January 7 forehead, cheekbone, and jaw surgery review

First, I should say that this post is quite long(^^;;). If long posts annoy you, please don’t read it...^^;; I had forehead, cheekbone, and jaw surgery on January 7 this year. I’ve been interested in facial contour surgery since 2003, and I’ve steadily visited various cafes and searched online for information, so you could say I had been preparing for this for quite a long time. Among them, the anti-plastic-surgery community on Daum and this community were the sites I visited most attentively. This community stimulated my intense desire for cosmetic surgery and a strong sense of purpose, while the anti-plastic-surgery community helped me question the real necessity and value of cosmetic surgery through the advice and desperate cases of many people who were suffering. Because I naturally have a rather shadowy temperament, I never posted comments or exchanged messages, and just quietly read the posts. As for my facial condition before surgery, first of all, I had severe facial asymmetry. Not only was my face line uneven in photos, but my left jaw was always bulging out as if I had candy in my mouth, while my right cheekbone stuck out sharply, making my face look twisted. My brow area was narrow, and the distance from the outer corners of my eyes to my ears was very wide, giving me a broad, flat face. To make matters worse, my cheeks were overflowing with flesh, so it was truly a face where all the features seemed crowded together. Still, thanks to having large eyes and a high nose, I was able to cover up the excessive width with my hair and avoid hearing that my face was big. (Of course, that was just an optical illusion...) Like most people who suffer from a complex about their face shape, I also stuck to nearly the same curtain-like hairstyle and hated being photographed more than anything else. Even though this is one of the highest-risk cosmetic surgeries currently performed, with side effects that can be devastating, after five years of wavering back and forth I finally went ahead with surgery because I judged that the things I was losing in my life due to this inferiority complex were too great. My purpose and need for surgery had become firm, but even if I did not know about the side effects, I already fully understood how serious they could be. So the next step had to be careful consideration of the surgical method, the hospital, and the doctor. I judged the standards for choosing the method, hospital, and doctor according to my own rational criteria. First, regarding the surgical method, I reviewed many posts and case reports to compare the frequency of side effects by method and the success of long-term maintenance cases, and I also examined how objectively valid and reasonable the principles behind each method were. Technical skill in surgery is entirely the doctor’s responsibility, but I believe the doctor at least has the duty to clearly explain to the patient, who must live with the result for the rest of their life, what will happen, how it will proceed, and what the underlying principles are. For that reason, I first gave high marks when clear information about the surgical method and principles was presented and that information seemed sufficiently valid by common sense. Personally, because I once studied in art school before quitting, I do not have specialized anatomical knowledge of the facial skeleton and muscles, but I was greatly helped by my sense of form structure and volume in understanding and judging whether the surgical method was valid. Different people may have different standards for judgment and choice, but by the criteria above, the most reasonable facial contour surgery in my view was the scalp incision method. Second, when choosing a hospital, I selected based on the validity of the method above, so the options were narrowed down significantly. Even so, over time I carefully observed side-effect cases, success cases, consultation cases, surgery reviews, and the consultation board on the hospital website. I did not put much weight on facilities or size when choosing a hospital. Of course, if possible, it would be nice to have surgery at a larger hospital with better facilities, but I thought the more important factor was the doctor, which would be the next point to consider. Third, the most important factors in choosing a doctor were surgical skill and responsibility. Of course, even if I were evaluating surgical skill, I am not a specialist and cannot directly assess surgical actions in the operating room with a checklist. Still, I thought indirect judgment was possible by thoroughly checking the doctor’s experience as a board-certified plastic surgeon, the period of surgical training, success cases and side-effect cases, and reviews of surgeries and consultations. The item of responsibility may be subjective and vague, but if a serious problem such as a side effect were to occur, it becomes the most certain and important issue in empathizing with the patient and solving the problem, so I included it as a key condition for choosing a doctor. Strictly speaking, this is the question of how possible true aftercare and customer satisfaction are if medical treatment is regarded as a service. For example, if a poor cheekbone surgery causes sagging cheeks, it does not mean offering a superficial stopgap such as lifting or skin procedures, but rather that the doctor should transparently disclose their past treatment behavior and, if there was any mistake in the procedure process, actively take responsibility for compensation. One of the most frequently repeated lines from the mouths of people suffering in the anti-plastic-surgery community is, “If only I could go back to the time before the surgery...”, and “The toilet looked one way going in and another way coming out...”