After <Original (left) nose, about 4 years after surgery (now): do you see the nostrils? They are slightly visible and slightly lifted/upturned> Before <Before removal, from between the eyebrows down the line is bumpy, right? They said there may be inflammation under the silicone (the hospital that took the CT said so)> Without removing the splint it looks basically the same, but I will show it anyway..ㅎㅋㅋ <From the day I removed starting from the original nose, by day 5 it looks like it is going down a little. Please bear with the nostrils, I feel embarrassed..;;> I am leaving this review because I can’t sleep before I remove the splint tomorrow. Mobile typing has many spacing mistakes and typos, so please understand..ㅠ
People outside Seoul/major cities... it was hard to do self-promotion. So I kept saying I had to write a review, I had to write this, and I wrote it..ㅠㅠㅠ People here, please keep going..ㅠㅠ
Back in 2016… I was in my early 20s and made a rhinoplasty choice I regret for life.
My original nose, when seen from the front, was a simple nose with almost no defined nostril flare.
From the side it did not seem like a low nose, but that part around the usual osteotomy line… is wide, so from the front the nasal bridge simply was not clearly visible.
So I had a huge complex. When taking photos with friends, my nose looked almost doubled. If I smiled, it looked even wider, so I felt even more depressed…
So, even though it was my own money, I finally got permission from my parents, got around to seeing a few doctors who looked very confident, and because they said they could make my so-called big, complex nose look pretty, and told me for my type a bad surgery could make it even bigger, I had the operation.
They had said clearly that my case had a silicone bridge, cartilage at the tip with slight fullness, and that only bilateral osteotomy and cartilage binding were needed.
After surgery, for the first half year I felt satisfied... not exactly pretty, but better than before. I only thought, maybe I should have made it a little prettier. I thought the tip felt hard because I had surgery. It was such a dumb thought. Also, even though bone cutting was only done once, it was the same.
Then time passed, and around 2019 something felt strange. I somehow felt something had gone wrong.
When I was physically unwell, my nose would swell at times. The area around my nose would appear red too. Usually, when it was a cold and I took cold medicine, it would settle. I kept living as if it was nothing.
One day, while looking in the mirror, the side line looked strange. From the front it seemed as if the silicone was showing. From the side, the highest part of the tip looked like it had been cut, and the nostrils seemed pulled upward. Even then I did not think it was likely contracture.
Maybe because every contracture photo I had seen before was much more severe… Then on another day while organizing photos, the front shot looked crooked. At that time, my husband (then my boyfriend) said, Baby, your nose seems heavily shifted to one side.
Then the glabella began to rise, like an avatar. I have a straight forehead, but it felt like it fell together with the forehead.
I was shocked. This was contracture, this was a side effect. So before marriage, I urgently went back to the hospital where I had the first surgery.
At consultation they suggested removing and doing an autologous skin-graft approach. They said they would do it by charging only the harvest fee; otherwise, they said my nose would become very deformed and collapse. So here I could not hear that they would do an autologous skin graft for me. When I asked for pre/post photos of someone who had autologous skin grafting here, they said none existed, saying who would even take such photos.
Can it be true that there are no photos for a surgery? And they said my crookedness is how my original nose was. ???....Really? Then why did they not correct it in the first surgery when they said a lifted nose is naturally a born-upturned type?
When I felt this could not be accepted, I started running to other hospitals. Living outside Seoul made it hard.
I went to four places; opinions differed on whether this was contracture or not, and removal costs were all over the place.
Also, while making rounds I learned that my original nose had Elza silicone. Half Elza… I found Elza silicone living in my own nose without my consent. My head went numb. My head was full of anger and bad words.
I searched all contracture and silicone-removal posts in communities, checked every anti-plastic-surgery forum review, looked up hospitals, and spent much of my late 20s doing this. While preparing to consult in Seoul, COVID cases there suddenly started to explode.
Unable to decide, I delayed and delayed. In January I got a short gap in Seoul and could visit one famous clinic. There they said it was definitely contracture, that septal correction was required and open approach was mandatory. I was in a bad mood and mentally broken. I drove to Seoul, got that answer, and thought: if this is contracture and septal correction is needed, and I already want everything removed, my nose is already hard and painful now... do I have to suffer more?
So I decided to do it in my region. I regretted I could not visit another Seoul hospital, but since open approach was needed anyway, I made a reservation nearby for easier aftercare and waited about 3 weeks to have surgery.
The explanation got too long...
Anyway, today is day 5. Yesterday I couldn’t stand it, so my husband washed my hair for me… it was so hard. After full removal, there was very little swelling at all—almost none. It felt only like a general morning facial puffiness after waking. There was not even one bruise. So I am anxious. I asked to remove all capsule membrane and scar tissue. Usually they say you get bruising after removal... Before surgery I set a humidifier by the recliner, prepared anti-swelling meds and pumpkin juice on a tray, set drinks in case mouth breathing would hurt my throat, prepared garbage bags and everything. It became useless. Still, just in case, I sat upright for two days. If you want to know what to prepare before and after, leave a comment.
Tomorrow the splint comes off, and they said they will explain the surgery more clearly, so I need to go and hear it first.
The procedure itself was really hard. In the first rhinoplasty I was barely dozing only near the end. Here, I was only briefly drowsy during the part- anesthesia window, and stayed fully awake. Even when I pleaded to be put to sleep, they did not. I cried repeatedly. I have claustrophobia too… It felt truly awful. The explanation was that if I slept, I could not shape the nose well or breathe through the nose. I thought that made sense, but because my first surgery did not have that, this was much harder. I was sweating all over. It was said to be sleep anesthesia, and that they may wake me to breathe through the mouth, but I was not woken; I never slept.
I will post photos from 4 years after the first surgery and days 1~5 after removal. If you have questions, leave a comment or a message.
As for the cost, it was Seoul-level expensive.
Maybe because it’s late night, I couldn’t write clearly, but I wrote so long anyway ㅠ I only hope contracture does not come after removal... Smoking cessation this week feels the hardest of all.
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