Today is already day 5. I had surgery last Thursday. Two years ago, I had jaw and cheekbone surgery through intraoral incisions. This time, I had revision surgery through a scalp incision. I thought I’d write down the small things I researched in my own way and personally experienced. After having surgery this time, I realized that when your own face swells up overnight to the size of a basketball, even if you’ve experienced it before, you suddenly get scared and anxious. Based on my experience with both intraoral incisions and scalp incisions, I’ll compare them for you. (This is getting more and more grandiose -_-;; ) I’m not a specialist, so I can’t guarantee how medically accurate this is, but I’ll compare them from the standpoint of a patient who has experienced the surgery. I hope it helps, even a little. First, if you’re considering facial contouring surgery, you end up worrying about postoperative pain (- people say things like “the pain of shaving bone” -), swelling, and then, as you research more and more, you start struggling between the surgical methods of scalp incision versus intraoral incision. At first, I didn’t even know scalp incision existed. I was young, but I was also foolish.;; It was a surgery I rushed into blindly, without reviews or information from cosmetic surgery communities or places like this community. First, regarding pain, I want to say you really don’t need to worry at all. You know bones don’t have sensation, right? ^^ No matter how much bone is cut off or shaved down, if the nerve line isn’t touched, there is absolutely no reason for it to feel cold or hurt. How the nerve line is handled is also a measure that distinguishes a skilled doctor from an inexperienced one. So I’d describe the pain after surgery as about the hot, throbbing feeling when the swelling rises. Until postoperative days 2 and 3, it feels hot and throbbing. From day 4 it slowly settles down, and by day 5 it’s completely fine. ^^ (I’m exactly on day 5 right now.) The pain was much less with this scalp incision. After my first surgery before, the intraoral-incision cheekbone procedure, I couldn’t even bring myself to go outside for about two and a half weeks. A blood vessel burst in one eye, - and the reason it burst was that on days 2-3 my face swelled so much I couldn’t open my eyes, so I just kept tearing up;; and I wiped too much, which was also why it happened.) I had dark purple bruises under both eyes. It took about two weeks for those bruises to fade. With this scalp-incision surgery, I didn’t swell to the point where I couldn’t open my eyes. There was no bruising at all either. Before the surgery, the consultant and doctor had told me in advance that because it was revision surgery, I would swell more - but instead, I swelled less than the first surgery, and the swelling seems to be going down faster too. On top of that, I’m the type who swells very easily. In my case, after this surgery the swelling peaked from day 2 to day 3. Yesterday the swelling suddenly went down a lot once, and when I woke up this morning, I had a human face again. On days 2 and 3, it’s a basketball.; When I slightly lifted the loosened bandage and looked in the mirror, I could see that the side width of my face had decreased. During my first surgery before, I had no idea whether the width had decreased or not. It just stayed round the whole time. The swelling went down from a big circle into a smaller circle, so I kept wondering where on earth the effect was.. -_- but.. I think I just comforted myself with the fact that the bruising had faded and the swelling had gone down. I don’t think swelling necessarily means you can’t see the effect. I could definitely feel that the cheekbones were gone even while there was swelling. Until yesterday, my face was round and looked like it would burst, but from yesterday afternoon through today, a lot more swelling has gone down again. ^^ They say you can see it going down day by day until one week after surgery, and it really is true..^^ Today, the swelling has moved downward, so the area around my mouth is plump like a bulldog, and the area around my nose is still swollen, but the side width has clearly decreased. According to my mom, it’s exactly half of what it was on day 2. Because the swelling has moved downward, my jawline hasn’t come back yet, but the area covered by the bandage has almost completely lost its swelling. It seems like the swelling is gathering toward the front of the face, where the bandage isn’t wrapped. When I slightly lifted it and checked, the line looked clean.^^ Even though it’s only about 5 cm covered by the bandage, my chin was originally on the short side and not very developed, so that amount of checking lets me roughly guess the line. For my jaw, they only removed the part that slightly protruded under the ear..^^ The incision inside my mouth from the jaw surgery has also healed to some extent and the swelling has gone down, so moving my mouth has become much easier. ^^ Yesterday evening I felt so cooped up at home that I decided to take a walk to the convenience store and left the house. I wore a thick stretchy knit hat so the bandage wouldn’t show, and it made me look like I had a totally huge head.;; Some little kids passing by looked at me and went, “Huh!!” ..ugh..ㅜㅜ And I heard two neighborhood young guys hanging around behind me saying, “Big head.. something something, hehe.” I heard it all. I was hurt. I gritted my teeth and walked hard, thinking, “Once I take off this bandage, people like you won’t even dare look at me!!” so the swelling would go down.. Just wait until I take off the bandage.. you’re all done for..! I thought, and bought just one grape juice and came home. This got really long; Thank you for reading. It’s my rambling story, but I hope it helps. I’ll come back Thursday after getting my stitches removed and report my one-week progress. ^^
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