. Even when buying a small electronic device, a warranty period of several years is standard these days, yet some plastic surgeons, despite providing a service that determines a person’s life, try to evade the problem by dragging things out with nothing but the patient’s endless patience once the surgery is over, without offering objectively understandable explanations or guarantees. That kind of lack of morality infuriates me. As evidence for judging responsibility, I considered whether, before surgery, the doctor explained in detail and accurately the procedure that would be performed on me, whether I could secure evidence to objectively verify the consultation process in advance, whether the surgery was performed correctly according to the procedure that had been explained to me, and whether, after surgery, I could clearly confirm the changes I wanted with objective data. Based on those grounds, at the hospital where I had surgery I was able to receive one copy of my medical chart, pre-surgery photos and X-rays, photos taken during the procedure, and post-surgery X-rays. According to the doctor, until last year related materials were sent to patients by email, but starting this year they would be burned onto a CD. Through all of the above arduous process, I finally underwent facial contour surgery using the scalp incision method on January 7 this year. As of today, it has been 17 days since the surgery. The first day after surgery was very difficult because of vomiting from general anesthesia and throat pain. But perhaps because there was no drainage tube or blood hose, aside from nausea and throat pain it was not especially hard, and I took a taxi home right after the surgery that evening. (The forehead was also done with the source material, so-called bone cement, which can only be used with a scalp incision, so there was no need for a drainage tube.) Well, I never felt unbearable pain or thought I could not stand the suffering after surgery. After that, until the third day, it was a war with swelling. Just as I had heard before, it was like a rubber balloon on the verge of exploding. From the fourth day, the swelling slowly went down, by the fifth day the wrapped bandage felt much more comfortable, and by the sixth day almost all the swelling had disappeared except for the puffy swelling around the mouth. Exactly one week later, I could visually confirm a slimmer line, which was amazing. I naturally tend to swell easily every morning, and the doctor also said that because of my cheek flesh my recovery period would likely be longer than other people’s, but perhaps because my surgery went especially well, the swelling went down quickly. Slenderness was what I had originally expected, but what I had not expected was that my facial asymmetry was almost corrected. Originally, during consultation, I was told that while slimness might be possible, it would be hard to expect facial asymmetry to be corrected accurately through surgery, so I did not have high expectations. But looking at my face now, the eyebrow that used to sharply rise on one side is now parallel on both sides, and the eyes that were once uneven are now aligned symmetrically. Of course, the cheekbones and jaw that used to bulge unevenly on one side are now balanced in line as well. There is still a definite difference between the feeling of the left diagonal face and the right diagonal face, but at least when viewed from the front, the two sides of the face now look almost symmetrical, which is incredibly amazing. Because I had the forehead done as well, the bandage was removed on the 10th day. When I took off the bandage, I was surprised that only a little blood had soaked into the gauze placed over the scalp incision. After washing my hair and showering, I put on a hat and went out, and because it looked like no more than the swelling after having wisdom teeth removed, nobody thought it was strange. At the hospital, most of the metal staples in my scalp and all the stitches inside my mouth were removed, but unexpectedly, when the stitches in my mouth were taken out, the two stitches at the front hurt suddenly and quite a lot. In terms of surgery-related pain, that was the most painful pain I had. (Of course, only for a moment...