Lip Lift After Thousands Wasted on Injections That Looked Terrible - Baltimore, MD

I've always had a thin upper lip, which made me look stern at rest. Questions like "What's wrong?" And "Are you upset?" became my life's torment. Men often said I looked bitchy and unapproachable and I would have random strangers telling me to smile. I'm generally considered pretty, but my self esteem was in the toilet and I became depressed and overly defensive about my resting "b*tch" face. I started looking into injections and the nurse convinced me that adding volume to my upper lip would help. I got a full syringe in my upper lip, and when the initial swelling went down, the downward sloping portions of my lip, which were thin to begin with, went inwards, while the top middle went out, resulting in the dreaded duck lips. Over the years, I tried different injectors, played with the volume, but the results were either completely unnoticeable or I looked like I could be Daffy Duck's long lost twin. I gave up and didn't have anything injected for about 5 years.

Then, I decided I wanted to try again, because as I was aging, my lip was becoming ever more stern. I started googling around about what caused duck lips with fillers and came across Dr. Rodriguez's video explaining the benefits of a lip lift vs fillers and it was like a complete epiphany. He says in the video that if you don't have upper tooth show, you are almost guaranteed duck lips after fillers. I've never been able to see my upper teeth with a slightly open mouth but until I saw the video and pulled my lip up in front of the mirror to reveal my top teeth, I had no idea what a difference it makes. Just a few extra millimeters of skin and it's like a 5 year difference! I was immediately sold on the procedure, and having reviews Dr. R's credentials, I was sold on him. I immediately made an appointment to have a virtual consultation with him. Realizing the challenges of traveling after surgery, especially the dreaded airplane trip back with people undoubtedly staring, I was a bit hesitant about doing the procedure out of state. However, after the consultation, I felt very comfortable with proceeding with Dr. Rodriguez.

I didn't think about it for a very long and scheduled the procedure right around Thanksgiving so that I would have more time off to recover. I had read on here that you could cover up the incision with make up after about a week, but I was honestly hoping for a quicker recovery. I work in the service sector and have to see people every day, so I don't have the luxury of staying at home and recovering for a very long time.

Because I had to drive myself to the airport after the procedure, I did not take any Valium before hand. Although I was obviously nervous before the procedure, Dr. Rodriguez and his staff made me feel very comfortable and as calm as I could possibly be given the circumstances.

The procedure itself starts out with two very painful numbing shots. I don't have very high pain tolerance and would estimate that these are about a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. I close my eyes for the shots, because I don't really do needles well. Your face goes numb very quickly after that and they put draping cloths over your face, so don't worry, you were not going to see anything and pass out. My one mistake in preparing for the procedure was putting my hair in a loose ponytail before I put the hairnet on. Although the ponytail was loose, after laying on it for about 30 minutes, I became extremely uncomfortable and had to ask Dr. Rodrigues to stop stitching and move my pillow because I couldn't take the pain anymore. I think the whole thing took about an hour or a little bit less. He removed a total of about 4 mm. He warned me before the procedure that I would look absolutely terrifying immediately afterwards so not to panic. However when I got up from the operating table, he said that mine didn't look that bad. Not wanting to faint if things were really bad, I decided to just put on the surgical mask that they were nice enough to give me for the plane ride and not look at it until I got home.

The days that followed have been a roller coaster, to be honest. When I first looked at what I had done, I was ecstatic that I could finally see my top teeth. My nose was, and still is completely disfigured by the swelling, and my nostrils are enormous, which makes me look like a pig. I have brought a lot of posts on here where people were complaining about nose distortion, and it seems most of those people saw the swelling go down after some weeks, and their nose return to normal, so that's what I'm hoping for. I guess it's still too early to tell as I write this eight days after the surgery. I will post additional pictures with a brief descriptions of what my face was doing on various days after the procedure.

So, like I mentioned in my summary, this process is very much an emotional roller coaster. If you're considering this procedure, you have to be ready for that. In my case, I liked the proportionality of my lip during the major swelling. I knew the swelling would go down, and I didn't want my lip that freakishly large, but I was hoping that the shape would remain more or less the same, just smaller. that didn't exactly happen. By way of background, I decided to get the lip lift for two reasons: 1) I wanted my upper teeth to show, and 2) those pesky inward dropping corners of my mouth. I elected NOT to get the corner lift because that wasn't really my issue. Pre-op, the line of my mouth was more or less a straight, horizontal line, and I was OK with this. I think that if I turned my corners upward, it would make me look unnatural. I just wanted more of my lip in the corners to show. When you look at my day 2 photos, that result seemed to be accomplished, however, on day 5, my outer top lip started dropping, while the top middle was still pulled up. It was worse than all the bad injections. And the corners of my mouth, which used to be a straight line, now pointed downward, making me look extremely angry. At this point, I started freaking out and called the doctor. He told me that it's too early to tell at this stage and that since I still had a lot of swelling in my face, my lip would reshape as the swelling went down. I wanted to be optimistic, I really did, but this is my face and thoughts of "what the hell did I do to myself? maybe I should have researched this better? maybe i should have waited and consulted with more doctors" started to creep in. I do have some discoloration along my outer vermilion border, so I thought maybe my eyes are playing ticks on me because of that. I tried using lip liner on the outer edges only to make them a bit fuller. The result: I looked like an angry pig. At this point, I was certain that I regretted the whole thing and that I made a mistake.

I think things are starting to fall into place. When I had my freak out call with Dr. Rodriguez, who, I would like to add was very comforting and understanding, he also asked me if my glue was starting to come off. I told him that it had not, and he suggested that I start gently prying it loose with a q-tip moistened in peroxide. I did this, very gently. My suggestion to anyone doing this is, first of all, don't do it unless your doctor tells you, and secondly, take your time. You don't want to pull on the incision or the stitches. I used the q-tip method Dr. R suggested, starting at the outer edge of the glue, and as a small piece came loose, I would snip it back with manicure scissors. The whole process took nearly an hour, but I don't think I tugged anything, which is good. The immediate effect of the glue being off was that my nose started to look smaller, because it kind of dropped, and wasn't protruding over the hard line of the glue anymore. That alone made things look significantly better. My cupid's bow started to look less taught, and my lip immediately looked more proportional. A little bit of the glue seemed to persistently want to stay on, and I didn't want to undue a stitch or open the incision, so I just left it there. I was starting to gain confidence that everything was going to be OK. Mood: cautiously optimistic.