I’m looking into revision surgery for my daughter, and I needed to level up, so I wrote this in another community as well. I’m posting the same thing here. In my case, it’s rare, so there probably aren’t many people like this, but when I was struggling so much and desperately searching like crazy, hoping to grasp at even a straw, there were almost no cases like mine, which made it even harder. So if anyone going through something difficult like I did sees this post, I’m writing it in the hope that it may help even a little.
I’m now in my early 50s. In my early 20s, I really knew nothing and, without anything that could even be called a proper consultation with the doctor, I had nose surgery with L-shaped silicone at a hospital that was said to be cheap and good at the time. It was only when I had the silicone removed that I found out there had been L-shaped silicone in my nose.
The incident happened more than 25 years after the nose surgery. At first, discomfort slowly started appearing in my face little by little. Sensing that something was strange, I went to several plastic surgery clinics and ENT clinics in Daegu. I consulted them saying I wanted to remove the silicone, but they all said it looked fine and that I didn’t necessarily need to remove it. Even though slight swelling and tiny reactions on the bridge of my nose were already continuing to appear. What I felt at the time was that since I said I only wanted the silicone removed and wasn’t considering revision surgery, it seemed like they didn’t want to do it because there wasn’t money in it. But since the hospitals kept saying it was fine, I couldn’t do anything about it.
As some time passed, abnormal sensations started coming to my face. At first, it felt like one side of my nose was blocked and half of my face felt heavy. That worsened, and I started feeling tenderness and numbness under my nose. When I went to the hospital and said I had tenderness, they removed the silicone. I think the nerves around my nose were probably being compressed at that time. Even after the silicone was removed, the numb feeling, especially in the area below the nose and philtrum, as if blood wasn’t circulating, was so strong that I felt like I was going crazy. I couldn’t live my daily life, and it was so hard that I really went around like a crazy person, visiting this hospital and that hospital, even university hospitals. But no matter what tests they did, they couldn’t find the cause. Since they couldn’t identify a disease by machine testing, one doctor even told me to go see a psychiatrist.
There was no treatment.. I felt like I was going to die, so I wanted to get help from anything, and I received treatment for facial pain at a dental university hospital. I’m truly grateful to that professor. Whenever I cried during appointments, he comforted me so much, saying I would definitely get better and that most people who were as desperate as I was had improved. Other doctors found me bothersome, but I was grateful that the professor at least treated me as a patient. The professor also didn’t know the cause of my condition, so he only prescribed medication like sedatives, but I don’t think they had much effect. Still, I had nowhere else to rely on, so I kept getting the medicine and taking it. I took it for over a year. Even while taking it, the abnormal sensation didn’t improve even a little because of the medication, but over 1 to 2 years, it seems to have gradually improved through natural regeneration. And the discomfort and foreign-body sensation in the nose and philtrum area, as if a stick had been inserted there, were severe at first, but they are much better now. It’s not that it has completely improved; I think I’ve just become used to the discomfort. It seems it took about 2 years for the abnormal sensation and discomfort to become bearable. These days, I think I spend more than half the day forgetting about the discomfort.
My nose now has contracture, so the tip is a bit lifted and my nostrils show a lot, but I’m just going to live like this. After suffering terribly for several years, I think I’m too scared to have nose surgery again.
For those who are struggling with abnormal sensations like I did, really, it gets much better with time. I was also suffering so much that I felt like I was going to die and couldn’t live my daily life, but time was the medicine. If you endure the difficult period well, you will definitely get better.