After facial contouring surgery, everyone is probably most curious about how the swelling progresses. Three days after discharge from facial contouring surgery, your face feels like it’s about to burst, and when you look in the mirror, a monster seems to be staring back at you. At that time, you get tears in your eyes, start regretting it, feel frustrated, and it becomes extremely hard. And even after one week or two weeks, the swelling from facial contouring really does not go down, so you can’t see the effects of the surgery and are left with only countless worries and frustration. I also searched for every surgery review, but there were not many helpful posts. (Once the swelling goes down and people get pretty, they lose interest in the community site and leave together, so there aren’t many posts.) This post is a detailed record of my swelling progress after facial contouring surgery. I’m writing this for people who have already had facial contouring surgery, so if you’re curious about facial contouring, planning to have it, or have already set a surgery date, please read the next post. http://sungyesa.com/new/d04/100857 (I originally planned to keep writing my progress in the post above, but there are so many comments that I can’t edit it.) (I wrote the detailed progress up to post-op day 3 in the link above, so please refer to that post.)
Surgical area = square jaw (long curved side jaw reduction), chin (T-osteotomy), cortical osteotomy, radiofrequency muscle incision Method = intraoral incision Surgery date = October 17 Reference = I had two types of contouring, square jaw + chin. Those who also had cheekbones done will have a harder time.
* Review of post-op day 4 There is no difference in my condition from day 3. No matter how much good food I eat, how diligently I wear the compression bandage, exercise, or do anything else, my condition stays the same. I think pre-op care is still very important. Because I took good care of myself before surgery, after surgery, when I opened my eyes, my throat didn’t hurt at all, there was no swelling at all, I didn’t feel any anesthesia effects, and I couldn’t sleep, so I thought, this is manageable~. But after surgery, no matter how I try to take care of myself, it seems useless. I think time is the only answer. The swelling is the worst. Don’t believe anything about the swelling going down starting from day 4. Once you recover a bit from day 3 onward and look in the mirror, that is the day you feel the most regret and tears come out. Even though I’m on the less-swollen side, I thought it would be better to die than to become ugly like this forever. Just don’t worry about appearance until one week has passed; focus only on your body. Until one week, I’m not a person.
* Review of post-op day 5 Today is the same. When I look in the mirror, my face is completely square. Nothing has improved, the pain is the same, eating is hard, and at least until day 5, there is absolutely no way to meet anyone. Even if you wear a mask, the swollen part of the jaw sticks out, so I only sneak out to the convenience store at night and come back. For those preparing for surgery, you’ll probably be curious about the recovery period. From my perspective, even if you try everything that is supposed to be good, there is absolutely no reduction in swelling or pain through day 5. Even if I want to do work at home, the pain makes it impossible, and I’m only in a state where I can watch movies or kill time.
* Review of post-op day 6 The pain is severe as soon as I wake up in the morning. My left jaw doesn’t hurt much, but my right jaw is very swollen, bruised, and painful. And one spot on my chin is throbbing too. I don’t think I can do anything today either. The pain level is just the same as the first day. It hurts for all 6 days, so I just accept it as is. I only sleep without noticing the pain. It looks like I still won’t be able to do anything today... And the hardest part is eating. Since they cut a 15 cm horizontal incision inside my mouth and stitched it up... I’ve only been drinking beverages for 6 days, but I keep getting diarrhea, I’m hungry, and I’m dying. Yesterday I was so hungry that I tried to eat canned tuna, steamed eggs, snacks, and things like that, but after feeling the pain of my mouth being torn open, I think it hurts even more today. Today I’m just going to drink tomato juice and lie down, waiting for another day to pass. The swelling and pain are slowly becoming familiar. But there is absolutely no improvement.
* Review of post-op day 7 My left jaw doesn’t hurt much, but my right jaw and chin hurt a lot. It hurts so much that tears come out. This isn’t like a cold where you sleep one night and wake up feeling a little better. The pain I felt on the first day stays exactly the same for the whole week. And since they cut open my whole jaw, eating a normal meal is unthinkable. Of course I tried rice too, but when I eat rice, bits get stuck between my lower lip. That is the surgical site where they stitched me up. If food gets in there, the pain is unimaginable. (I imagine that if I eat rice while doing a handstand because I’m so hungry, maybe it won’t get stuck between my lower lip.)
