Recovery

Day after surgery:

I woke up probably at 7 or 8am after I had napped a bit since the breakfast arrived at 5:45 and then I had some appetite to try the food. The soup I got and the white thing that was kind of like yogurt was soooo good. I was afraid to eat but had so little bites. I could feel that I felt much better after some food.

I then was wondering if I could go after breakfast and breakfast was already done so was I going?

Around 9am a lady was coming in to measure my blood pressure when I asked her about leaving (because I couldn't wait to get to my hotel room) and said that my doctor said I could go after breakfast so I needed someone to remove the iv. She was surprised but said ok will get on that and dragged out the blood pressure thingy. I then ordered a car to be there soon.

I then waited FOREVER, and ended up ringing the nurse again and they said that they couldn't remove the thing in my arm because a doctor needed to do it but they would ask them. Another half an hour passes. I see that I can't possibly get the car so I try to cancel it but they are already there so I need to pay the "no show up fee" (which was 20 euros).

I then ring the nurse again, and note THEY DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH, any of them really so I relied heavily on using the google translate app (I downloaded Turkish so I could use it offline) and ask to go and she tells me to wait. 

Then she comes back with some iv bags and I am like...what...I am going and am I supposed to take these iv bags with me and use at the hotel??? So I used google translate to try to clarify that I don't know how to use these on my own, she then replied that it won't take long....then I understood, they wanted me to get these iv bags BEFORE I left ;D so ok, this kept happening, some delays and more iv bags so at around 1:30pm I got a message from my doctor asking if I was still there and I explained that they refused to remove my iv saying that a doctor needs to do it but this doctor never arrives. He then said he would call the nurses and fix this. And shortly after a nurse came and took out my iv, HALLELUJAH, I was free!

So I tidied up my room, took some pictures to show my family and was on my way FINALLY at 2pm. 

Ordered another car and got to the hotel and wow it was so nice to get there. Much less stressful.

First days after surgery:

Recovery wasn't bad in many ways.

I didn't have any pain, I didn't have any pressure in my nose.

I did get swollen, increasingly before being worst at day 3 but that didn't hurt and if I had been bothered more with putting ice on my face it would have been less swelling probably.

The absolute worst part about recovery was the silicone tubes or tampons in my nose. I could sometimes breathe a tiny bit, just enough so it wasn't so bad swallowing (try holding your nose and swallow, it's really uncomfortable actually when there is no airflow through your nose!) but when I slept my mouth would dry out so bad I would wake up and feel horrible in my mouth.

My body is also so used to nose breathing when sleeping so it would actually somehow attempt to only nose breathe so I every time I was about to fall asleep I would wake up gasping for air because I couldn't breathe...I could but my body was just so focused on using ONLY my nose that I had to manually use my mouth for breathing (My body is weird, I don't know why this happened) but I found out if I slept, not elevated but completely sitting up, this would rarely happen. So I slept sitting up for the 8 days I had my cast on.

And my cast was massive, much bigger than other patients I saw. I think it is because many people get tweaks, he had to completely break my nose, all of it and reassemble so it needed extra support.

So the worst part of recovery was not being able to breathe through my nose for 8 days!

I did panic a bit when looking at my nose because it seemed very upturned when it was taped up.

I had to rinse my nose 8 times per day and use antiseptic cream on the inside of it and the outside stitches. Rinsing was no problem.

I did misunderstand though and not rinse the first 2 days because I thought they said I needed to rinse for 3 weeks after cast off...but they said surgery and 2 days later I was reading the instructions again and saw it said after surgery not after cast off so I wrote them on whatsapp and they said to use it now so I did. So from day 2 or 3 I did the right follow up care. I was lucky though that it didn't seem to ruin anything, healing was just fine.

Cast off:

This time we arrived on time but there was no wait so we could go straight in. He just pulled the cast off, I expected him to do it super gently but he just pulled it off xD but it didn't hurt.

He then removed the silicone tubes and it was like he was dragging parasite worms out of my brain through my nose xD but it didn't hurt, it was just gross.

