This is my first post after joining.
If you are thinking lightly about square jaw reduction surgery, please make sure to read this before deciding on surgery.
Two months ago, I had square jaw reduction surgery and deep cheek fat removal at a certain plastic surgery clinic in Gangnam. (The plastic surgery clinic where I had surgery is, after joining and looking around this community, a really, really popular clinic that people often mention as a place they went to for consultation.)
I had the surgery because I trusted the director’s confidence and postoperative care.
And these are the side effects I have been experiencing since the surgery until now.
1. After surgery, I cannot close my mouth. Because of this, my pronunciation leaks, it is hard when I fall asleep, and saliva drools.
To be precise, my lips do not close. Even when I keep my teeth gently together and closed, my front teeth show, and when I relax and my mouth opens, even my lower teeth show.
After looking up posts by several board-certified plastic surgeons and patients’ treatment reviews, they say this is a side effect that occurs when the chin has been shaved down (chin retrusion), because the lip muscles under the chin are not in their original position and the muscles sag.
Also, because the chin was shaved down, my lower lip naturally moved backward and is rolled inward. (My lower lip became smaller.) During my follow-up visit, I asked the director who performed my surgery about these side effects, and he said that because the surgery is performed by cutting the muscle that closes the lips, time would resolve the issue. But even after looking at many Q&A posts and plastic surgery reviews, I found cases where sensation came back or a twisted lip returned, but I could not find any story saying the lips closed like before.
So for me, if it does not recover, I may have to consider mentalis muscle resuspension after the recovery period.
2. Aching pain in the resected square jaw area
After surgery, when I press the resected square jaw line with my hand, my jaw aches and my lower teeth feel sharp and tingling. There are many restrictions on what I can do. You can think of this feeling as almost similar to when you receive dental root canal treatment. Every day feels like dental treatment.
When I looked this up too, they say that even if CT after square jaw reduction confirms that the inferior alveolar nerve canal was not cut off, this is a side effect that can occur if the nerve canal is exposed during square jaw reduction surgery. So they say it may become impossible for life to rest my chin on my hand, put something against my chin or bump it, wash my face vigorously, and so on.
They also say that as you recover after surgery, cortical bone fills in the cut jaw area. But I may have to think that I can never dream of living the same way as before surgery.. I have also half given up.
3. Reduced nerve sensation from the lower lip line to the chin and lower jaw
They say this is also a side effect experienced in cases of tiny nerve cuts or exposure of the inferior alveolar nerve canal; So I do not know whether it will recover or not.
(This is how it feels externally, and since nerve sensation is reduced in these body parts, naturally the gum area connected along that part also has reduced nerve sensation.)
Of course, when I suck through a straw or when food gets stuck while eating, it feels terrible.
The area above was completely tingling and numb after surgery, and even though sensation is coming back, when I touch it now, it feels itchy and sharply tingling, so it bothers me a lot when eating and speaking. Speaking does not feel smooth, and eating comes with that feeling too, so it greatly interferes with daily life and I feel like my quality of life is dropping more and more.
4. After deep cheek fat removal, when I make my mouth shape into “O,” I feel pulling from the muscles under the cheekbone all the way to the muscles beside my mouth, plus cheek hollowing.
Korean people say the “O” sound more often than you might think. (When I talk, it feels like my muscles are zooming in and zooming out.)
Only one side has cheek indentation, so when I look in the mirror, it feels like someone pressed a fingerprint firmly into it with a finger.
Right now, the saying “time is medicine” does not resonate with me at all. No matter how much prettier my face shape may have become after surgery, I feel uncomfortable except when I keep my mouth closed (in reality, my mouth does not even close). Life is not just looking in the mirror and taking tens of thousands of selfies a day. It is not a life where I simply keep my mouth shut and look only in the mirror, so every day is uncomfortable and hard, and I just swallow my tears inside.
After reading my post, I hope many people will seriously consider whether they really need square jaw surgery and deep cheek fat removal. I do not think everyone has side effects after surgery, but I also do not think there is no possibility of side effects occurring in anyone.
Thank you for reading this long post. If you continue to be curious about my recovery reviews going forward, I will try to post progress updates consistently every month.
However, as for revealing the clinic, the director may be right that there is a possibility of recovery, and I am afraid it could lead to litigation.. The clinic I went to is a place that gets mentioned a lot if you browse this community for just 5 minutes. Please do not rely only on famous places; really visit many clinics in person, look up as many side effects as possible, see through consultations whether the director is trustworthy, think as much as possible, and then decide on surgery.
+ If anyone who had surgery similar to mine has had these symptoms improve, I would be sincerely grateful if you could let me know in the comments what efforts are needed for improvement, etc.
+ If anyone had facial contouring surgery and was in a situation similar to mine, I would appreciate it if you could leave a comment about how you recovered.
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