* Review of post-op day 8 I went to the hospital. First, I thought I would be able to survive a bit once the 15 cm stitches were removed, but they said not to remove them today and to take them out next week. I heard that it’s not just me; cheekbone and square-jaw stitches seem to be removed after 2 weeks. I also got swelling care, and it feels good to receive something at least. Today, the swelling and pain were reduced by about 20% compared with yesterday. But the pain and not being able to eat are still the hardest parts. At this point, it’s hard to go around bare-faced. You need to wear a mask.
* Review of post-op day 12 The pain from the first day of surgery continued until day 10, which was hard. The pain felt like my jaw was being cut with a knife, the inside of my mouth was all raw, and because it hurt so much my teeth kept pressing on the wound, I felt like I wanted to pull all my teeth out. I think the reason for the pain is inflammation, so I worried a lot about whether to take anti-inflammatory painkillers. But after looking into it, I found that after 3 days post-op, if you suppress inflammation with ice packs or anti-inflammatory painkillers, wound recovery is actually delayed a lot. So even though it hurt a lot, I just endured it. From day 11, the pain started to lessen, and today, day 12, it’s just a throbbing ache; the same pain as the first day is gone now. The swelling has also gone down a lot, so only the chin sticks out a bit and looks a little strange, and except for a fist-sized bruise, it has settled down to looking like I just gained some weight. (At the 2-week mark, they remove the stitches inside the mouth, and until the stitches are removed, eating is extremely painful. So I’m still only eating porridge.) Now, if someone who doesn’t know me sees me, I just look like someone who got fatter in the face and became much uglier. So you can just say, yes, I’m ugly, and take off the mask.
* Review of post-op day 14 It’s the day the stitches are removed. The stitch sites were quite uncomfortable and painful for me. And it already hurt even when I was just sitting still, so hearing that they were going to remove the stitches scared me. (The stitches are very thick.) I took a deep breath and had the cheek stitches removed. The cheek stitches were painful enough to make my eyes well up with tears. Then the lower-lip stitches were removed. The nurse warned me that the lower lip area would hurt more. It hurt so, so much. For a moment, it felt like a healthy tooth was being pulled out. But the nurse seemed like a veteran and, without any mistakes, removed them all one by one successfully. After all the stitches were taken out and I gargled, my whole body was trembling. But more than the pain when the stitches are removed, the thrill of having a foreign object disappear from my body afterward is really exhilarating. Up until then, because of the stitches, eating was so painful, my mouth was swollen when sleeping, the stitches would get caught on my teeth, and because of the lower lip area I couldn’t even speak properly, but now it feels refreshing. For reference, I asked and was told that these are dissolvable stitches, but since after 2 weeks there is no need for them anymore, they remove them. It is much better to have them removed. I only had square-jaw surgery, and it took exactly 2 weeks to recover and return to daily life.
* 2-week precautions Today I went for my 2-week swelling care session and saw many women in the waiting room. Most of the people in the waiting room were there for 1- to 2-week facial contouring swelling care. One person had purple bruising covering one-third of her face. One person had a head and face that were very small and cute, but her jaw was swollen to the size of a bowling ball, so she looked like a frog. One person had her face wrapped tightly in bandages and seemed to be in a lot of pain, looking up at the ceiling while holding back tears. At least until 2 weeks, you should think of yourself as not human. Until week 1, you are a monster and can’t meet anyone. Until 2 weeks, if you don’t want to reveal that you had square-jaw surgery, you should not meet acquaintances; if you already told them you had surgery, then it’s okay for them to see you. And if you think you have little facial fat so you won’t swell, you absolutely should not think that. It’s the opposite. People with more facial fat swell less and the swelling is not as noticeable. I read all the reviews, and people with less facial fat tend to swell more and show it more, so keep that in mind.
