It has now been exactly two weeks since my facial contouring 3-procedure surgery, and I’m going to leave a record of the recovery notes I kept during that time.
Right after surgery, I kept coming here and searching for day 1, day 2, and one-week updates to see whether I was recovering normally, and I got a lot of help from other people’s posts, so I’m leaving my own case too.
I copied and pasted from the memo app, but looking at it now, I mostly recorded what I ate;
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- Surgery day (Before surgery ~ recovery room) It was the first surgery slot, and I arrived at the hospital around 8 a.m., got ready, had the final design consultation with the director, and went up to the operating room around 9 a.m. The surgery took about 3 hours. (I was told that 2 hours and 55 minutes after going in, they called my guardian and said I had been moved to the recovery room.) I saw the anesthesiologist in the operating room, shook from nerves, and then lost consciousness in an instant. I woke up in the recovery room. I don’t know exactly, but I think I was conscious there for more than 30 minutes. My first thought was, “I’m alive, thank you.” Right after waking up, my chin was in a lot of pain, but at some point they connected the pain pump and it got better. The mat in the recovery room was warm, which was nice. I had no energy to open my eyes or move, so I just lay there. I had my eyes closed and was only listening, and while I was lying there, it seemed like two or three patients under sedation came in and out. Because I had general anesthesia, they probably needed to keep checking my vitals for a long time, so I was left lying there for more than an hour. I didn’t have a drainage tube, and I didn’t have a urinary catheter. The elastic facial bandage was on.
(Ward) Around 1:30 p.m. I was taken down to the ward. I was scared to walk down, so I held the nurse’s arm and came down slowly. When I looked in the mirror, there were no bruises, just facial swelling.
It was a 1 night, 2 day admission, but I didn’t bring a donut cushion, so my butt hurt like crazy. At first I was overwhelmed, I really wanted water, and it felt like my throat was being torn apart. If I had to do general anesthesia twice, I don’t think I could. It really hurt terribly, and being told I couldn’t drink water for 3 hours was torture. Around 3:30 I was allowed to drink water, so I started then. I had no appetite at all. Around 6 p.m. they gave me a patient meal like New Care, but I didn’t eat it until the next day.
I could watch my phone and TV, but I didn’t even feel like doing that. It was just uncomfortable and stiff, so it was hard.
During the day I would sleep for 10 or 20 minutes and then wake up, but at night I still slept straight through for 4 to 5 hours, woke up, refilled the humidifier, and then slept straight through for another 3 hours. I slept with the bed raised.
In the middle of all that, the director came by and said the surgery had gone smoothly and naturally, then left.
- Post-op day 1 You have to time the hospital discharge and hotel check-in well. Mine didn’t line up, so I had a rough time in between. T_T
I started getting phlegm, and I had nosebleeds here and there. After they removed the pain pump, I was okay for a while, but when I tried to sleep it felt like it was hurting again, so I took one Tylenol tablet just in case and went to sleep. From the next day, it didn’t hurt much. My nose was also a little blocked as well, so breathing was slightly difficult. (It wasn’t blocked on surgery day.)
I could barely talk. So swollen. I drank one can of patient meal drink. But it tasted bad, and it felt like the phlegm was getting thicker, so I didn’t like it.
This was the hardest day for sleeping. The day before, I was hospitalized, so a nurse was stationed there and I could call if I was struggling. (Luckily, I wasn’t struggling enough to need that.) This day I was sleeping alone, so I was scared I might die in my sleep. T_T lol Maybe it was after-effects of the general anesthesia, but breathing was hard, and I kept waking up in the middle because I had to swallow saliva.
- Post-op day 2 My body condition was fine, but my face was even more swollen. My upper lip hadn’t been swollen, but suddenly it swelled up. Starting that morning, for 5 days I drank pumpkin juice, Elas A, and Bruna. It tasted bad. I drank an ion drink and it was so good. I also had corn silk tea and Vegemil.
- Post-op day 3 Torreta, two Vegemil A’s, and corn silk tea. It swells more. Why does it keep swelling? I went for a walk for about 1 hour. I took my swelling medicine properly 3 times.
- Post-op day 4 In the morning it was even more swollen, like a monster. Maybe because I didn’t remove the elastic bandage...? When I loosened the bandage for 30 minutes at a time, the swelling went down quickly. It went down to about the level of my face on days 1-2. But my lips kept hurting, and it felt like the thickness of my upper and lower lips was about to reverse. I took swelling medicine, and for brunch I didn’t eat Bruna because it tasted bad. I had Torreta, honey water, and yuzu seed drink. In the afternoon I ate beef juk from Yangban Juk, and it was so good. I couldn’t eat many of the chunks, but it still tasted good. I went for a walk for more than an hour at night. After the walk, I bought soft ice cream from McDonald’s and ate it. It was delicious. Now that the swelling had gone down a bit, the sutured areas felt a little sore here and there. I slept with the bandage on.
