Hello.
I was a foolish person who saw a friend suddenly show up after getting nose surgery and, out of envy, copied them and got plastic surgery too.
I was just over twenty at the time. Back then, cosmetic surgery communities were not that active, and even if they had been, I wouldn't have known. I was young, so I had no reason to be scared of the operating table.
That was about 12 years ago, and now that I'm in my 30s, married, with a husband and a child, I realize how endlessly stupid and ignorant I was back then..
Of course, even now that I've had the removal, I still can't be sure whether this was the right thing to do or whether I chose the right hospital. Even after my first surgery, I was fine for 10 years, and then problems suddenly appeared recently, so after the removal I'll probably be able to live without major issues for now.
If I'm lucky, I may keep living that way until the end of my life, but if not, another unexpected problem could come up about 10 years later.
I want to add more about my first surgery, but I have so much to say that I don't even know where to start, so I'll stop here and talk about the removal in earnest.
It probably started after my baby was born. The baby slept so poorly that until six months old, I never once slept more than three hours a day. After that it got a little better, but I still really can't count the times I slept soundly as I pleased. I think from around that time I occasionally had pain between my eyebrows. At the time I didn't realize it was a silicone inflammatory reaction..
About a year later, the pain between my eyebrows got worse, and the left side of the nose bridge started hurting too. The bridge hurt more strongly. Even then, unbelievably foolishly, I didn't connect the cause to my nose surgery.
A month before the removal, I even had a mild fever. It went up and down between 37.2 and 37.4 degrees, my nose felt hot, I got headaches, and my body felt drained. Because I get body aches so often while raising a child, I thought it was just another bout of being unwell and went to internal medicine, but the fever didn't go down even after taking medicine. I got tested for COVID, went to ENT, a general hospital, and got all kinds of tests and medications, but nothing helped. After having a fever for two weeks, I eventually felt better, and while searching around in that situation, I saw information saying it could be a silicone inflammatory reaction.
They said that when immunity drops, immune cells can't block the inflammation-causing cells attached to the silicone, and inflammation occurs. Going through that process repeatedly makes the inflammation worse and eventually causes contracture. In my case, it seems my immunity had dropped because I hadn't been sleeping properly for a long time. Once I heard the explanation during the consultation, I understood why the pain had gradually worsened and spread.
So I decided that as people get older, even if they manage themselves carefully, immunity inevitably drops, and I couldn't keep this silicone in my body for the rest of my life. And then I immediately decided on the removal surgery. My husband tried to stop me, worried about surgery and telling me not to touch it and just leave it alone (he even cried during my C-section because he was afraid I might die), but I felt it was a surgery I would eventually have to do anyway. I thought I should do it while I was still a little younger.
Beyond the pain, I was also worried that if contracture came, I wouldn't be able to handle it, and the foreign-body sensation was significant too. (When I played with my baby and got hit hard, it felt like bone-breaking pain, and I hated how stiff it was and how I couldn't even do the pig-nose movement.)
On the day of surgery, I was so tense and scared that my memories of the surgery I had enjoyed(?) in my twenties overlapped with the present, and I thought, wow, I was really crazy back then.
After surgery, they showed me what had been inside my nose, and it was so disgusting... The silicone was L-shaped too (I didn't even know it was L-shaped), the cartilage was thick, and the capsule was gross as well.
Strangely, even after removal, I still felt pain clearly on the left side of the bridge, so I was worried that maybe they hadn't removed all of the capsule. But after the splint came off, the bridge hurt sharply left, right, and center, and now it's almost gone.
They said that was probably because they disturbed the bridge while removing the capsule.
Oh, and I don't have any pain between my eyebrows at all!
As for contracture... it's only the second week, so the contraction phase hasn't come yet. According to the doctor, I don't need to worry too much about contracture. They said that although I had pain and felt it was inflammation, it wasn't actually a severe inflammatory state and there was no contracture, so it should be okay to remove it. I'll keep posting updates later as I follow the progress.
And after taking off the splint and removing the stitches, the swelling is going down day by day, but the bruising isn't fading very well. It's been two weeks and I still have red bruises on my cheeks. Among purple bruises, blue bruises, and red bruises, red bruises fade the slowest.
Lastly, the hump-reduced area I was most worried about... I don't even know what to say. That area was shaved down way too broadly, and I honestly feel like killing the doctor who did my first surgery. Still, it is getting better day by day. The hospital that did the removal surgery says the area where the silicone was will gradually fill in with tissue, so the angles won't be visible, but if I look at reviews, they say the shaved bridge doesn't get better later on.
For now, I'll trust the doctor (I'm still stupid enough to trust doctors), and try to wait. Even if waiting doesn't fix it, I won't touch it any further and just live with it. All I can hope for is that no other problems arise for the rest of my life.
This post got really long, didn't it? If you have questions, ask me and I'll answer when I have time. I'm sure everyone here has a lot on their minds, so don't be swayed by brokers and make your decision carefully. And if you haven't had cosmetic surgery yet, please don't do it. The face your parents gave you is the prettiest...