I had ASO surgery in early 2020.
Every few months I used to come back to the community, reply to any accumulated messages, and answer what I could. It’s been a while since I came back, and now there are rules about honorifics? They say it’s to distinguish brokers, but I actually find that more inconvenient. I’ve always preferred using polite language, so it suits me better anyway.
First, I already wrote a post about my “9-month review after ASO surgery” about two years ago, so if you want, please refer to that. This time I’ll write a 3-year review. It’s now just a little over 3 years.
1. Why am I writing a review? There are a lot of reviews for double jaw surgery, but compared with double jaw surgery, there is really very little information about ASO. Even when I was preparing for surgery, I searched everywhere, including this community, but there wasn’t really much information and no reviews from people who had actually undergone the surgery.. Even if you visit many clinics in person, patients are still just patients. You only really learn things after actually having the surgery, and since there were hardly any reviews like that, I trusted my own judgment and went ahead. And when I had the surgery, I thought, “Later, after I’ve had the surgery, I should post some information.” That’s why, even three years after the surgery, I still come by every few months to leave comments or reply to messages. I’m not writing because I got some discount and was told I had to write a review or anything like that. I’m just sharing information because I want to.
2. Does ASO have side effects? Even appendectomy can kill you if something goes wrong, so how could there be no side effects? There is no surgery with no side effects. But what you’re probably wondering about is not “Can you die during surgery?” but rather “Are there any problems with eating, nerves, or things like that?” So I’ll focus on the things you’d actually want to know. The condition 9 months after surgery is in my previous post, so please refer to that.
- Have the nerves fully returned? By feel, the nerve sensation around the gums is about 95% back? The skin around the jaw is maybe around 90%? It seems like it doesn’t really recover any further than that. So is it inconvenient? No, not really. If something gets on it, I notice right away, and I can feel temperature too. After about six months to a year after surgery, it seems like everything recovers to about 90%, but at first, because of that remaining 10%, it can feel a little awkward. Just a little. You can still feel everything, but it feels slightly different from before surgery. But after living like this for a few years, you get used to it, and you don’t even think, “Right, before surgery things felt a little different from now.” You just adapt and stop thinking about it. When I say 10% is missing, you might think, “Does that mean sensation is reduced?” But that’s not what I mean. Even when I squeeze a pimple on my jaw, it hurts like crazy, lol. It’s not that kind of thing. It just means the sensation is a little different from before. Anyway, it has no effect on daily life, and I have no complaints.
My conclusion is: unless something like a medical accident happens, there’s no need to worry that the nerves won’t recover or that it will leave you uncomfortable.
- Do the gums or the roof of the mouth rot or necrose? No, they don’t.. Even when I had surgery, I saw posts worrying whether the gums would rot, or saying someone who had surgery at a certain hospital ended up with a hole in the roof of the mouth. I also searched very diligently at the time. Palatal necrosis is a side effect that used to show up only with old surgical methods used back when ASO had just become available, but the current method isn’t one where you need to worry about that kind of side effect in the first place, so you don’t need to worry about it~
- How is chewing food? Chewing hard things. For example, pickled radish kimchi? No problem chewing that kind of thing. Of course, after surgery I don’t intentionally chew only with my front teeth; I chew a little more to the side, toward the canines. But I don’t chew very hard things with just the front teeth at all. For example, a thick chocolate bar that’s been frozen solid. So the short answer is that it definitely seems to recover to about 90% of pre-surgery strength. As I mentioned when talking about the nerves, how could it be 100% the same as before surgery.. that doesn’t make sense. But even at 90%, eating reasonably hard foods in daily life is not inconvenient at all, so this is also not something to worry about~~ That said, while the nerves return within six months to a year, the front teeth area seems to take more than a year, and in some cases up to two years. It doesn’t seem to get back to 90% in just one year. To be precise, according to the doctor, it should recover to the previous strength in about four months, but that’s only in theory; in practice, if you try chewing, the front teeth area feels tingly, so for the first six months after surgery it’s easier to think of it as simply not being able to use the front teeth. So medically it may be recovered, but the nerves haven’t fully recovered yet, right? That’s why hard foods make it tingle, and I also feel anxious myself (afraid the gums + front teeth might just snap off;), so in the end I don’t chew them anyway.