- Post-op day 5 In the morning I tore off about half a dinner roll and soaked it in milk to eat. I felt like I shouldn’t chew, so I just crushed it with my tongue and ate it. Corn silk tea, one dinner roll, one pack of milk, Yangban Juk, ice cream.
As the swelling goes down, I get a slight numb feeling or an itchy, tingly feeling. I slept without the bandage on. The swelling started going down quickly. From two pufferfish on top of my face to about one pufferfish. It became like a puppy that had been stung by a bee.
I walked for 1.5 hours. I shouldn’t power-walk too hard; my face felt like it was shaking.
- Post-op day 6 According to the friend who took care of me, I was only slightly more swollen than on the first day after surgery. By around lunchtime, it seemed like the swelling had gone down even more than on the surgery day.
- Post-op day 7 I went to the hospital, had the cheekbone stitches removed, and took off the tape on my face. I got my hair shampooed and received light therapy.
- Post-op day 8 I ate bread and soft snacks.
- Post-op day 9 I was chewing hard snacks and thought my cheekbones were going to come loose... Maybe it was the sound of chewing the snack, but there was a sharp pop, and I was startled, so after that I stopped chewing.
- Post-op day 10 Without thinking, I was eating tteokbokki and finely breaking up the egg, but I felt a sense of crisis that I should not be moving my jaw that much, so I started holding back on chewing again.
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After that I didn’t really keep records, and because I was worried about my cheekbones, I’ve been eating mostly things I can eat without chewing as much as possible.
At first my upper and lower lips were swollen into a round O shape, so I couldn’t close my mouth properly and food would leak and drip when I ate, but now I can close my mouth fully and eating is back to normal. My mouth still only opens about one and a half fingers wide.
In the early stage, it’s important to do cold compresses well. The hotel refrigerator’s freezer function was poor, so I did a half-hearted job with the cold compresses, and by day 3 the swelling got out of hand.ㅠㅠ Please make sure to do cold compresses properly.
I had the stitches inside my mouth removed on day 12, and it hurt... it also bled while they were removing them.ㅠ Once they were out, it felt so much more comfortable, and making facial expressions got much easier too.
As for sensation, when I touched my face in the ward after surgery, there wasn’t really any area with no sensation at all. The lower lip, cheekbones, and part of the jaw felt tingly and numb, but now almost all of that numb feeling has returned except for the center of the lower lip and one cheekbone. When sensation returned to normal, I think I also felt a slightly itchy or prickly kind of sensation.
The surgical area doesn’t hurt when I’m just sitting still, but if I accidentally touch it while putting on clothes, if it shakes while walking, if I move my facial muscles a lot, if I do hot/cold compresses, or if I focus my attention there, I get occasional throbbing pain.
The swelling has gone down a lot, but gravity definitely seems to be pulling it downward, so right now the area under my cheeks is puffy. I also have a slight double chin, my jawline isn’t very visible, and I look like I’ve gained weight. As the swelling came and went, I had a fairly large bruise with a little blood-purple discoloration and a yellow bruise around my mouth and lips, but after applying bruise ointment and doing lots of warm compresses, it has almost disappeared.
Before surgery, my temples had a lot of hollowing, but after surgery they became more prominent because of the swelling, and as the swelling goes down they’re sinking back in a bit. I feel a little disappointed, so I’m thinking maybe I’ll get fat grafting later.
Because if the swelling lasts too long it could be one cause of sagging, I’m walking almost every day and taking my medicine, trying to reduce it as quickly as possible. I do worry a bit that walking too much might shake the cheekbones from the impact, but they probably weren’t fixed that weakly in the first place;
Oddly enough, starting around day 9, even though I still had swelling, I felt like my face had gotten smaller. Maybe it just looked smaller relatively because it had been so swollen before, and the director had also told me not to expect much in terms of facial size, so I wasn’t expecting anything, but it was surprising that it looked smaller. Then again, looking at it every day, I sometimes wonder if it was always like this. I’m not sure.
The cheekbone area lost swelling quickly, so I found it fascinating that the hollowing was visible from early on, and I still can’t really tell the jawline yet. I haven’t seen the CT yet... I wondered if I should have asked them to make it more sharply angular, but then again, once the swelling goes down, maybe this is exactly the right amount. When the swelling was still heavy, I thought my jaw had been reduced too much, but now that it’s gone down a bit, maybe the length is just right. Every time I look in the mirror, and even every hour, my thoughts change. My impression looks softer and rounder than before.
My facial expressions and the overall feel of my face are still strange, and smiling is unnatural.
It definitely isn’t an easy surgery, and the recovery period has to be long. During that time, you have to control your mindset well, and I’m also worried that I need to prevent sagging even more carefully than before surgery.
Still, after going through a surgery that had been a long-time complex and worry of mine, I feel relieved in a way.
For everyone who had the surgery, you all went through so much. Let’s recover well together and get prettier!
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