Dorsal Hump Removal to Straighten My Nose - Albuquerque, NM

I have not always had a preposterous nose. As a child and up until my freshman year of high school, my nose was average-ish in size and straightness. But as maturity and genetics took their toll, a pronounced dorsal hump began to appear that over the next few years made my nose extremely crooked and hooked. Obviously I hated it, slightly at first, and then with mounting passion as it appeared to get worse--more crooked and pronounced. My self-esteem plummeted. People would comment on it, tease me, ask me to smell things because they "assumed" that my large and crooked nose was more highly sensitive than a normal sized nose. I would get asked if I were Jewish (which, isn't insulting in itself, obviously) because of the nose. And it angered and embarrassed me because the whole point of asking was to make some sick corollary between Jewish people and and large noses and draw attention to my own large and crooked nose.

I have run the gamut of thoughts from anger to despair to embarrassment. I have hated my genetics and fantasized about smashing the hump down into my face with a hammer, or cutting it off myself. Recently I have been devoured by my crooked nose. I've been embarrassed to be seen, especially from the profile. Obsession over this deformity over which I have been teased and embarrassed to be seen sporting on my face has been ruining my life. And while I know it is a very trite and superficial thing to obsess over with all of the terrible afflictions others in the world suffer, I cannot shake it.

Because of these things, I decided on rhinoplasty. I wanted to change this while I am still young and can date and enjoy myself. After extensive research, and subsequent consultations with plastic surgeons in the Albuquerque area, I decided on Dr. Taghizadeh from New Mexico facial plastics. My reasons for choosing him: he was a nice man who seemed intelligent and competent; his office was nice, newer, with a machine that scanned one's face and rendered a 3D composite of it; this machine was very helpful in that it allowed him to manipulate the image of your face until you got the nose that you wanted; he consulted well with me and went over the procedure in detail; he was very calm and reassuring; and his staff were polite and kind. The other p. surgeons I saw were less collaborative. I said I wanted the dorsal hump removed and that was good enough for them. "Yeah, we can do that no problem, just schedule a time" --and they were out of the room like that. No walking through the procedure or taking the time to try and visually flesh out what I wanted.

What I disliked about Dr. T., and scared me about the procedure was his caveat that "We can shave down the hump, but may not be able to cut down the cartilage on the nose below the hump. At least not with closed rhino." The implication being that there may be a bit of a cartilage bump below the hump after surgery. I didn't want to get rid of one hump just to have another on my nose. And open rhino was about $4k more and would eat up all of my savings, and possibly not make any appreciable difference anyway--because, he might be able to get the cartilage down no problem. I couldn't blow $4k on a "might." But, nervous as I was, we went over the images again, and he said that he would get it as close to completely straight as possible. And he assured me we could do a revision if I wasn't satisfied.

I was confident enough going in. Surgery went well. Days post-op went well. I lied to my family about it, saying I broke my nose.

I am still unsure if it was worth it or not, however. Because: my nose was straight when the cast came off. Almost a month post-op it is crooked, with a bump on the side of the filed-down dorsum, and a cartilage bump further down the nose. This severely depressed me. All the hype just to have my nose about as crooked as it was before. Also, I had had in my mind going in, the possibility of scooping the nose out just a LITTLE bit (as I would prefer a straight of slightly scooped nose to the large humpy one I've carried around the past few years). I was also considering lifting the tip a TINY bit. But Dr. T. talked me out of both, and being a p. surgeon, I figured he had some experience and knew what he was talking about. At this point, I kind of wish I had insisted on those things, and gone with open rhino.

Time will tell if my bumps are merely swelling as I hope, or if I will have to live with a crooked nose for another 6 months to a year before trying AGAIN to fix it.