Posting the full nose-removal photos since people were curious

They removed everything: silicone, donor rib cartilage, septal cartilage, the capsule, ear cartilage, and the Megaderm that had been placed over the bridge of my nose (it had been absorbed, so they scraped off what was left behind like scar tissue). While removing it all, they used the septal cartilage that came out too (they said a huge amount had already been harvested in the previous surgery) to reinforce my own septum and straighten the bend in it (they said it had been horribly crooked). They also cut some of that up and used it as support to prop up the collapsed columella and make it stand straight again. It is not a support for lifting the tip of the nose. They said it will be the same when my nose softens later, too. They also performed an osteotomy on the right side of the hump to fill in the hollow left from shaving down the hump in the previous surgery, and they also straightened the pinched left ala. I had been working at a company for three months (I had originally been self-employed), and the workplace had a pretty severe case of harassment from a supervisor. From the very first day I went in there, I kept feeling like there was a strand of hair lying on the bridge of my nose, so I kept trying to brush it away, but there was no hair there, just constant itching. The more I scratched, the more my skin peeled off, and even when I scratched, it never felt relieving... It honestly felt like the silicone inside my nose was itching. Then I couldn’t stand that job anymore and quit. After quitting, I suddenly got anxious, thinking maybe my nose was developing inflammation, so I came here right away to look into removal and the top three names came up exactly. So I thought this was the place, chose one, booked a consultation immediately, and had the surgery. But the first consultation was three weeks later, and about a week after I quit, the itchy feeling disappeared. So I kept wavering about whether to have surgery again or not, but I didn’t want to live carrying around this time bomb, and suddenly I found myself thinking I wanted to trade that stressful feeling from working for a soft, comfortable nose and live more easily. It was like I had reached a point where I could no longer tolerate even the slightest discomfort. So I decided that even if I ended up looking worse, I should just live the rest of my life comfortably, and in the end I went through with the removal. My revision nose had been crooked and pinched here and there, the columella was tilted, and it was a mess, so the decision was easier. If it had been a pretty nose, maybe I would have thought, "It hasn’t gotten inflamed yet and there isn’t any major problem, so maybe I should just endure a little discomfort and keep living with it?" lol Anyway, I had the removal surgery, and from right after the operation I had no foreign-body sensation and the light feeling was so nice that I immediately felt like I could live again. Today is day 8. I read every post about removal on this community very carefully, so I wanted to help a little too and decided to post. The left side is the before photo taken at the hospital right before removal, and the right side is today’s photo, day 8 after removal. Why didn’t they take a photo when I went back yesterday for my one-week checkup? I tried to take them as similarly as possible, but the front-facing angle is a little different. The hospital put a small round piece of Megaderm over the part where they did the hump osteotomy and over the area where they straightened the pinched alar side. I took it with a selfie camera, so the quality isn’t that great. The Megaderm doesn’t show very well. So for the final columella photo, I took it with the rear camera because I thought people might want to see the columella scar. The nostril size and the tilt of the columella look different depending on the camera angle. When I look in the mirror, since I can’t see it from very far below, it looks like it is standing straight and well. My husband, who looked at it from directly underneath, says it looks a bit crooked like before, but also says it looks fine. When I take photos from below, it comes out slightly differently depending on the angle, so if I enlarge it a lot, flip it, and inspect it closely, I start to wonder if it is a little crooked like before? But that’s something only I know, or maybe even I don’t know... It feels like a level no one else can really detect. From the front, the bridge is still quite swollen, so it looks like a nose block. I straightened the pinched part, so why does the other side now look pinched too? lol It must be swelling, right? The side profile is exactly the line I had wanted every time I had surgery Everyone here says this is swelling, so it will all go back down like my original nose. But my original nose had no defined bridge between the eyes, the bridge was a bit wide, and the tip drooped, so I just want time to stop like this I can already feel that my nose is getting softer. I lived with a hard nose for 24 years, so even the tip becoming a little soft feels incredibly strange. The last nostril photo is a bit gross, but I posted it because there are people like me who have trouble breathing through one nostril after nose surgery, so I thought it might help as a reference. I’ve had trouble breathing through my right nostril ever since my revision surgery last year. You can see in the photo that the upper part is narrow and blocked, right? For now it seems similar to before the surgery, maybe because of swelling. At the end of this surgery, when I was waking up from sedation, the first thing I said was, "Doctor, I can breathe!" Then they stitched everything up and finished, but when they put the splint on, breathing felt obstructed again. So yesterday, when they removed the splint, I thought