Nose Job Problems: My nose is swollen after my cast came off!
Hello, fellow nose-job-haver! Let’s talk about the anxiety you’re currently having.
You just had your cast removed after surgery, you’re ready to see your beautiful (and costly) new nose, and instead you turned out looking like Shrek after a bad bar fight.
I’ve been there, trust me I know what you’re feeling right now. My nose job was an ordeal. I was supposed to have a 4 hour surgery, but halfway into it, my surgeon discovered that I had a “traumatic nose” which meant more work had to be done, and the surgery was 8 hours long.
I was also vegan at the time I had this done, so my bruising was, as the nurses blatantly told me months after, “the worse we have ever seen”.
Let’s all have a good laugh - I’ll show you exactly what I looked like when the cast came off.
You might think this looks gruesome, but truth be told, when I first saw this I was ecstatic! My nose was a bit swollen, yes, but I had expected that from what my doctor and people online had chattered about. But from the side my new nose was gorgeous, had no bump and was smaller - that was what I had wanted to fix the most.
I got in the car happy, and drove home with my parents. The drive was about 30 minutes.
Then I got home and realized that my face had turned into a big, fatass potato person. I was the embodiment of live-action Lion King a year before it had been created. I looked like a Wii avatar. I looked like the Avatar, straight from a James Cameron fever dream.
Now, here’s the important thing to remember after your rhinoplasty - and I did a pretty okay job of this at the time - objectively, this is hilarious.
Without a doubt, this is the weirdest you will ever look in your life. It’s a bit demoralizing because you just spent a week bloodied and bruised, with a huge cast on your face, just waiting for it to come off so you can finally be beautiful…and now you’re a potato. And you’ll be a potato for about a week.
I was sad, I was pissed, I was self-conscious…but I also couldn’t stop laughing. I went on a few forums where other post-surgery people complained about their nose and compared it to various cartoon animals.
Have you ever heard of the theory that the most beautiful faces are the most symmetrical? There are photos where people will mirror celebrities faces to see what they look like when they’re perfectly symmetrical, and sometimes they look beautiful, but sometimes they look super weird, like the below photos.
That was how I felt I looked. Wide. Stretched. Weird. And also bruised and bloody and just swollen in many places.
Remember how I said that I laughed? I did also cry. And that’s totally okay. You just went through major surgery, spent a week recovering, only to find out the battle is only halfway done. Let it out! It feels good.
Let’s talk about trying to speed along the swelling process. The most important thing is time (here’s what I look like now)
But there were a few things that quickly helped my tragic situation, which I want to share.
After receiving so many comments and questions from folks in my position online, I decided to write an e-book about my tips on how I de-swelled my nose quickly, put myself in a good mindset during this time (because trust me, I was ready to throw away all of my mirrors haha) and share tips on my de-swelling timeline, and how I answered questions about my nose job in my social sphere afterwards.
In my e-book, I cover the following:
I’m also always working on improving the e-book and adding more valuable content into it! So if you have any questions at all that aren’t included in there (although it’s 29 pages and long so there’s a lot packed in haha) please feel free to reach out to me for any other questions you may have about your healing process or what I did to help my nose!
Also - check out the comments below for any advice you might want. Thousands of people have visited this page who were in your exact shoes, so if you’re looking for camaraderie or just want to share your story below, head down to the comments!
Until next time,
S