- How does the mouth and jaw area feel? Hmm~ After surgery, there is definitely a sense that structurally my mouth? my jaw? is a little different. Again, a part of my body was removed or moved. But this odd feeling is not discomfort or anything like that. It’s just, literally, a sense of difference. Of course, it doesn’t interfere with daily life, and it doesn’t make things hard or painful or anything like that, but if you ask whether it feels good or bad, it is on the bad side. Still, it’s not something that affects daily life at all, so there’s no need to think too much about it. In the first place, if you’re worried enough about ASO to consider surgery, I doubt anyone would change their mind because of these tiny side effects or this sense of unfamiliarity, hehe.
- Does the skin sag or droop? First, let me say this in advance. I had ASO and chin surgery together. I reduced it a little more with chin reduction. Please keep that in mind. I’ve gained more than 15 kg over the 3 years since surgery, and I do have a slight double chin. Some people might look at that and think, “Isn’t that just because you gained weight? Not because of the surgery?” No. The surgery definitely has some effect. In other words, after surgery, if you gain weight, the double chin that would have been a 10 becomes a 15. That kind of effect is definitely there. But if you’re not gaining 10 kg at a time, or if you’re already overweight to begin with (if you’re overweight, you probably already had a double chin before surgery anyway), then as long as you can keep exercising and managing your weight consistently after surgery, I don’t think you really need to worry about a double chin. I’m not in a situation where I’m stressed out about my double chin right now either, and honestly, this amount of double chin is something almost anyone could have. (Until right before surgery, I had always lived as someone naturally thin. I had no double chin at all. But after surgery I bulked up, exercised, and gained nearly 20 kg, so that contributed too.)
- What I want to say to people preparing for surgery I think I may have written this in my previous post too, but I’ll try to recall it and write a few things again.
1) Don’t rush into surgery just because you’ve saved the full surgery fee. Save enough for the surgery fee plus extra funds, and only then have the surgery. Right after surgery, you’ll be in pain and miserable, you’ll have spent over ten million won, and your appearance will still be far from ideal, so you’ll feel a serious emotional slump. I’ve also heard that some people even borrow money and then have surgery while repaying loans and doing post-op care, but personally I hope you don’t do that.. I saved up all the money first and I’m objectively a pretty mentally strong person, but even then it was hard psychologically. I think this is a surgery you should only get when you have plenty of room financially. And borrowing money to have surgery is even more something you should not do.
2) This surgery will definitely fix your appearance-related complex, but it will not turn you into a handsome or beautiful person. If your eyes, nose, and overall features are already handsome, and only your mouth/jaw area is unattractive, then yes, this surgery can improve things dramatically. But if your features are ordinary or unattractive, or your nose is ordinary or unattractive, and you get this surgery? Then you’re just an ordinary or unattractive person with a better lower-face ratio lol.. Once the lower-face ratio is corrected, you start noticing the eyes or nose again. That’s why people keep getting cosmetic procedures. For reference, after ASO I had eye correction, and later, since I already had a somewhat prominent nasal bridge, I raised the tip of my nose just a little, using septal cartilage, by only about 3 mm. Because the lower face is unattractive, other areas start to stand out.
I wanted to do more in other areas too, but at that point I decided to accept reality and I haven’t had any more surgery. And I’m quite satisfied now. Of course I’m not some extremely handsome person now, but I think I’m at least above average, and I also understand and accept for myself that no matter how much more surgery I do, I still can’t become a gorgeous person. Think about it. Cosmetic surgery can improve you, yes, but it can’t make everyone into an overwhelmingly handsome or beautiful person. It’s also fine to fix your complexes and then just be satisfied once you reach ordinary or above ordinary. Of course, for some people, cosmetic surgery does lead to a huge success. But usually that happens when they already have favorable conditions such as a good face shape. So if you also think that surgery is not likely to make you a huge success, then I hope you stop at the point of fixing your complexes and develop your other strengths more. For example, take up hobbies or improve your physique.