* Review of post-op day 22 Now I can eat meals. For those who had cheekbone surgery too, please avoid heavy foods like ribs, jjolmyeon, or almonds. I don’t eat them either. The pain is almost gone, but when I try to focus and work, it’s hard and I unconsciously sigh. My body is still struggling. Eating is quite uncomfortable. It’s 100 times better than before the stitches were removed, but if I eat the way I did before the stitches came out, foreign matter gets stuck a lot between my lips and gums. I just keep rinsing with water while eating, and I drink about 10 cups of water each time I eat. I can’t even tell if the swelling is going down. In my feeling, day 14 and now seem about the same. The first thing I do as soon as I wake up is rush to the mirror, and I’m disappointed every time. First, on the first day of surgery, my right side hurt, the swelling was worst on the right side, and up to now the right side has remained quite swollen. The left side has lost a lot of swelling and is now back to about the pre-surgery look. The right side is a face with candy in its cheek. The asymmetry is severe. The bruising was also bad for a long time, but today all the bruises on my face disappeared, and the bruises on my neck are almost gone too. I had almost no bruising. The inside of my mouth has a lot of scar tissue. I’m being careful not to bite the scar tissue when I eat, and I heard scar tissue can last for 6 months. I hope it goes away quickly enough that eating won’t be uncomfortable. The jawline can be felt when I touch it, but if I press on the swelling with my hand, it is definitely there. My left cheek looks similar to how it was before surgery, but because I can clearly feel the swelling, I feel good thinking that once the swelling here goes down, I’ll look prettier. They say the swelling under the chin goes down the slowest. I slightly moved my chin backward. Others dislike a recessed chin and get advancement surgery, but I, not knowing much, asked to have it moved backward. But now that it’s swollen, it looks like a prognathic jaw, so I’m not too worried about the recessed chin anymore. The problem is the double chin, and when I look in the mirror now, I can see it. I’m most afraid of a double chin. I may not know much about lifting, but I really do not want a facelift. I spent a lot of money on this, and if I end up with a double chin, I think life would become unbearably hard, so I still wear the compression bandage sometimes and am on a very strict diet. For breakfast and lunch, I only eat protein supplements + vitamins + pumpkin juice + health foods. So far I’ve lost 6 kg, and I plan to lose 5 kg more from here. If I lose that much, I don’t think loose skin will create a double chin, and I’ll probably think it’s either a side effect or just swelling. The double chin is only very slightly there. Next week I’m planning to get incisional eye correction surgery + canthoplasty. I bought a lot of pumpkin juice already, so I still have plenty left, and while I’m managing swelling, I figure I might as well suffer a little more together. And once I have eye surgery, I’ll probably worry about eye swelling, but square-jaw swelling is so slow to go down that if I worry about the eye swelling going away, time will pass quickly and maybe I’ll worry less about the square jaw. I think swelling goes down best for people who exercise a lot. I know walking is the best, but it’s not easy. Instead, I only do warm compresses every day.
* Review of post-op day 25 From week 3 onward, I stopped looking in the mirror. Nothing changes even after waking up. Bruises = completely gone, left jaw = looks like before surgery, right square jawline = swollen and bulging, chin = swelling is felt when touched and it is hard, face = completely ugly. Since I was already going through the trouble, I also went ahead and got eye surgery yesterday. (Eye surgery review = http://sungyesa.com/new/d03/237372) Today is day 2 after eye surgery, and the swelling is really no joke. If you have facial contouring surgery and another surgery separated by about a month, do not get the facial contouring surgery first. When I had square-jaw surgery, I hardly swelled on the first day, but even with just eye surgery, I can barely open my eyes properly. It seems the body is too busy dealing with the big swelling to manage the small swelling. So today, for the first time, I had radiofrequency care + a 1-hour walk. I’m feeling firsthand that there is nothing better than walking for swelling.
* Review of post-op week 4 From now on, I’ll write reviews by week. Total swelling = so compared with last week, I think it has gone down a lot overall. Left jaw = has almost returned to the previous appearance. If there is still swelling, the effect should start showing soon. Right jaw = still swollen. Still, the bulge has disappeared and the right jaw has lost a lot of swelling, so the face is at least presentable. Chin = recovers the slowest. When I wake up in the morning, it is swollen and my lower lip is also puffed up. It still hurts when touched. I hardly walked after surgery. But after this eye surgery, it was hard to even open my eyes, so I started walking a lot more. When walking, wear a mask and walk at a slightly fast pace for more than 1 hour. Then after about an hour, you start getting a little short of breath, and that seems to help the swelling tremendously. After exactly 1 hour of walking, I can feel blood circulating in my face, and especially the heavily swollen right jaw and chin become firm and the pain comes in a cool, tingling way. It’s not painful, it just feels like I’m being treated. (I walked for 1 hour and 30 minutes. If I walk more, my legs hurt,) Up to today I deliberately walked a lot, going to parks and hiking, and it’s really good for the swelling. I’m losing weight too.^^
* Review of post-op week 5 Total swelling = almost back to the pre-surgery appearance. Left jaw = the effects on the left jaw are starting to show little by little. Right jaw = mine is still swollen on the right side. The left side is starting to show effects, but because the right side is swollen, overall it looks about like it did before surgery. Chin = the same as before: when I wake up in the morning it’s swollen and the lower lip is swollen too. It doesn’t hurt much when touched. At least daily life is manageable. Until last week, when I had to do mentally demanding work at the office, thinking was so hard, but from now on my body seems to have recovered a lot and only the swelling remains to go away. In my opinion, even if next week comes, the effects of the surgery still won’t really show. This damned swelling... it really goes down late.
