It has already been 20 days since the removal. I didn’t have silicone, and I had all the cartilage that had been used for nasal tip extension removed. There was no inflammation before surgery, but I didn’t like the overly pointy and unnatural shape, so after thinking about it for years, I had it removed through a closed approach.
Because it was a closed approach, cartilage repositioning and things like that couldn’t be done separately. I had asked them to decide whether to do nasal tip tying depending on the situation, but in the end they said they didn’t, or couldn’t, do it. I wanted to record my own postoperative changes, but I didn’t take photos.. Please read it with that in mind, and I hope this review helps even a little.
Day 1 (day of surgery) - It was soft and very swollen. It felt slightly numb, and when I touched it, it felt like pudding? so I was anxious, but there was no bruising. The columella (the middle column of the nose) was extremely swollen, so the nostrils looked very small.
Day 2 - I went to the clinic, briefly had an IV, and they drew out a handful of blood from inside my nose. The pudding-like feeling disappeared, the outline of the alae became very faintly visible, and the columella settled a little.
Days 3-5 - The middle of the nose became thick, and it felt like the inside of my nose was packed tightly with cotton balls. Anyone could tell it was very swollen. My skin had a slightly yellow bruise, but because I wanted to shape it while it was swollen, I taped it like other clinics do, and the swelling went down quickly.
Days 6-8 - The puffiness gradually went down and I looked slightly more normal, but I still taped diligently during this time. The nasal tip was still quite high, and when I pressed it, rather than feeling like something was inside, it just felt firm because of swelling.
Days 9-15 - Around day 9, I woke up in the morning and the taping had become a bit loose, so I removed it. The swelling had definitely mostly gone down, and I started looking normal. There was nothing special during this period; I just wore makeup and went outside freely. But when I pinched my nose with both hands, the middle definitely felt hard and painful, as if something was inside, and above all, I strongly remember that the dissolvable stitches inside my nostrils stung so much...... As the weather got colder, I had a lot of runny nose, and every time I blew my nose it hurt so muchㅜㅜ And as the swelling went down, the nasal tip became lower. Like my original nose, the nasal tip also seems to have come down slightly with a bit of a hump-like feeling.
Days 15-20 - I had been living without thinking much about it, but from one day, I started feeling a pulling sensation toward the center of my nose. When I looked in the mirror, the columella area had contracted inward in a concave way, and I wondered if this was the contraction phase I had only heard about. (The alae and the rest were unaffected.) It felt like a vegetable put through a dryer, with all the moisture drained out, becoming thinner, harder, and more fibrous? Two or three days ago, when I tried to make a pig nose, it didn’t work well, and it felt so hard that it was like cartilage had been inserted again. Even now, making a pig nose doesn’t work well, and it’s hard inside (different from the hard swelling on days 3-5; it feels as if something is actually inside), but as each day passes, it seems to be loosening little by little. The doctor said it would become hard after one month, but I don’t know if this is what they meant, or if it will become hard again after one month.
I had the surgery because of the shape, so I’m satisfied that my nose has naturally become smaller again. It’s not a perfect shape, but I removed it because I wanted a natural shape rather than a perfect one from the start, so these changes don’t bother me too much. Even now, when I look in the mirror, I think, “Ah, the nasal tip height would be perfect if it had stopped at day 3.” But I don’t think I will ever have nose surgery again.
My family, who see me every day, also said there has been no difference since day 3, and a friend I met after a long time didn’t even know I had surgery, so I think these subtle shape changes are things only I notice. As I was told during my first consultation, and as a few people in this community also said, it really feels like something halfway between my original nose and my surgical nose. Maybe because something that had been inside disappeared, it looks a bit more reduced than my original nose, and the height is definitely lower than my surgical nose. The nasal tip is sagging slightly as the swelling goes down, but it may also look that way more because the columella has contracted right now. It hasn’t spread sideways as much as I expected yet.
Honestly, 20 days is still early in recovery, so it will probably keep changing little by little, but I think it will gradually move in the direction of my original nose. I was a little surprised when I had yellow bruising and when the pulling suddenly started as the contraction phase came, but after reading other people’s reviews in this community, writing a post, and receiving replies, my anxious mind was comforted a lot. And looking back now, they were just minor things that happen during the recovery process.
Then I’ll stop here!
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