3) If you’re considering not only ASO but also eye/nose surgery or contouring, be careful about the order of surgeries. Doctors.. to be blunt, I often felt that the basic stance is “they do not lie”.. What I mean is this: a patient comes in wanting nose surgery. At a glance, this patient’s bigger problem is the jaw, not the nose. But the doctor says nothing about the jaw needing treatment too, and only operates on the nose. What’s the problem? To become handsome or beautiful, the proportion between the nose and the lower face is very important, but this doctor makes only the nose pretty according to the current face. Then if I later get lower-face surgery? The ratio between the nose that was operated on earlier and the newly operated jaw may no longer match, and it could turn into a total disaster lol.
So if you’re considering ASO and also planning to have nose and contouring surgery later, then make sure!! absolutely!! tell the doctor that you’ll be having those other surgeries later too, so they should consider that when operating now. Say that together with your consultation, or have them done at the same time.
Think about it. Suppose your jaw is extremely long, but your nose is very short. What would the doctor do? They’d lengthen the nose, right? To fit the current facial proportions. That may look somewhat better at the moment. But in the end, because the proportions still aren’t ideal, you still can’t become handsome or beautiful, can you? To become handsome or beautiful, you ultimately need to match ideal nose / ideal jaw proportions. But if you later go to have jaw surgery and shorten the jaw length, then the nose that was operated on earlier will look long this time, and there’s no good answer. So either do them together, or tell the doctor in advance that you’ll be having other surgery too..
4) For a few days after surgery, you really do regret it.. Steady your mind.. All you can think is, why did I even have this surgery. You can’t sleep properly, you can’t shower properly, you can’t eat properly.. that pain is really severe. The surgical site doesn’t throb. If you take painkillers, it doesn’t hurt.. But the pain of not being able to sleep properly is really huge. And in my experience, if you want to lie down and sleep after surgery, you need about five days first. Until then, it’s really hard.. Of course, even after that, the first month and a half is still very hard ^^. Expect that it will take two to three months before things start to feel livable again.
5) Don’t do it just anywhere; make sure you personally visit multiple places and compare them.. The more you go around to different places, the more your own perspective expands. Then you start thinking, “Ah, that doctor back then was saying something strange to me,” and your own standards begin to form. I hope you personally go around and choose according to your own judgment. For example, at one famous dental clinic, they told me to have triple-jaw surgery, to split the upper jaw twice and the lower jaw once, something like that, but after I kept looking around, I realized ASO would be enough for my case, so I got ASO. Of course, even if I had gotten double jaw surgery, I doubt I would have died or anything. It might have come out similarly to now, or maybe even changed more dramatically. In jaw surgery, double jaw is almost a cure-all. But people treat double jaw surgery too casually and present it as the solution.. it is a very big and risky surgery. Nowadays, because the technology has advanced, you can assume that people don’t die from it and similar issues aren’t a problem, but that’s not the main issue. If you undergo a major bone surgery like that just once, your quality of life drops a lot for several months. And even if you do recover completely, it still won’t become 100% the same. So I think that if a problem can be solved, it’s better to choose the smaller surgery as much as possible..
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I don’t regret getting ASO. Even if I went back, I would do it again. But there are definitely small side effects.
People generally think cosmetic surgery is no big deal, but once something goes wrong, you have to live in this body for the rest of your life. You can’t change it. People with severe side effects really suffer, don’t they? They want to die.
What guarantee do we have that that won’t happen to us, or that we can avoid it? They probably all thought the same thing when they had it done.
So I hope you research as much as possible before having surgery.
Since I wrote this, I’ll come by for about a week and reply if there are comments and such.
And even after that, I stop by every few months to answer messages or comments, so if you have questions, ask away. Even if I don’t reply right away, I’ll answer later~
Then everyone, take care!