!!!
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