* Review of post-op week 6 Total swelling = no different from the pre-surgery appearance. Left jaw = the left jaw is gradually becoming slimmer. Right jaw = I ate chewy food this week, and now my right jaw and the area around my ear hurt. It hurts a lot when I eat, and there is a lot of swelling. Chin = the most swollen area. On the X-ray, a lot of flesh protrudes like a pig. This week my right jaw felt so tight and painful that I went back for a follow-up. They said the surgery itself was fine, but there is a huge amount of muscle on the right jaw. The doctor said it will go down. My face doesn’t really become something to feel happy about as time passes, but when I took an X-ray at the hospital today, it looked like it had changed a lot. At least from the front, the square jaw is not extreme, but it has been refined in a masculine way, and the chin, while not a V-line, has become quite small. What I liked most was the chin. My chin stuck out a little (one hospital even said I should get double-jaw surgery), and I asked them to set it back. But after surgery, the photos show that the chin has been brought in so well that double-jaw surgery is unnecessary, and the chin length has also shortened. When I look in the mirror now, I’m still ugly, of course, but looking at the X-ray, it seems like once the swelling goes down, the jawline will really come alive. The current problem is that when I clench my teeth, the right jaw muscle is very noticeable. The left jaw is soft. Since the doctor said everything will eventually go down and that the surgery went well, I’ll trust that and watch the progress over the next 2 to 3 months.
* Review of post-op week 7 Total swelling = the effects are starting to show. Left jaw = the left side is showing a lot of improvement. Right jaw = the swelling is starting to go down. The doctor said it will go down, so I’m trusting that, and even though I’m not paying much attention, it seems to be going down gradually. The right jaw is still a bit tight. Chin = this area was always hard. At a glance it looks like swelling. But it has become slightly softer. This week the effects are starting to show especially well. Starting with the square jaw, I began improving my whole face. Two weeks later I had eye surgery, one month later eyebrow tattooing, and after 6 weeks I went to dermatology. And I lost about 10 kg. My eyebrows have become more natural, my eyes are still uneven and swollen, and the dermatology treatment seems to be working well. I lost 10 kg because I was afraid of the fat on my eyelids and my double chin, and because of that my double chin has also been reduced by about half and my face has become a bit slimmer. I’ll work hard for another month and lose 5 kg more, and one month later I booked lifting (Ulthera). I lost almost 25 kg this year, so even if I hadn’t had square-jaw surgery, I think I would have had a lot of sagging skin, which is why I booked lifting. I hope this month will make me much prettier.
* Review 2 months after surgery At around 2 months, daily life is no problem and my appearance seems better than before. Right now, after surgery I’ve dieted 10 kg, so my facial fat has also decreased a lot. And last week I had Shurink lifting, which seems to be effective. The double chin has also disappeared and my face feels a bit tighter. It hasn’t changed dramatically in appearance, so I’m looking forward to one month later because of the lifting effect + the swelling gradually going down. The current remaining problem is the asymmetry of the right jaw. The right jaw is still bigger and has more muscle. The bones are symmetrical, but I don’t know whether it’s swelling or something else, the right jaw is bulging.
* Review of post-op day 00 Right now, day by day, nothing changes at all. So I plan to write down anything as soon as the swelling goes down or anything changes.
Reference) How I reduce swelling according to my constitution http://sungyesa.com/new/b10/7518 I wrote this post too. Please keep in mind that pumpkin juice does not suit everyone.
I had surgery at the large Let Me In hospital. This post is for people who have had surgery, so please do not leave hospital information in the comments. (I’ll keep writing future progress whenever I have time.)