I’ve heard that after cosmetic surgery, if you end up reasonably satisfied with the result, there isn’t much motivation to write a review afterward, and that really does seem true. It’s been about 3 weeks since my nose surgery, and I think I stopped visiting this community once I hit week 2. But before surgery, I had resolved that because this community helped me gather a lot of information before my rhinoplasty and manage my anxiety well right up until immediately after surgery, I should leave a review. I felt I should keep that promise or I might get punished lol. There was a lot of information about the hospital I went to on the hospital’s own website, but not much in this community, so before surgery I desperately searched everywhere for it. Hospital reviews also feel a bit less reliable, right? Anyway, that’s why I’m posting. If I don’t write it now, I feel like I’ll only get lazier, so today I’m going to look back on the past 3 weeks like a diary entry
*Consultation First of all, the director was decisive and clear. The director said people often describe him as unfriendly, but I’ve always thought that truly gentle doctors are rare in general, regardless of specialty. The training process to become a doctor is so intense and they’re always pressed for time, so I think efficiency becomes important as part of the process, and maybe it’s a kind of defense mechanism that develops from being asked endless questions by patients who don’t know much. Still, I didn’t really think this director was unfriendly. Rather than unfriendly, “very decisive” feels more accurate, and according to my mom, he was straightforward. I live overseas and could take a long vacation, but I still had to minimize the time I spent in Korea, so before even coming to Korea I spent a lot of time researching on this community to choose a hospital. My goal was a natural result, to the point that other people wouldn’t know I’d had surgery, and a surgery that minimized concerns about side effects, especially anything that would limit movement in my nose even after surgery, even if the correction wasn’t absolutely perfect. As soon as I arrived in Korea and my quarantine ended, I first went to the hospital where I had surgery, ㄹㅂㅅ, and after that I visited two other hospitals that were recommended a lot in this community for a natural, conservative approach, plus one factory-style? large? hospital, but ㄹㅂㅅ, where I had my first consultation, gave the most detailed and theoretical? consultation, so the other places I visited afterward didn’t feel very appealing, and in the end I went ahead with surgery there. He explained my nose anatomically, which helped me understand it more vividly, and it was also the hospital that felt least like it was trying to sell me something. The reason I first put this hospital on my list, even though it wasn’t heavily promoted in this community or others, was first because they do non-open surgery, and second because I felt sincerity from the hospital website. The consultation is only with the director; at the first consultation, they use photos of the nose taken with a phone, but once you decide to proceed, they take proper nose photos again. They never leave the photo-taking to staff; they use a method they developed themselves to take extremely detailed images. Of course it’s for before-and-after comparison, but they also said the director studies the photos to decide how to perform the surgery, and for that, all patients have to be photographed under the same conditions so that lighting, angle, and other factors don’t distort things and the nose can be observed objectively. I was moved by that. The nurses and the head nurse? at the hospital were all kind, and maybe because it was an ENT clinic, compared with the people I met at other hospitals, they didn’t feel commercial at all and seemed much more focused on helping with surgery and recovery. Actually, my nose had a lot of issues, so the director spent a lot of time thinking about whether he should operate on it at all. Another thing that made this feel like a safety-conscious hospital was that, unlike other hospitals, the standards for medications you must not take before surgery were very strict, and they only do one surgery a day. The follow-up care after surgery was also very frequent and systematic. Other hospitals usually seem to call it around 3 visits? cotton removal, stitch removal, and a final check about 2 weeks after surgery, but here I visited every day for the first week after surgery, and even now, although my nose seems to have almost fully returned to normal function, the director still checks it every 3-5 days.