I didn't see what came out with the tubes but my mom did and she said it looked pretty gross xD

I then looked at my nose and it was much smaller than it appeared when the cast was on and not as upturned as it seemed when taped up.

My nose was straight, nostrils looked fine but it looked like another persons nose so it was just super weird to look at. The nose was more upturned than I liked but he said it would drop down.

I do understand he has to put it a bit up because it will fall down. I asked if I would have the same angle as before surgery (like he said it would be) but then he said it would be slightly higher, so in that sense he didn't do like he said BUT I think we are talking about few mm and also my nose was droopy, I didn't ask him to keep the droopiness so in that sense, it will be more up than before.

I was surprised my nose wasn't more swollen, I expected a potato nose but it was nothing but that. I did have swelling between the eyes so I looked a bit like an Avatar character xD but I know that swelling should go in 3 months so patience!

But my breathing is just fine through my nose.

People keep asking me if my breathing is better but to be honest it's just more even, by that I mean on one side I had very bad breathing and I think I had like extra good breathing on the other side (because my nose was crooked) but now I have the same amount of breathing on both sides but in total the breathing is just as good as before. But now if I kiss my boyfriend and his nose happens to close one of my nostrils, I don't end up gasping for air xD now I can just breathe through both nostrils well.

But they said now I just need to rinse my nose 4-6 times per day for the next 2 weeks and that was so nice because it is a lot doing it 8 times per day, such a hassle.

At this point I was still completely numb between the nostrils and in the tip of my nose and didn't have normal feeling in the rest of my nose except the sides of my nostrils.

2 weeks after surgery:

Everything is healing well. Bruising FINALLY almost gone, the last little bit of color went after the 3rd week. I got swollen under my eyes mostly, also my cheeks (my face shape changed a bit) and above my lips slightly but the swelling went away under the eyes the first week but it took 1-2 weeks longer for my cheeks to stop being a bit like a chipmunk xD

You can't tell obviously that I am swollen but I have seen before and after pictures of a few weeks after op and then a year after to see that my nose is swollen even though other people can't really see it except on the top of my nose between the eyes, where I am unusually wide.
I have some feeling between the nostrils now and more normal in the rest of my nose, tip still pretty numb.

I had to rinse my nose 4-6 times a day

1 and 1/2 months after surgery:

The swelling between the eyes has decreased quite a bit, look more normal there but think it will decrease more until the 3 months mark. My tip has dropped a bit which I am glad, makes a huge difference for me for but I hope it drops more, because it is still higher than I would like (but note...I liked my droopy nose and would rather have it droopy than up...I should have told him that before the surgery) but it still looks fine and everyone around me tells me it looks good so I can totally accept it the way it is. It will just be more perfect to me if it drops more.
My friends and family tell me it looks really good like this and they think it will look better if it will not drop more. So we will see.

I have more normal feeling in the nose and towards the tip as well as between the nostrils but the tip is still pretty numb. My doctor said it could take 3-4 months to get a normal feeling in the nose.

I have to note though, if you have a droopy nose, lifting your nose up will create more spacing from your lips to your nose because your nose isn't shadowing over that area anymore even if your nose is starting at the same place. I have that now and that is the main thing bothering me after the operation so I think I might want a lip lift in the future xD

Another thing I noticed is that before my operation my upper lip would lift up a lot when I smiled a lot, showing my gums, I really disliked that. Now when I smile my lip lifts less, not sure if this is because of the swelling but it is nice that I don't "oversmile" anymore xD might come again though at some point.

So the smile is better but the increased spacing between my lips and my nose does bother me.

Otherwise I don't feel any side effects, discomfort, breathing is good, only thing that bothers me is the stitches in the nose, when you scratch there they are so hard and just uncomfortable to touch with your finger, I have this strong feeling to wanting to rip them out xD but when I leave them alone I don't feel them.

A week after I got home there was one part of my nose where I felt like the end of the stitches were sticking too much out and hurting the other side of my nose so I visited an ENT here in Denmark and she trimmed the ends of the stitches and that solved the problem. I asked her how everything looked and she said it looked good.

PICTURES OF CURRENT RESULTS COMING UP!