^^;;) Regarding fixation of the surgical area, during those ten days I repeatedly touched my jawbone and cheekbones, tapped my cheeks, and carefully opened my mouth as wide as I could. Subjectively, it definitely felt securely fixed. (This is entirely my own instinct, a sharp sense for detecting the condition of my own body first, so I have no other logical way to explain it.) That day, I also had an X-ray taken. When I went to radiology for the X-ray, they said there was no swelling for the tenth day after surgery, which made me quietly happy. The radiology staff there must have seen many patients coming in for X-rays because of cosmetic surgery, so I thought they would be able to objectively compare and judge the level of swelling. If someone like that said there was almost no swelling, I felt it was fair to interpret that as meaning the surgical area was recovering quickly. Things that should be in the right place had been put back where they belonged, so what needed to flow flowed properly, what needed to pass through did so properly, and what needed to be absorbed was absorbed quickly. As for how slim I look now, even though swelling still remains on day 17, I can clearly feel that compared with my previous face it has become narrower and more three-dimensional. The swelling makes my skin look dry, and the double eyelids that used to be thin and visible have disappeared under the remaining swelling, but overall the image looks much softer and more feminine than before. Before, I was always rushing to bring my hair down to cover my face, but now the more I sweep my hair back, the better it looks.^^;; When the swelling first went down and my facial contours began to show, because I had lived with such strong asymmetry for so long before surgery, the right cheek, where the cheekbone had been more prominent, seemed just a little less firm and a bit saggy. But the body’s recovery and adaptation are truly mysterious. Every day when I woke up, it felt like the skin and muscles were firmly condensing and reorganizing themselves to match the changed骨格... and now there is almost no difference in firmness between the two cheeks. The doctor in charge also said that if the surgery is done correctly, the flesh cannot sag and the outcome will improve more and more with time. They explained it with the analogy that if the skeleton is the clothesline and the flesh is the laundry, then if the laundry sags, it is because the clothesline has sagged. My mouth area is still numb, and it sometimes looks swollen because of the healing tissue, and my smile still feels awkward, but since I can see improvement day by day, I am waiting for recovery without much worry. Looking back, these were events that happened in a relatively short period of time, but when I think of them as including the time when I first began worrying about my facial contour, and also as including the expectations for my changed life ahead, they feel like long, heavy, turbulent, and desperate days. Before surgery, while looking through many cosmetic communities and reading posts, I unfortunately came across many painful stories from people suffering from surgical side effects, and their most desperate feeling was exactly this: “If only I could go back to the moment before the surgery... ” Whether the surgery was for correction due to a complex or for better beauty, the life that follows cosmetic surgery complications is a miserable one that destroys even the ordinary happiness of one’s previous life, without exception. Reading those posts hurt me deeply, and I also felt an unbearable rage toward some dishonest plastic surgeons who cut into and threw away other people’s lives without any remorse. In my case, it is still too early to make a rash conclusion, but so far it has been a process that suggests a successful outcome. Even so, despite having repeatedly heard explanations from the doctor in charge and receiving guide materials about the temporary discomfort and functional impairment that can occur during the recovery process after surgery, and despite having checked the progress many times through reviews from previous surgical patients, the surgery preparation, procedure, and recovery process itself was a difficult time that caused a fair amount of stress and anxiety. At times, I even gently touched and missed my pre-surgery face through photos, as if it were a friend I could no longer see. What I want to give back to everyone, after receiving such great help from this community, is this. What I sincerely, strongly want to say is that before deciding on cosmetic surgery, please be careful, and then be careful again. Once the scalpel is used, there is absolutely no going back. As the owner of the face I will carry for my entire life, you must look back on the necessity and purpose of surgery with the coldest possible judgment, become the most thorough and meticulous overall supervisor of the operation, and after surgery, have the will to endure the long and difficult process of patience alone. If you want to leave the surgery to heaven’s luck, then after doing everything you possibly can in the entire process, after confirming that the consultation process was transparent and there were no mistakes in the surgery process, and after doing your utmost to obtain recovery and a successful outcome, you should pray that there are no unpredictable adverse reactions or biological incompatibility reactions as a human being. As a human being and as the owner of my own life, I am saying that anything that can be prevented in advance must be prevented with all my effort. Prayer for what lies beyond human control comes after that... Lastly, I want to express my deep sympathy to those suffering from cosmetic surgery complications, and I definitely want to say that the earnest advice and warnings from those people changed many lives. I bow my head in gratitude, and I sincerely hope that your lives will recover and become bright again.