Surgery I had hump reduction osteotomy, repositioning of the nasal tip cartilage, and cartilage suturing, and although it’s only been 3 weeks and it will keep changing as it settles, I’m very satisfied for now. Of course my post-op nose is not some celebrity-perfect nose, but considering the many drawbacks of my original nose and the fact that I insisted on a natural result, I think it’s the best result possible, and it came out very close to what I expected, so I’m really satisfied. To say it first, what I think is special about this hospital is that it specializes in non-open, no-implant surgery using mainly septal cartilage, and that except for the early stage of surgery, it is done only under local anesthesia. Before surgery, my nose was crooked, had uneven nostrils, large nostrils, a hump (in real life the hump was much more pronounced than in the pre-op photos I uploaded), a wide tip, and a long drooping/arrow nose. But at the first consultation, when the director looked at my nose, he said my nose was one with underdeveloped nasal tip cartilage, which is why the nostrils were wide, and that even with surgery, a very pretty nose wouldn’t come out of it. He also said that because the nose itself is crooked and the face is crooked too, the uneven nose and uneven nostrils would remain as well. (Two other hospitals said they would improve that part, but I excluded them because the surgery methods they proposed clearly looked like they would put too much strain on nasal movement.) He also said that because the base of my nose is relatively wide, after trying hump reduction osteotomy, if the bridge became wider too, they might need to see how it looks and possibly do medial and lateral osteotomies. And although we all wanted a no-implant approach, he said that if, after the hump reduction osteotomy, the nose felt too low and flat, then in a very unlikely case we should also consider placing silicone in the bridge. Some people have noses where the estimate is fully set before surgery, but in my case it seemed like there would be parts during surgery where the director would need my opinion and approval(?) on the spot, and because I felt anxious that a hospital doing everything under sedation might just proceed according to the pre-set plan instead of checking the process step by step during surgery, I liked that this hospital did it under local anesthesia. Some people dislike being awake during surgery, but for me the fear during surgery felt more manageable than anxiety about the final result, and when I read reviews of this hospital, most said they were able to get through it comfortably with almost no sensation because of the anesthesia, so I wasn’t too worried. I also needed septal cartilage harvest and a rhinitis surgery, but during the actual operation the rhinitis surgery felt a little unpleasant, while the cosmetic part felt comfortable. Anyway, the director said that in his judgment it wouldn’t be a very pretty nose, but my goal was just to correct the width of the nose to some degree and clean up the hump line, and I was actually uncomfortable with changing the original nose too much, so I was drawn to the surgical method he suggested. Another hospital said non-open surgery would be inaccurate, and that may well have been true for them, but the director at ㄹㅂㅅ had been doing non-open surgery for a long time and seemed confident in the accuracy of the operation, and after seeing the consultation process before surgery, I didn’t think he was the kind of person who would have baseless confidence, so from start to finish I felt trust and relatively calm. As everyone considering surgery knows, deciding to have cosmetic surgery was a huge thing in my life, so like most people, I think I would have worried before surgery, kept seeing side-effect reviews in my head, and even after surgery my mind would have gone back and forth until the splint came off and the swelling went down. Especially after experiencing it myself, for about a week after surgery my body was very tired and I also had nosebleeds, so I felt that affected my mental state too. In my case, for example, the director would shape the nose during surgery and briefly show me the nose before stitching it up, and in that confused state, when I suddenly saw the changed nose, there were parts I liked but also unfamiliar parts. And because I was only seeing it for a split second while feeling dazed, I couldn’t really remember it in detail.. So while resting in the recovery room, I started thinking maybe my nose was too upturned. Then right after I came out of recovery, I said, “Isn’t my nostril showing too much,” and the director said, “Have you ever seen an upturned nose in the hospital review photos? No, right? Trust me~!” and from that moment on I felt a huge weight lift off my mind. The director was more trustworthy than I was;; And now I’m actually satisfied with the result too. My mom and dad were also very worried about the surgery, but now they’re happy saying I look prettier, so I feel like I’ve repaid them in my own way. Just changing one part of the nose can change the whole impression of the face a lot. Even though the bridge stayed the same and in fact the hump reduction could have made it a bit lower, the tip being lifted also makes it look like the bridge is higher. And only people who have been through this will understand, but after nose surgery the condition is divided into before and after cotton removal, right.. After my nose surgery, because I had the weekend in between, I had the cotton removed on the second day after surgery, but other people who had surgery at this hospital seemed to have it removed the very next day. I didn’t know this before surgery either, but compared with other cosmetic surgery clinics, they remove the cotton extremely quickly, and I’m guessing that was possible because it was a fast-recovery non-open procedure. During surgery, the director would encourage me by saying things like, “The hump reduction went well~” and on the day the cotton was removed he also comforted me by saying I’d worked hard and that the hardest part was over. The director said swelling and bruising vary depending on a person’s constitution, and because it was non-open, I barely had any bruising or swelling. Still, according to the director, it’s still very swollen. If I look closely only at the nose, it does feel a bit tight, lol, so I’m also curious what shape it will take about a year after surgery. I met a few relatives today, and they didn’t even know I’d had surgery.
It feels like this got way too long as I was writing It’s not a surgery where your life is on the line, but still, while preparing for surgery, you end up looking back on your life with a heavy heart. Questions like what appearance means to me, and where one should be satisfied and let go I’ve seen a lot of negative posts about nose surgery too, but if you have surgery conservatively and without greed, I think there’s also a lot to gain from the fact that you go through a short period of discomfort and come out with more confidence. Of course, it may still not be something I can fully judge when I’m only 3 weeks out. I went through my own emotional struggle before getting nose surgery, and I’m sure there are many people still deliberation 중 about it now, but having been in that position myself, I really hope everyone finds a good hospital that suits them and has a successful surgery. I’m uploading some photos I took roughly, and if I later get the ones the director took at the hospital, I may upload those again.