I would immediately be able to breathe well again, but it wasn’t quite like that. Because I knew what it felt like right after surgery, I was pretty disappointed. I also wondered whether the septum had bent again when the splint was put on. In the photo, the wall on the right side is the septum, and you can see that it protrudes, right? The septum on the other side is slightly bent inward. About 1 mm, maybe? But looking at the bridge from the outside, the bridge itself seems to be slanted and somewhat crooked in the shape of the septum. Even during the revision surgery, I thought the silicone had been inserted at an angle, but after removal, it seems my bone was originally shaped that way. It looks like the axis of my original nose was crooked, so the septum probably naturally bent in that shape too. Still, since the thicker donor rib cartilage was removed and so on, it looks dramatically better even to the naked eye from the outside. Yesterday, when I went in for the one-week checkup and said I couldn’t breathe well through the right side and that the septum seemed to have collapsed a bit, the doctor said that if I was worried, he would show me directly. He used an endoscope to show me that the airway was open well and that the septum was standing straight. He said the inside of the nose is like a cave, so it isn’t supposed to be perfectly straight. When I met the doctor right after the removal surgery, he had told me that the septum had been extremely crooked and messy. I guess what is visible on the outside isn’t everything. I just have to trust that they straightened it well Since they said the breathing discomfort is still due to swelling, I’ll have to wait and see. Just because I wanted to widen the airway a little, I kept sticking cotton swabs into that narrow gap for several days and kept pushing at it with the swab because the septum seemed bent too, and now it seems like the mucosa is even more swollen. It mustn’t become scar tissue After listening to the doctor yesterday and trusting that the septum is well straightened, I didn’t touch it at all today, and as the swelling seems to be going down a bit, breathing is very slightly getting easier. I guess I’ll need to check this over time. If the bulge on the left is scar tissue (it appeared after my revision surgery), and breathing still feels obstructed even after all the swelling goes down, I’ll ask an ENT doctor later whether it can be trimmed away a little. I don’t recommend or discourage any particular hospital. The surgery was my choice and my decision, and I believe every surgery inevitably comes with large and small outcomes that neither the doctor nor I can fully predict. So I don’t think that because things went well for me, they will go well for others, or that because something went wrong for me, it will go wrong for others too. So please look only at the objective facts and make your own decision carefully. I’m extremely sensitive and the type who gets mentally overwhelmed every time I have surgery, but this time I really think I was lucky. I’m never getting cosmetic surgery again. People look best when they’re natural. Writing this for hours when I’m not even getting paid is exhausting I hope my effort helps everyone here even a little! I hope you all make good decisions and get good results too~ And for those who haven’t had nose surgery yet, absolutely do not get surgery!! I wasn’t even happy with the nose I had surgery on at 19, but I kept living with it, then had revision surgery last year because the tip had drooped so much. I thought it would definitely be better than the previous nose, but the previous nose only had a drooping tip, while the revision nose ended up crooked all over the place, the columella collapsed, and breathing got worse too... Things happen in surgery that I can’t predict. So don’t even think, "If I just fix this one part a little, it’ll look pretty." One or two out of ten people may turn out well, but the rest may end up with a slanted bridge, bent septum, asymmetrical nostrils, crooked columella, columella scar, upturned nose, hooked nose, pointed nose, avatar nose, more height than requested, unsatisfactory tip shape, unsatisfactory columella shape, and so on, along with functional issues like not being able to breathe well. But even if surgery goes wrong, it’s not necessarily the doctor’s fault either. What doctor in the world would want to make nostrils uneven or insert silicone crookedly? They all do their best to make it pretty during surgery. Because they don’t have much experience, maybe they also can’t predict that the septum will bend later. If you can somehow avoid all of those possible outcomes and live with a nose that turns out beautifully, you still have to care for that nose for the rest of your life, and one day inflammation or contracture could still happen... If you can accept all of that, then go ahead and have surgery. If not, just live with the most natural and beautiful nose you already have. Now that I’m over forty, people around me who had nose surgery were only pretty in their twenties. These days, as the skin gets thinner, the silicone shows easily and the face ages, but the nose stays the same, so it looks unnatural and very obviously operated on. As time goes by, standards of beauty keep changing too, and these days when I watch TV, I only see artificial-looking people who all look the same, and they don’t even look beautiful. The people who never had surgery look the prettiest to me. Everyone, your nose is already pretty. Instead of trying to decorate the outside, please cultivate what is inside. I hope you become someone who is attractive the more people see you, not someone who only looks pretty at first glance. Please, please don’t ignore your older sister and regret surgery later. Just live as you are right now, in the most beautiful state you are in!!