I’ve wanted a rhinoplasty since middle school, although I didn’t tell anyone about it until college in case I changed my mind (I didn’t). I felt like my nose was just a little too big and round for my face. I have a fairly narrow forehead and a small mouth, and I thought the shape and size of my nose overwhelmed my features, especially in profile.
But almost no one agreed with me, so I stopped telling people about it, because I got tired of hearing that I didn’t need one. I did get a non-surgical rhinoplasty to see if I liked the look of a straighter nose, and loved it.
Fast forward (a lot) to finishing grad school and getting a full-time job, and I finally decided it was time.
Choosing My Surgeon
I went to two consultations with well-known plastic surgeons in my city. They both had great reviews and told me similar things: they were willing to do a rhinoplasty on me but warned me that I wouldn’t see dramatic results (which I wasn’t surprised to hear). I was thinking about going with the first doctor when I learned about ultrasonic rhinoplasty.
Ultrasonic rhinoplasties are the next generation of nose surgery and are generally a lot less traumatic for your body than traditional rhinoplasties. I spent days reading and watching videos about them, and finally decided that was what I wanted.
I searched for doctors who performed them, and found that there was only one doctor in my city (and state, at least at the time), so it was an easy decision to set up a consultation with him.
He went into a ton of detail about what exactly he wanted to do to my nose and how he would do it with his ultrasonic equipment. I agreed with everything he said, and I was confident I’d picked the right doctor. After a week of debate, I called back to schedule the procedure.
Post-Surgery
My surgery was smooth and took a little less than two hours. I stayed on top of my pain medication (hydrocodone) for three days, and then tapered off to ibuprofen for the next couple days, so that I was on no pain medication by the end of the week. I didn’t ever feel worse than a 2/10 pain, and for most of the time I was hovering between no pain and 1/10.
The worst part, by far, was the packing. I HATED feeling like I couldn’t breathe right, I hated not being able to smell or taste anything (I have a whole new level of empathy for people with these covid symptoms), and I hated how gross the packing made me feel. That was the one part of recovery that I truly didn’t feel prepared for.
The cast and packing came off on day 6, and apart from some sallowness under my eyes and across my nose, I had no bruising. Once my nose was cleaned off I looked like a 95% normal human being. My nose was really swollen, but if I was a stranger you probably wouldn’t have been able to tell that I was less than a week out of a rhinoplasty.
Once everything was off of and out of my nose, for the next couple months it was just a matter of using saline washes a couple times a day, and keeping everything moist. I also used aquaphor on q-tips a few times a day to keep things wet.
My doctor told me to tape my nose at night to reduce swelling, but I found smoothing down the tape to make it tight enough to be effective really painful, so I decided to just let time take care of the swelling.
As of this writing, I’m about one year post-op. I have no regrets about it.
Cost: $10,000. I was quoted approximately $9k, $10k, and $11k by the three surgeons I visited.
Worth it: Yes, definitely.
